Thoughts on ethics, society, politics, religion, philosophy, theology, and everything in between
What is Self-Control? The two most powerful motivators of human action are fear and love. Fear motivates us to withdraw from things we consider to be dangerous in some way, while love motivates us to pursue things that we find desirable. There are many different kinds of love, and many different things that human beings … Read more
What is Courage? The two most powerful motivators of human action are love and fear. Love motivates us to pursue things that we find desirable, while fear motivates us to withdraw from things we consider to be dangerous in some way. There is nothing wrong with fear per se. Without the powerful emotion of fear … Read more
What is Wisdom? We live in a complex world. At any given moment, there are an incredible number of possible courses of action we could take. We all have goals in life, and those who seek moral goodness do their best to have morally worthy goals. But how do we determine how we should go … Read more
What is Justice? Human beings are by nature social animals. Every individual human being is only alive because of a relationship between their parents, and because other human beings (usually their parents) took the time and energy to provide for and nurture them through their infancy and childhood years. Human beings have a natural instinct … Read more
Most Christians tend to think of Christian ethics in terms of following a list of rules. God has given us His laws, and we have to obey them. If we do, then God will be happy with us. If we don’t, then we have sinned and God will be angry with us. Now, it is … Read more
In the last three entries in this series, I examined what Scripture has to say about homosexual behavior, and concluded that: 1) the Old Testament forbids all homosexual behavior among God’s people, 2) we have no reason at all to think that Jesus would have been in favor of modifying this Old Testament teaching, and … Read more
The majority of Christians who believe that the Church should approve of homosexual behavior acknowledge that the apostle Paul teaches the homosexual behavior is wrong; they argue that, for other biblical and theological reasons, the Church should now approve of homosexual behavior in spite of this.[1]See, for example “Homosexuality and the Bible” by William Loader, … Read more
It is very common for Christians who believe that the Church should approve of homosexual behavior to point to the teachings and example of Jesus in support of their position. Jesus, they argue, never said anything about homosexuality being wrong. Therefore, the Church should not condemn it. Furthermore, Jesus did not condemn tax collectors, prostitutes, … Read more
In recent years, the ethical status of homosexuality has become one of the most controversial theological issues in the Western Church. In spite of the Church’s longstanding traditional teaching that homosexual behavior[1]Some advocates of traditional Christian sexual ethics prefer to use the terminology of saying that “homogenital acts” are sinful. This is because “sexuality” encompasses … Read more
In my last post, I critiqued the common American cultural phenomenon of people defining their personal identity in terms of the feelings and desires that they happen to have inside of them. Unfortunately, this phenomenon is not restricted to non-Christians in our culture. Many American Christians have to a significant extent absorbed the idea that … Read more