A new movie is coming out and hopefully it will be coming to your neighborhood. Its based on the best-selling novel, Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. Here’s a trailer:

The plot of Atlas Shrugged is . . . monumental– too long to describe but essentially it is a story of capitalists and entrepreneurs who go on strike in response to Government interference with the market. The enigmatic John Galt Continue reading …

Rob Bell has certainly ratcheted up the question of eternity in Christian and secular discussion with his book Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived . Many know that when I was younger I was an atheist and came to faith once I realized that Jesus was an actual historical person, He was physically raised from the dead and the Bible is fundamentally true. As I viewed his interview with Martin Bashir: I was struck Rob Bell’s assortment of non-answers. Does it matter how we live? Perhaps. Is salvation by grace alone, through faith alone in Christ alone? We aren’t sure. Rob Bell wonders about those who haven’t heard. His claim is that doctrine we have about salvation is “all speculation.” In other places he has said that he believes Christ is the only means by which we are saved but we may call on Him without knowing it. Does that mean we can reach Him by calling on Buddha? Bell, like any good politician, doesn’t commit himself one way of the other. Continue reading …

So the king said to me, “Why is your face sad though you are not sick? This is nothing but sadness of heart.” Then I was very much afraid (Nehemiah 2:2)

If we live long enough, we will experience loss. Sometimes it will seem beyond our ability to cope and even though we continue to function and, as the English say, “keep a stiff upper lip,” the grief sneaks up on us and we cannot hide it. Nehemiah was in grief over the state of Jerusalem. According to the first chapter we wept for days. Others might have simply said, “Get over it.” It is sometimes difficult to be around someone who is suffering grief because it isn’t tangible and cannot be “fixed” like a broken window or flat tire. It is something that happens inside. Continue reading …

Two stories that caught my attention this week have to do with persecution of Christians in foreign countries. I’m always amazed at how many people have no idea that Christians are persecuted in other parts of the world. It is something that often escapes my friends on the far left of the political spectrum. It seems in the minds of many, religious persecution is something that happens only to minority religions or Islam. When questioned about Christian persecution, I can almost see the images of lions and Roman arenas forming in the heads of my friends, rather than say a lone Chinese preacher languishing in a cell or in recent events: A lone Pakistani member of parliment who dared protest Pakistan’s blasphemy laws as a representative of all the non-Muslim citizens of Pakistan. Shahbaz Bhatti was remarkable. I only heard of him after his assassination which is sad. I would like to have followed him before he became famous for dying. But his death is what he will always be remembered for:

I think the most poignant moment in that interview Continue reading …

In fact, a lot of people have liked this book. And isn’t that all that matters? I mean, if you can write in a congenial autobiographical style that makes people feel good by telling them the kinds of things anyone would want to hear, if readers warm up to you the way kids would to a favorite uncle who intrigues them with views different from those of their parents, if you can effectively manipulate the emotional hooks in a story when truth and logic abandon you, does it really matter if your premises are faulty, your facts are few and far between, and the cover of your book is a tad misleading? So what if this book is less than the sum of its parts (much less, actually)! Why can’t we all just be open minded for a change, and if, in the process of opening our minds our brains fall out, so what? If God is bigger than our puny little brains, He shouldn’t care what’s in them, right? So let’s try putting the stuff Philip Gulley and James Mulholland have written in their book, If Grace Is True: Why God Will Save Every Person (San Francisco, CA, USA: HarperSanFrancisco, 2003) into them and see what happens. Continue reading …