Click on the image for the Dallas Morning News’ photo-journalistic telling of this compelling story about the beauty, significance, and value of life. TK and Deidrea Laux plan to be in studio for “Live from Criswell” on Thursday, October 15. It should be a remarkable opportunity to reevaluate the gift of life.
Here is a circumspect letter from a Catholic listener about a doctrine we’ve covered for the last couple of days on the radio, sola scriptura, i.e., that scripture is the sole final authority for Christian faith and practice.
Sphere: Related ContentDr. Creamer, I am Catholic and I listen to your program everyday and I enjoy it even though I disagree with most of your theology. I am not able to call in to your show but I want to address sola scriptura.
But before I ask my question I must take issue with several comments. First the Catholic Church does not and never has believed in ongoing revelation.
From the Catechism # 66 There will be no futher revelation: …no new public revelation is to be expected before the glorious manifestation of Our Lord Jesus Christ. Yet even if Revelation is already complete, it has not been made completely explicit, it remains for Christian faith gradually to grasp its full significance over the course of the centuries”
Example: About ten years ago Pope John Paul II spoke from Read the rest of this entry »
Here’s the Baptist Press story I mentioned on the air yesterday.
In U.K., care denied for premature baby
Posted on Sep 18, 2009 | by Staff
WASHINGTON (BP)–A young British mother says her prematurely born son was left to die last October by doctors because he fell two days short of the minimum requirement for care.Sarah Capewell’s son, Jayden, was born 21 weeks and five days into her pregnancy, but physicians said he needed to be at 22 weeks gestation in order to be treated, she told The Daily Mail in a Sept. 9 article. He lived for nearly two hours without medical assistance. She is seeking a review of the guidelines followed by National Health Service (NHS) hospitals in such cases.
Jayden, who was born at an NHS hospital in Norfolk, was breathing without help, had a strong heart rate and was moving his arms and legs after his birth, said Capewell, 23.
She told The Daily Mail she pleaded with a pediatrician, saying, “You have got to help.” The doctor said, “No we don’t”
While she was having contractions, a chaplain visited her to make plans for a funeral for her yet-to-be-born son, Capewell said. “I was sitting there, reading this leaflet about planning a funeral and thinking, this is my baby, he isn’t even born yet, let alone dead,” she said, according to the newspaper.
Compiled by Baptist Press Washington bureau chief Tom Strode.
Here’s the well-informed listener e-mail I received in response to what I said on air:
Sphere: Related ContentI enjoy listening to your show almost daily as I drive home from work and I appreicate the topics you discuss. I generally agree with most of what you say. However on this subject from Oct 6, 2009, I think you were not well informed and Read the rest of this entry »
Michael Moore certainly knows how to make a spiel entertaining. But no amount of entertainment, and for that matter, rhetoric, can make a claim true. Michael Moore does more than make a claim. Instead, he makes an argument—a series of statements intended to establish another statement, as Monty Python so eloquently stated decades ago. Arguments come in many forms. But regardless of form, some are sound and some are not. Unsound arguments are fallacious by definition. But fallacies also come in many forms. For instance, some are formal (committing at least one error in how the argument is structured, regardless of content) while others are material (making factual claims which are false). Fortunately, Mr. Moore’s fallacies are of both kinds.
It would be a herculean and soul-deadening task to address every falsehood presented in the latest of Moore’s documentaries, Capitalism: A Love Story. So, instead, let’s focus only on Read the rest of this entry »
A weakness in my personal study of texts, biblical and otherwise, has always been my reluctance to rely on secondary sources for interpretation. I’m not sure whether my motive is noble in the sense of relying on self-discipline or arrogant in the sense of rejecting any reading other than my own. But either way, or more likely somewhere in between, there my commitment has lain.
And either as a result of that commitment or in spite of it, I have been blessed to learn from texts some interesting things apparently often overlooked.
As a high-schooler, my argument for my approach was simply that it was not my responsibility to find out what everyone else thought—that it was my responsibility actually to think. My experiences and personal characteristics would create a unique intersection with each text I encountered. Why, I reasoned, would it be worth existing just to think other people’s thoughts? (My vocabulary was not the same then, but my argument was.)
The only serious problem with that line of reasoning is that it presumes there Read the rest of this entry »
Sphere: Related ContentOur last day in Israel was spent at places of importance surrounding the crucifixion. We descended from the Mount of Olives and Gethsemane to the Kidron Valley. We visited Caiaphas’ house and the Pool of Bethesda. We stood in the pit where Jesus was kept the night of his arrest. And we saw the best candidate for Golgotha and the Garden Tomb. Best moment: reading Psalm 88 while standing in the pit mentioned above. Worst moment (or at least the oddest): a stranger in the Arab quarter grabbing Dr. Wooddell by the arm and declaring, “I love you; I want to kill you.” Hmm.
The greatest impact of the trip overall is realizing how incarnate Christianity is—not myths caricaturing theories but facts applying truths.
The worst impact of the trip overall is realizing how poorly instantiated the reality of Christianity is in me. We’ll just have to work on that.
Monday was a departure from the Dead Sea and ascent to Jerusalem. We started at Masada, the isolated Dead Sea mountain where Herod had built a fortified palace for himself, but which ended up being a refuge for about a thousand zealots and survivors from the “Great Rebellion” of the Jews against Rome in 66 AD, which resulted in the complete destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD. They lived at Masada for three years until the Romans finally came for them, seiged them, and built a ramp to take the city. The rest is too much to tell here, but makes clear what is meant by the Masada mentality, a both scary and encouraging descriptor of the Israelis’ level of commitment to their nation. From Masada we visited En-Geddi (the oasis where David cut off Saul’s skirt) and Qumran (where the Dead Sea scrolls were found) on the way to Jerusalem. Best moment: seeing the caves where David hid with his “mighty men” while being pursued by Saul. Worst moment (and maybe best): contemplating Masada.
Tuesday started early with a jostling visit to the Temple Mount and ended with the Holocaust Museum. We entered Old Jerusalem through the Dung Gate, entered the Temple Mount, took in the mosques and comparative options for the intended location of the Holy Place of the Jewish Temple, and finally visited the western wall, or Wailing Wall. It is the remaining visible retaining wall from Herod’s Temple Mount. Much more of that retaining wall is now accessible underground. In the afternoon we went to Yad Vashem (The Holocaust Museum). Best moment: seeing the very stones on which New Testament characters were standing when the biblical narrative’s events took place. Worst moment: knowing that the psychological distress I suffer everytime I am again confronted with the truth of the Holocaust is not suffering at all.
We spent Wednesday getting a perspective of the greater Jerusalem area. We started by taking in a 1:50 scale model of Herod’s Jerusalem just before Titus’ destruction of it in 70 A.D. We also saw the Aleppo Codex there as well as various Qumran artefacts. From there we looked at Jerusalem from several prominent overlooks, stood where the shepherds were when angels announced the birth of Jesus to them, then traveled to the Valley of Elah. Best moment: either standing where David killed Goliath or where the shepherds received the announcement. Worst moment: seeing the sharp division between the Jewish and Arab sectors of Jerusalem and knowing how far this city is from the meaning of its name (“the city of peace”).
Sphere: Related ContentSunday began with a visit to the ancient crossroads city of Megiddo. Megiddo was three times as old as any American city (say, Jamestown as 500 years old) before Solomon made it one of his three chariot cities. Then we crossed over toward the Jordan Valley where we visited Bet-She’an (or Beth Shean, or something like that), which is a First Century Roman city not mentioned in the New Testament, although it was certainly along the trail Jesus travelled when, for instance, leaving the Galilee to be baptized and face the wilderness temptation. Finally we arrived at the Dead Sea, the lowest point on the surface of Earth, 1300 feet below sea level (and another 1300 feet deep, by the way). Along the way we also saw the mountain of Elisha’s pre-prophetic farm life, the mountain on which David heard of Saul’s death, the location from which Gideon’s confrontation with the Midianites began, and the oasis city of Jericho, in the running for the most ancient city in the world. Best moment: putting together innumerable events with a few of the twenty layers of archeological evidence at Megiddo. Worst moment: taking two showers and still having Dead Sea residue.
Sphere: Related ContentHere are the pictures from our third day in Israel: Sabbath Day. We spent it in the upper Galilee; first at Tel-Dan (one of Jereboam’s two cities where he built golden-calf alters hoping to prevent the Northern Kingdom from re-pledging their loyalty to the Southern Kingdom); next at Caesarea Philippi (Bana) where Jesus confronted Peter and the disciples with His identity and calling; and finally to a former Syrian bunker on the Upper Golan Heights. The last stop has no specific biblical significance other than as a probable way point on the innumerable ancient and more recent past invasions and journeys from or through Syria into Israel. Best moment: standing right where Jereboam or his corrupt priests offered sacrifices to one of his golden calves; at the same time being where the only ancient extra-biblical inscription referring to the house of David was found. Worst moment: considering why the valley below the bunker where we were enjoying a beautiful new coffee house is called “The Valley of Tears.”
Sphere: Related ContentI arrived in Israel yesterday with a few other faculty, and will be here for one more week. (Yup, we’ll be flying back—from Israel—on September 11th.) I thought I’d share a few pictures from our first two days. If the player doesn’t work for you on this web page, you should be able to click it and get the pictures directly on my Picasa site.
The first day was spent traveling from Tel Aviv (where we landed) to Tiberius (where we are staying for the first few days). The captions of the pictures should give a sense of the places we stopped along the way. The best: being in the place where Elijah saw one of Israel’s two greatest miracles in the OT was certainly my favorite. The worst: knowing that since capitalism conforms the merchant to the customer to a certain extent, I had the privilege(?) of seeing the caricature of real Christianity with which many non-Christians believe they must deal.
Our second day was spent traveling around the Sea of Galilee. Again, the captions of the pictures should give a sense of the places we covered. The best: seeing what is very likely the very mountain from which the Gadarene demoniac would have emerged to meet Jesus was impressive. The worst: a vodka and juice special for those who chose so to celebrate after being “baptized” in the Jordan was ironic, to say the least.
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