Spiritual Journey Insights

Racial discrimination is a big issue which this country has faced and it has its influence in every social-political structure. Justice rather than reconciliation is the better rubric under which to consider the issue of race. If reconciliation is understood as the repair of broken relationships and the restoration of trusting an intimate community between persons and groups, then justice is its first step. Racial reconciliation is not possible unless there is first the redress of race-based or race-lined injustice.         Some of the injustice can be seen in the violent crimes and death committed against Black people or a particular group of people. We see hate crimes and death penalties handed over to a particular group of people. This has led to a reduction in life expectancy. Many of the political decisions and steps taken are racially biased. We see power imbalances and discrimination at every level. We see from history that there existed housing discriminati...

In his chapter on Shame and Conscience, Bonhoeffer says that man is reminded of his dis-union with God in shame. Conscience is man’s disunion with himself and it relates to himself and is not concerned with God and other men. Conscience is satisfied when the prohibition is not disobeyed. Whatever is not forbidden is permitted and for conscience, life falls into two parts: what is permitted and what is forbidden.  There is no positive commandment and what is permitted for conscience is identical with good and it does not register the fact. And even in this man is in a state of disunion with his origin. The range of experience of conscience does not extend to the fact that this unity itself pre-supposes disunion with God and with man and that consequently beyond the disobedience to the prohibition, the prohibition itself, as the call of conscience, arises with disunion from the origin.  This means that conscience is not concerned with man’s relation to God and to other men but w...

Some of the key points from  Kingdom Ethics: Love . Love is at the heart of the life of Christ, his teaching, and his death on the Cross and for Christians, love is the heart of living. Even on the cross, Jesus reflected his compassion through his actions. It is important for Christians to understand what we mean by love and what the true shape of love is. It is important to compare and discern which form of love fits best for Christian ethics.      Sacrificial love is the agape love which is purely unselfish, spontaneous and unmotivated by any value or benefit the other might have for us. It is not created by any value it sees in others but instead creates value in them. This love is regardless of the attractiveness of the one we love and is not something we do but God initiates it as a pure gift and we reflect the love that shines from God through us towards others. The sacrificial love throws its pure white light on our usual way of loving and reveals our selfish ...

Below is a reflection from Kingdom Ethics: Authority and Scripture . The two key methodological issues in Christian ethics raised by Jesus when he talks about law and the prophets found in Matthew 5:17-20 are: Where shall Christians turn for authoritative insight and direction in shaping their ethics which relates to the source of authority? How shall scripture be interpreted in Christian ethics and how is Scripture used?             The issue of biblical authority is a recurring question in church life and Christian ethics. If the church is functioning as it should, it will continually and very earnestly engage in a search for authoritative direction and insight concerning its character and its conduct. It is not enough to say that Scripture, tradition, divine guidance, conscience, church leaders, and the other function as the sources of authority. Christians need to know which among these sources they should really use and how to ...

Technologically, we are making a lot of progress, but morally we appear to be lost. Evangelical Christians are challenged to formulate their positions on what are literally matters of life and death. Since the time of reformation, the subject of casuistry has become less fashionable in Protestant circles.  Jesus in no way minimized the role of specific obedience to the commandments of God but made such specific obedience a test of the genuineness of the disciples’ love. The teachings of the Scripture are the final quote of appeal for ethics. Human reason, church tradition, and the natural social sciences may aid moral reflections but divine revelation found in the Bible constitutes the bottom line of the decision-making process.  The Word of God is the only infallible and inerrant rule of faith and practice and consequently is the highest authority for both doctrine and morals. There has been a widespread tendency in modern biblical scholarship to minimize the prescriptive ele...

Relativism is a knowledge-denying claim i.e.; that truth claims are really just opinions or culturally-shaped perspectives. Facts, moral precepts, or values can be true for you and at the same time not true for me. Relativists deny that objective universal truth exists. Many Christians struggle to respond to relativism and fail to live a faithful life in a morally discouraging culture. The culture war between truth and relativism is not at all new and the belief that universal objective truth does not exist (alethic skepticism) or cannot be known (epistemological skepticism) is not a latecomer to the Western civilization. Although relativism has intermittently appeared and reappeared throughout history, its dominance of culture is new. They argue that rather than having a significant voice in public life, religion has to be relegated to private and personal life. Relativism is a knowledge-denying enterprise and if you say you know something you are not really a relativist. It claims th...

This blog presents a summary of Chapter 10 from Lee Strobel's book ' The Case for a Creator . T he basic argument in the chapter-  The basic argument of the chapter is that there is a mind or consciousness existing in human beings which is beyond or different from the brain. We are created in the image of God and hence our soul is complex to understand. The chapter deals with evidence of consciousness. Lee Strobel starts with the controversy over consciousness and concerns related to brains boundaries. Then he writes about his interview with J.P. Moreland which deals with various issues and questions regarding consciousness. 2.   The major points of the argument that impressed me the most- Wilder Penfield, the renowned father of modern neurosurgery through performing surgery on more than a thousand epileptic patients encountered concrete evidence that the brain and the mind are actually distinct from each other, although they clearly interact. Penfield ended up agreeing ...