How Internet Porn Explains the Decline of American Faith

Since the early 1990s, there has been a significant uptick in Americans abandoning their faith. After crunching the numbers, one researcher says contributing factors such as upbringing and education only explain part of the increase. What about the rest?

After controlling for variables like income, environment, and so on, computer scientist Allen Downey of Olin College of Engineering in Massachusetts found 25 percent of the decline can be correlated with Internet access. More Web, less faith. 

Why? Here’s Downey’s stab at an answer: “For people living in homogeneous communities, the Internet provides opportunities to find information about people of other religions (and none), and to interact with them personally.” So increased exposure leads to doubt, disagreement, disenchantment, and ultimately to discarding your faith.  Continue at Joel J. Miller

When Faith Causes You to Doubt

I believe in a God whose love is so great that he is love. I also believe in a God who is so powerful that he is all-powerful. But sometimes my belief in such a God causes me to struggle.

When I see sad and desperate situations, compassion compels me to pray and to help. This is where I am sometimes confused by faith. Some struggle because they doubt; I sometimes struggle because I believe.

My faith does not waver: God can do something to help those who suffer. But when I cannot do anything to alleviate the pain and suffering, and neither do my prayers alleviate their suffering, I struggle to understand why God does not seem to answer the cries of my heart for those in need.

Worn Out from Calling on God

 

I realize that I am not the first to be conflicted over faith and suffering. I resonate with the psalmist who asked, "How long, O LORD? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and every day have sorrow in my heart?" (Psalm 13:1-2)

Things were so intense for the psalmist that he said, "I am worn out calling for help; my throat is parched. My eyes fail, looking for my God. . . . Answer me, O LORD, out of the goodness of your love; in your great mercy turn to me. Do not hide your face from your servant; answer me quickly, for I am in trouble. Come near and rescue me" (Psalm 69:3, 16-18).   Continue at Steve Cornell

Learning from Liberals

Dead Germans. 

They are the subject of a lecture I give every spring in my church history classes: a brief overview of German theologians from the 19th and early-20th centuries.

It’s kind of a depressing lecture to deliver — the sad tale of skepticism intersecting with scholarship; a dismal depiction of the disaster unleashed by unrestrained doubt and disbelief.

Despite standing in the shadow of the Reformation, many German Protestant theologians abandoned the historic truth claims of biblical Christianity due to the mounting popularity of Enlightenment rationalism. In so doing, they shipwrecked their own souls while simultaneously devastating the faith of millions of others.

Higher critics, such as Johann Eichhorn and David Strauss, denied the inspiration and inerrancy of the Bible. Moses didn’t write the Pentateuch, they claimed; nor did Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John write the four gospels. To make matters worse, they suggested that the Jesus of the Bible is not the same as the real Jesus of history. In their “quest to find the historical Jesus,” the critics created a “Jesus” of their own imaginations — essentially reducing him to a nice guy who couldn’t do any miracles, never claimed to be God, and was largely misunderstood by first-century Judaism. 

Liberal theologians, from Friedrich Schleiermacher to Albrecht Ritschl, similarly disavowed the truth claims of the Bible. They looked instead for a new foundation on which to base their contrived version of Christianity. Some found it in the personal experience of romanticism; others in the moral ethics of the social gospel. But by denying core Christian doctrines (like the substitutionary death of Christ and His bodily resurrection), liberalism denied the very essence of the gospel message (cf. 1 Cor. 15:3-4).  Continue at Nathan Busenitz

Dealing with the Doubting

I deal with many people doubting their faith. To be more specific, these are Christians going through some sort of faith crisis where they no longer believe with the simplicity that once characterized their belief. This is becoming more common in a world where sheltered or isolated beliefs are impractical and antiquated. However, most of us really don't know how to deal with doubt. We don't know how to deal with it when it comes to our own doubts, much less other people's.

At the risk of presenting a bit of a caricature, let me give some tongue-in-cheek ways that some different theological systems deal with Christians going through such a crisis of faith:

Baptists: They are still saved, no matter where their doubts take them. They just need renewed assurance.

Calvinists: They were never saved to begin with. They need to hear the gospel.

Charismatics: They are demon possessed. They need an exorcism.

Arminians: They are in the process of losing their salvation. They need to stop sinning or be argued back into the faith.  Continue at Michael Patton

The New Evangelical Virtues

Asking questions is in, answering them in a clear and compelling way is out. Here is how Greg Boyd praises Bell in this regard: “Rob is first and foremost a poet/artist/dramatist who has a fantastic gift for communicating in ways that inspire creativity and provoke thought. Rob is far more comfortable (and far better at) questioning established beliefs and creatively hinting at possible answers than he is at constructing a logically rigorous case defending a definitive conclusion.” As just one example, the strength of the Emerging Church and its draw was far more in asking questions than in answering them. In fact, the New Calvinism and the Emerging Church arose by asking many of the same questions—questions that came out of the Church Growth Movement and the slow erosion of significant, weighty doctrine. Right teaching and right living were being replaced by mindless entertainment and those who became Emergent leaders asked many good questions. But their answers, when they were willing to give them, were lousy. Read it all HERE

Don't Pamper Your Doubts

Another Doubter of Darwin Goes Public

Although books related to the never-ending discussion of the pros and cons of Darwinism are constantly rolling off the presses, there are only a few that have the potential to mark a major turning point in the debate.

James Le Fanu's new book Why Us?: How Science Rediscovered the Mystery of Ourselves may be another such book. Le Fanu is a medical doctor who has contributed articles and reviews to the British Medical Journal and the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine. His previous book, The Rise and Fall of Modern Medicine, won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in 2001. (Read the rest HERE)