J.S. Park: Hospital Chaplain, Skeptical Christian
From Devout Atheist to Skeptical Pastor: A Blog For Busted-Up, Beat-Down People (Like Me)
What is “sin”? Is it merely just drinking and cursing and skipping church? Why is the word “sin” still important today?
How sin explains the itchy longing inside every human heart, and why it’s good news that you’re a sinner.
Subscribe to my channel here.
Love y’all!
— J.S.
[Thank you to Steven Hause of pudgyproductions]
shatterrealm asked a question:
How would you say Christianity challenges you to think for yourself?
Hello dear sister in Christ! I have to plug you here and recommend your other blog, gothicchristian. I’m a fan!
Contrary to misinformed popular opinion, I would say Christianity challenges us to think for ourselves in several great ways.
1) God first and foremost commands us to think for ourselves.
If God’s commands are a way of describing reality and how it ought to work, then it’s a big deal that God wants us to think through to the bottom of everything. Passages like 1 John 4 and Proverbs 2:9-11 show that God wants us to have discernment and wisdom, and that “knowledge is pleasant to the soul.” Acts 17 is almost entirely about Paul wanting us to dig deep on what we really believe. God is absolutely pro-intellect and pro-science, and anyone who says otherwise hasn’t read the Bible very far.
2) Traditional Christianity had such a profound respect for knowledge that it practically kept libraries open during the so-called “Dark Ages.”
I know that not everyone will see eye-to-eye on this one, but modern scholars have completely dismissed the “Dark Age” myth and how “Christianity set us back for centuries.” This is a terrible misconception and only repeated by the shallowest of college students. Any medieval historian will tell you that early Christians cared so much about knowledge, whether pagan religion or Greek philosophy, that they preserved such teachings until it revitalized academia, to the point that you can link this revival with the scientific method and the Enlightenment. I personally believe the church has really lost their way on this in the twentieth and twenty-first century – but it must never be said that the early Christians tried to snuff out the sciences. It’s the very, very opposite. The purest state of Christianity will always seek knowledge in its purest form, no matter where it comes from, because the Christian believes all information can point us back to the true God (1 Timothy 4:4, Romans 1:20, Psalm 19:1-4).
Continue reading “Five Ways That Christianity Helps You Think For Yourself”
How is God three in one? Why does the Christian faith need a Trinitarian God? Does any analogy really work?
An explanation of this unexplainable doctrine in less than three minutes. And a unique way to see the Trinity. I got really excited about this one.
Subscribe to my channel here. Love y’all!
— J.S.
[Thank you to Steven Hause of pudgyproductions]
How do we actually love someone? What does it mean that God loves us? What is the “Christian” concept of love? Why is it unique?
Defining the gritty, painful, crazy depth of love in two and a half minutes.
Subscribe to my channel here. Love y’all!
— J.S.
[Thank you to Steven Hause of pudgyproductions]
forestwater87 asked a question:
I’m really struggling to love God. I don’t feel Him, so people say to read the Bible. But when I open it, I see stories of slaughter—often of children & innocents—& God hardening people’s hearts, & I find it really hard to love Him. Why does He create people just to destroy them? Are our lives so insignificant that He can end them just to prove a point? If faith itself is a gift from God, why doesn’t He give it to everyone & not send anyone to Hell? Most important, how do I love a God like this?
Hey dear friend, thank you for your honesty and may I simply say: I totally feel you on all this. I have so much love in my heart for you right now, really. I wrestle daily with some of the tough parts of the Bible, and I’ll probably ask those questions until my time on earth is over. I wish I had a more adequate intellectual answer for you, but I’m certain I’ll fall short of explaining away some of these things. There are also so many different interpretations that I couldn’t claim to be the one who’s unlocked all the mysteries today.
Here’s an attempt to offer a jump-off point for some of your concerns.
Anonymous asked a question:
Hi, Im taking up a BA in History and I get exposed to theories & philosophies that are either not in line with the truth of God or blatantly against Christianity. Sometimes I run out of arguments&words to stand up for my faith. I don’t know if I should be dealing with these or should I just ignore it. I hope you could help me out of this. I don’t want to drift away and be taken captive by hollow and deceptive philosophies just as what Paul wrote to the Colossians. Thanks for your response.
Hey dear friend, to be truthful, I’ve gotten rather jaded about defending my faith to myself and to others. I’ve found that there are just about equal piles of evidence both for and against the existence of God and Christianity. I could easily argue on either side and create a compelling argument for both. So ultimately, it’s about what I choose to believe. At the start and end of each day, I must make that choice.
The hard part is that we are naturally biased to believe that a personal God must not exist. We each have a rebellious streak against authority; no one likes being told what to do; we all want some kind of freedom, whether sexual or financial or psychological — so the deck is already stacked against God. We never walk into such a debate on neutral terms. We all have a conflict of interest when it comes to believing in Him. Nobody is without bias on every side of this.
This is the Table of Contents for my book on trials and suffering, called Mad About God.
The book also talks about True Detective, Louis C.K., the Serial podcast, the pressure to be “radical” and do “great things for God,” the romanticism of third world missionaries, overly inspirational Instagrams, The Shawshank Redemption, the misquoting of Jeremiah 29:11 and David & Goliath.
It’s now in both paperback and ebook. Be blessed and love y’all!
— J.S.
atenleaguecanvas asked:
Hey Pastor Park! I want to thank-you for the grace you show in your answers. I really appreciate your example of presenting your views in a gentle and humble manner. I also have a question, I struggle with reconciling God, as he is depicted in the Old Testament, with how he is depicted in the New Testament. Did He really order the deaths of men, women, and children belong to nations that opposed Israel? I know He is ultimately just, but I keep getting hung up on this.
Hey dear friend, I appreciate your very kind words.
This is a really tough question that has disturbed me when I was an atheist and disturbs me even more as a Christian. It will always be a point of tension that might not be entirely resolved until our time on earth is done. I’d like to graciously present several different views about the wars in the Old Testament, from most brutal to most reasonable, and then let you decide. I’ll tell you what I personally believe in the end.
Please note: I’m not soft about the Bible. It does say a few hard things that I’m going to question all the way to Heaven. Jesus said hard things too. I don’t want to accommodate Scripture to fit a Westernized, watered down, sugarcoated, therapeutic pick-me-up. But I also don’t want to capitulate to my own Easternized, patriarchal, wrathful, vengeful picture of God. I believe the Bible has way more nuance than that. I know we won’t all see eye to eye on this either, and that’s totally okay. I truly welcome disagreement and I want to know where I’m wrong.
So here are some views to consider.
Continue reading “Why Is God So Homicidal In The Old Testament?”
I started the 90 Day Bible Challenge, also called B90X, about two weeks ago. I’ve actually done it once before and it was awesome: you can definitely see the huge narrative scope of the Bible.
If you want to try the B90X, click here to download from Dropbox!
For daily updates about the reading, check out my new Facebook page (and please click “like”!)
— J
A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for adversity.
As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.
— Proverbs 17:17, 27:17
… When Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart out of this world to the Father, having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.
— John 13:1
John 21. When Jesus asks Peter if he loves him.
Beautiful.
In reference to this.
Feel free to skip around on this post.
Anonymous questions:
– Hi. I enjoyed your last post. I am a woman and have been struggling with Scripture for a long, long time about complementarianism vs egalitarianism in the church. Despite my struggling, my conviction is the former. I am guessing yours is as well. So can you give me your view (and on submission, historical context of Paul’s teachings, etc)? Also, what if there are few men in a certain area unable to do pastoral work for w/e reason.. is it better to have a woman do this work rather than no one?
– In reference to your recent post about qualifications for pastors, could you also address this issue: must pastors be male?
– Can you explain 1 Timothy 2:11?
Please allow me the humility to throw down some groundwork for our discussion. Also please know that I am one person interpreting a controversial text, and disagreements here shouldn’t lead to division. Feel free to skip around if you read on.
I can’t continue unless I explain neo-feminism. It is a form of feminist values gone wrong, in which instead of equal rights calls for a debasing of masculine values and a superiority of feminine ones.
I have little problem with feminism since its true spirit is to heal the historical deficit of women’s rights. But neo-feminism is a clever corruption, often subtle and much more entrenched in our culture and mentalities than we presume, as we’ll soon see.
We are also such a product of our times that we’re blinded to much of the ideas that have clawed into our psyches. C.S. Lewis’ famous argument of chronological snobbery is helpful to read here.
No doubt that I will say disagreeable things and I don’t claim to have all the answers. Yet I stand on these convictions because I don’t want to be a relativist passionless fool who compromises in a politically correct culture of catering. As best as I know how, these are my personal biblical foundations. Please seek for yourself as well.
Anonymous asked:
What do you think about tattoos? A “Christian” tattoo. Should a Christian not get one?
It depends on who’s asking. When Jesus comes back with a tattoo on his leg, his head on fire, a sword coming out of his face, holding seven stars in his hand, riding a warhorse and wearing a robe dipped in the blood of enemies he just killed — no one is going to ask him, Dude should you have a tattoo?
I’m mostly kidding. But the root truth remains: It just depends on who’s asking. It depends on your motives. It’s a heart issue.
You cracked open your journal, busted out your favorite pen, and finally opened your Bible.
Five sentences later, you have no idea what you just read.
Confusion, frustration, resignation: But the pastor made it so easy. It was better when he told it.
And the final excuse: At least I tried.
It’s happened to all of us, from rookies to veterans, when we catch the excitement of digging into Scripture and come out cold. Most of us will conclude the Bible is too hard, that we’re not mature enough, that we need to be spoon-fed, that something’s wrong with me, that we’ll try it again later. And with each pass at reading, we grow more bewildered.
Every pastor with the best of intentions is yelling at you to read your Bible, but they forget to tell you how.
Of course the simplest way would be to turn to Genesis and just rip right through it. But there’s absolutely nothing wrong with a little help in reading Scripture. If you genuinely want to read the Bible but have had some false starts, here are some ways to dig into the Greatest Truth in the universe.
We live in a world that values others based on what they have accomplished in life, how intelligent they are or what their social status is. But for the Christian, this is not where a person receives their value. The value and dignity of each human life, male and female, is based on the biblical doctrine that each person is made in the image of God. Our value is not in our intellectual abilities, social status, the number of children we produce, the number of degrees we obtain or the size of our bank account. Our value is first found in Christ Jesus, whose image we bear. It is not a matter of degree; it is categorical.
— William M. Struthers
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“How did the early Church ever function without the “expertise” we have today? Yet, those Christians turned the world upside down, and they did it without any celebrity testimonies, without modern management techniques, without psychotherapy, without mass media, and without most of the means the contemporary church seems to view as essential. All the had was God’s Word and the power of His Spirit, but they knew that was sufficient.”
— John MacArthur
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! — 2 Corinthians 5:17.
When Apostle Paul wrote this in the original Greek language, he was so excited he forgot all the verbs (he was normally an eloquent writer). So literally it reads, “Any of you Christ? He new creation.”
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Originally posted on my Tumblr.
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I recently completed the 90 Day Bible Plan, or as it’s called in places, the B90X. It took me 104 days.
Things I learned:
J.S. Park: Hospital Chaplain, Skeptical Christian 