Category Archives: Worldviews

“Are You Ready for the Reason Rally?”

This entry is part 3 of 3 in the series True Reason

My BreakPoint column for this month: I’m trying to imagine how one conducts a rally for Reason. “Three cheers for Reason! Hip! Hip! True Major Premise! Hip! Hip! True Minor Premise! Hip! Hip! Valid inference to a sound conclusion! Now everybody go give your all for objectively and dispassionately examining evidences, and reasoning through appropriate …

February 21, 2012 – 5:02 pm | By Tom Gilson | Posted in New Atheism, Worldviews | Tagged , | Comments (1)

Ten Turning Points: The Incarnation

I had surgery to repair a tendon in my foot last Thursday. For the past five days, to prevent post-operative swelling, I’ve been under doctor’s orders to keep my foot elevated all day long. I’ve been on a couch, recliner, or bed 23-plus hours a day since then. Today I’ll see the surgeon, and I …

February 21, 2012 – 9:25 am | By Tom Gilson | Posted in The Faith, Thinking Christianly, Worldviews | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments (0)

Ten Turning Points: God’s General Revelation

God is a relational God, a Trinity from all eternity, who has put relationships at the center of his creation. He is a God of glory, and a God of truth and of justice, as we have seen earlier in this series. He has never failed to have a revelation of himself in his creation, …

February 13, 2012 – 6:00 am | By Tom Gilson | Posted in Bible, Origins and Science, Thinking Christianly, Worldviews | Tagged , , , , , | Comments (4)

Blessings Through God’s People

I wrote earlier this week that God’s people had been called to be a blessing to all nations of the earth. What was that blessing to be? The answer to that is clear, though it’s complicated, because it hasn’t been a sudden outpouring right from the start. It’s been gradual. God “knows our frame; he …

February 8, 2012 – 5:45 am | By Tom Gilson | Posted in Bible, Deep Social Change, Service, Worldviews | Comments (42)

“Deepest Feelings” or Right and Wrong?

I didn’t catch this exactly enough to quote it all, but it went something like this. Mark Halperin was on one of the morning shows this morning, discussing the (apparently) surprising pushback the Obama administration has been getting this week, since announcing there would be only narrow exceptions to the new federal requirement that insurers …

February 7, 2012 – 2:44 pm | By Tom Gilson | Posted in Deep Social Change, Ethics, Knowing God, Thinking Christianly, Worldviews | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments (86)

The Progress of God’s People

If there’s one lesson we can learn from church history it’s this: God’s work has survived moral rum-dums and outright idiots down through the ages. It can survive one more: me. We looked last time at failures among the people of God. It is a sorry tale, but it has a flip side: God never …

February 7, 2012 – 6:00 am | By Tom Gilson | Posted in Bible, Worldviews | Tagged , , , , , | Comments (2)

The Calling of God’s People

This topic, God’s people, definitely belongs in any discussion of major turning points in the history of God’s work in the world, so I cannot leave it out. On the other hand, there is no way to do it justice in the time and space available. Its story ranges over thousands of years and across …

February 6, 2012 – 8:00 am | By Tom Gilson | Posted in Bible, Worldviews | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments (3)

Our Problem: To Explain the Human Condition

Genesis 3 tells how humans first entered into what I’m calling our problem. Some people find the story there hard to believe on account of the talking serpent and the seemingly magical fruit. We’ll come back to that. For now I want to show what it is in Genesis 3 that makes more sense than …

January 31, 2012 – 5:50 am | By Tom Gilson | Posted in Bible, The Faith, Worldviews | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments (28)

Our Problem: Illusion or Reality?

What’s our problem? No, seriously. What’s wrong with us? Maybe nothing’s wrong with us. Sure, it seems like something’s not right with humanity, but maybe it’s just an illusion. There are modern naturalists/materialists who say consciousness and free will are human illusions. They’re not the only ones who place common-sense human experience in doubt. “Christian …

January 30, 2012 – 6:00 am | By Tom Gilson | Posted in New Age, Origins and Science, Worldviews | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments (2)

In His Image: Working and Creating

Genesis 1:26-31 says, Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” So God …

January 26, 2012 – 6:00 am | By Tom Gilson | Posted in The Faith, Worldviews | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments (0)