"There is absolutely no reason to abandon the faith that created our civilization."

In City Journal, Andrew Klavan writes,

...This, as I see it, is the very essence of Christianity. It is the religion of the Word. For Christians, the model, of course, is Jesus, the perfect Word that is the thing itself. But each of us is made in that image, continually expressing in flesh some aspect of the maker’s mind. This is why Jesus speaks in parables—not just to communicate their meaning but also to assert the validity of their mechanism. In the act of understanding a parable, we are forced to acknowledge that physical interactions—the welcoming home of a prodigal son, say—speak to us about immaterial things like love and forgiveness.

To acknowledge that our lives are parables for spiritual truths may entail a belief in the extraordinary, but it is how we all live, whether we confess that belief or not. We all know that the words “two plus two” express the human version of a truth both immaterial and universal. We likewise know that we are not just flesh-bags of chemicals but that our bodies imperfectly express the idea of ourselves. We know that whether we strangle a child or give a beggar bread, we take physical actions that convey moral meaning. We know that this morality does not change when we don’t perceive it. In ancient civilizations, where everyone, including slaves, considered slavery moral, it was immoral still. They simply hadn’t discovered that truth yet, just as they hadn’t figured out how to make an automobile, though all the materials and principles were there.

We live in this world of morality and meaning—right up until the moment it causes us pain or guilt or shame or gets in the way of our ambitions or happiness. Then, suddenly, we look at the only logical source of the meaning we perceive and say, “I do not know Him.”

A West whose ethicists coolly contemplate infantile euthanasia, whose nations roll back their magnificent jurisprudence to make room for the atrocity of sharia, whose historians argue themselves out of the objective reality of human rights because they have lost faith in the numinous basis of those rights—such a West may not be heading for disaster as much as it is living in the midst of one, a comfortable and prosperous disaster to which our default atheism makes us blind, a dystopia in which we are increasingly happy and increasingly savage at the same time.

It need not be so. Outside the Enlightenment Narrative, there is absolutely no reason to abandon the faith that created our civilization. The flowering of the Western mind took place under the Christian sun. The light that led us here can lead us on.

Read more here.

Being a Secular Atheist started to feel like trying to walk on thin ice.

This sweet photo caught my eye so I was drawn to the accompanying post by Gerard Vanderleun on "The very small limits of the secular."

It seems that for Science to triumph as the new religion, Christ has to die again — and this time he’s got to stay dead.

My very small puppy in this fight says that there is a lot in Science that lets all of us live longer and better lives while there is a lot in Christianity that lets us live deeper and more meaningful lives.

I don’t look to Christianity to bring me the weather reports for tomorrow. At the same time I don’t look to Science to ever, in its widest dreams, reveal the core of the miracle and mystery of being a conscious entity who has been granted the gift of being able, in my better moments, to witness — even for an inch of time — the wonder of Creation.

Read more here.

Being real with God

Heather Caliri writes at Relevant Magazine about being real with God.

About two years ago, at my wits’ end in faith, I tried a radically different approach.

I stopped doing Christian stuff I didn’t want to do.

Instead, I got brutally honest with God. If I didn’t feel like praying, I told Him, and asked Him to give me that desire. Ditto with the Bible, church, and other disciplines.

Funnily enough, that brutal honesty was the most earnest praying I’d done in years.

For the first time, I’m being honest with God and myself. Just as importantly, I am finally seeing that God is the author and perfecter of my faith, not me.

...I thought of prayer or Bible reading like sandpaper that would take off my rough edges. The more I disliked it, the more effective it was.

But that attitude wore me thin.

Lately, I’ve paid attention to ways I actually enjoy encountering God. Writing, liturgy, a prayer partner, worship music and long meditative walks give me regular ways of exulting in God’s presence.

The transformation this has wrought is nothing less than spectacular. I used to feel resentful when I spent time with Jesus. Now, being with Him is the best part of my week.

Read more here.

Will Obama meet with Naghmeh Abedini tomorrow?

President Obama is going to be in Boise, Idaho tomorrow. That is the home town of imprisoned pastor Saeed Abedini, who's serving eight years in prison in Iran for his faith.

Abedini's wife, Naghmeh, has pleaded with Obama to meet with her so that she can ask him for her husband's release.

"My heart leapt with hope when I heard that you would be visiting my hometown of Boise, Idaho. Since the Iranian government took my husband, Saeed Abedini, almost three years ago, I have been praying and wanting to meet with you," Naghmeh Abedini wrote in a letter ahead of Obama's visit.

"With each of my travels to Washington D.C. I hoped that I would get a call, or an invitation to see you and to speak with you. To have you look into my eyes and see the piercing pain that has been there since my husband's imprisonment; to see my kids and to know that they have missed the warm embrace of their dad for nearly three years."

She added: "Mr. President, my children and I respectfully request, as you come to our home town of Boise, Idaho, that you take a moment of your time to meet with us."

Pastor Abedini was imprisoned in Iran in September 2012 after traveling to work on a children's orphanage, and was later sentenced to eight years in prison.

Since then the American Center for Law and Justice, which represents Naghmeh and the couple's two children, has campaigned, along with hundreds of thousands of people worldwide, calling for the pastor's release.

Pastor Abedini has held fast to his faith despite the brutal treatment he has received in Iranian prisons, which has included beatings and death threats by jihadists believed to be connected with terror group ISIS.

Read more here.