A person’s appetite for and willingness to change can frequently be a matter of personality - some people are by nature more conservative in their personality and tend to resist change by nature, while others have personalities that are more progressive and tend to embrace and even pursue change.

The former group have the advantage of not being easily swayed into making bad changes in their life but the disadvantage of being unwilling at times to make necessary good changes. On the other hand, the latter group have the advantage of being willing to embrace much-needed changes but the disadvantage of sometimes rushing into unnecessary and even harmful changes. Both groups, of course, need each other to temper each other’s weaknesses. But how do we know what is bad change and what is good change?

The answer the Bible gives is that their is an unchangeable touchstone, Jesus Christ, who is the same yesterday, today, and forever. He never changes because he is perfect and thus needs no change. But we are not perfect, so we must be ready to change when needed, and we know we need to change when our thoughts or behavior does not match up with the perfect, unchangeable Jesus. So, with Jesus as our North Star, we can know when changing is necessary and when changing would be wrong.

Hosts: Aaron Mueller and Chuck Rathert

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In Christianity there are two different, but related, senses of the word confession. On the one hand, there is a confession of faith - the public and private statement of what Christians believe. On the other hand, there is also a confession of sin - the public and private statement that God is right and his human creatures are wrong. What these two confessions have in common is they both are fundamentally an agreement with God, that he is right and we are wrong.

These confessions carry with them a lot of benefit for the individual human: first, by turning us away from the fake “reality” that God is wrong and we are right and orienting us to true reality, we can know that we are right with God; and second, this right orientation to God’s reality produces psychological comfort as the individual human begins to experience much less dissonance in his life as he moves throughout God’s world.

Chuck and Aaron also discuss the benefits of private confession to God, corporate confession, individual confession with a pastor, and confessing our sins to those we have sinned against.

Hosts: Aaron Mueller and Chuck Rathert

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Every human belief or opinion is based upon a presupposition - a faith commitment that cannot be proven but can only be assumed. For instance, the difference between Christianity and atheism is not the difference between “faith” and “reason”, between opinion and fact, between superstition and rationality; instead, both positions are based on unprovable, faith-based assumptions - presuppositions. Christians believe God exists, atheists believe God does not exist. Neither can prove their position is correct, so both hold their position based on faith. And starting from those presuppositional foundations, each builds out logical explanations of how the universe works based on those presuppositions.

The question is which presupposition makes for the best logical conclusions; does faith in God or does faith in no-God make best sense of the universe? Does Christianity or atheism make best sense of the inborn sense of justice all humans have? Does Christianity or atheism make best sense of the quest for beauty that all humans strive for?

For Christianity, the logical conclusions of belief that God has revealed himself in Jesus make sense of our world in ways that no other presupposition can.

Hosts: Aaron Mueller and Chuck Rathert

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Some Christians have held that cremation is not permitted by the Bible, on the grounds that bodies buried intact, or “sleeping”, are a concrete anticipation of the resurrection of the dead on the last day. But the Bible never expressly forbids cremation, and in at least one place cremation is approvingly performed (1 Samuel 31:11-13).

The key issue is the question of what the resurrection from the dead means: if the body has been created by God and is fundamentally good, then our funeral and burial practices must center around and focus on the belief and confession that God will raise all the bodies of his children someday to new life in his new creation, whether they have been buried or cremated.

Hosts: Aaron Mueller and Chuck Rathert

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Virtue, in the ancient world, was the word for moral and physical excellence. Those who were brave, those who were honest, those who accomplished great things, were excellent, therefore virtuous.

The Bible, too, picks up on this ancient idea and calls humans to pursue virtue. But the Bible, unlike the Stoics and other ancient philosophies, holds that virtue is something that is only located in God’s character. In 2 Peter 1, Peter first claims that glory and virtue are something that are God’s alone, and then calls God’s people to live in His virtue, making ever effort to supplement our faith with this excellence. And if Christians are living in Christ’s virtue, then there is no need for “virtue signaling” - having to tell people we have virtue, to cover up our lack - because the genuine virtue and excellence of Jesus will be manifest in our day to day living.

Hosts: Aaron Mueller and Chuck Rathert

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When Jesus was falsely accused of sedition and blasphemy, Pontius Pilate asked him a question which has persistently confounded every thinker before and since: “What is truth?”

Pinning down truth so that everyone can have access to reality has been notoriously difficult. One option is to hold that humans can figure out the truth based upon their own observations and experiences - but the human propensity to be mistaken often demonstrates this theory’s weakness. Another option is to hold that there is no such thing as truth (or, at least, no one can know whether there is or not) - and yet we humans continue to live as though some things are true and worth giving assent to and others are not.

The Christian solution is that no mere mortal can completely know and understand the truth, but that God has made the truth known in the person of his Son Jesus. In other words, any and all truth claims must be tested not against the standard of human experience or common sense, but against the person of the One who claimed to be the way, the truth, and the life.

Hosts: Aaron Mueller and Chuck Rathert

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The cultural trope of the twenty-something guy living in his parents basement, not working, not exercising, and playing hours of video games, is perhaps a caricature, but it touches on a reality that is all too common today: the disillusioned and lonely young man.

Individualism has taught all of us that community responsibility and living life in relationship is unimportant, and guys who have bought into this lie pay the price of loneliness. But in addition, cultural currents which disdain the way God has created men to function (with energy, aggression, logical rigor, and decisiveness) make being a real man in public an almost impossible task. Part of this cultural pushback is, of course, a necessary reaction against the sexual aggression of some men who have felt loosed by the sexual revolution to treat women as objects. But Christianity insists that the solution to the problems of the sexual revolution is not to stifle biological manhood, but to channel the way God has made them in service of their families and community, by providing and protecting.

Hosts: Aaron Mueller and Chuck Rathert

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Sometimes churches close for demographic reasons: a small, rural community whose citizens are moving away will perhaps struggle to keep its churches open. But the primary reason why once healthy churches shrink and die is that they stop recognizing their foundation, Jesus Christ.

The liberal way of ignoring the foundation is to ignore his teachings, his strong Jewish commitment to the way God’s Law reveals God’s own character. The conservative way of ignoring the foundation is to ignore his mission, his desire - not to establish a theological ghetto of like-believing religious adherents - but to use his own people as his body to rescue the cities and neighborhoods where he has planted that particular church. But when God’s people remain faithful to his teaching and his mission, the Christian church grows and flourishes.

Hosts: Aaron Mueller and Chuck Rathert

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To comment on this episode, visit https://saintjamesglencarbon.org/cacg-ep97.