Our culture faces a situation nearly unprecedented in human history.  We have forsaken having children (the birthrate here in America is approximately equal to the replacement rate, and it is even less in Europe.)  Thus, we face a massive “graying” of our society as the “baby boomers” age.  In fact, many societies around the world are already or will very soon experience an enormous imbalance between young working people and older people who are no longer in the workforce.[1]  Such an imbalance is virtually unknown in human history outside of times of war, famine, or plague, and the eventual impact on societies around the world will be enormous.

In fact, we are beginning to see this impact in a number of issues that are making news right now.  One such issue is Social Security.  Albert Mohler states the basic problem of a graying population this way:

The simple fact is that a stable standard of living depends upon a steady stream of young persons entering the work force and contributing to the economy and the culture.  When an unprecedented percentage of the total population is aged, the economy and the society in general begins to tilt toward unsustainability. [continue reading…]

Here is an unusual post.  It is technical in nature, and not the type of thing I normally do.  That said, I hope it might be helpful to those who use Blackboard at Liberty University and Liberty University Online.

It is often a struggle to copy and paste materials into Blackboard while retaining the formatting of the material as it appeared in the word processor.  Students (and professors) are often frustrated when material that looks great in the word processor is pasted into Blackboard and suddenly looks horrible.  The following methods are not meant to be full-proof ways to solve this problem for all users.  Rather, they are suggestions that I, and some students of mine over the years, have found helpful.  (A full-proof, technical discussion of this issue is beyond my capabilities.)

Method for Copying and Pasting Into Blackboard Discussion Boards Using a Windows PC

First, I have a Lenovo issued to me by Liberty University.  I am using Internet Explorer 8 and Microsoft Word 2007.  [continue reading…]

Legal philosophers of our day, indeed virtually everyone in the legal academy, operate on the assumption that faith is out of place in any discussion of what the law is or should be.  Typically, therefore, the substitute that is offered is reason.  Faith is seen as antithetical to reason, and reason is considered to be the only acceptable basis for argument about law (and various other matters.)

Obviously, the Bible never countenances such a position.  “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom,” says Proverbs 9:10, “[a]nd the knowledge of the holy is understanding.”  (Examples of other similar statements abound: Proverbs 1:7 and 15:33, Job 28:28, Psalm 111:10, and Jeremiah 8:9.)  Further, the saying credo ut intelligam, [continue reading…]

A great couple of quotes from Written on the Heart: The Case for Natural Law: First, in writing of the deplorable state of higher education in our civilization, Budziszewski asserts that:

What educated people now call common sense is largely a collection of dogmas pumped in from the outside.  Because these dogmas are often pumped in under the guise of liberation from dogma, they pass unrecognized.  We are entering a strange era in which, in some respects, the educated know less than the completely uneducated.[1] [continue reading…]

I had a friend ask me last night at our church banquet, “what dragons are you slaying in your profession?”  There are several, that I at least hope that I am fighting, and I listed some.  Then, today, doing some research on Aristotle and natural law, I came across this by Rushdoony.  He writes:

In the West, law became secularized when the Hellenic concept of natural law was confused with God’s revealed law, and God’s creation law, i.e., the laws whereby God rules in creation.  For the Greeks, natural law is an abstract universal which is not a part of creation, the world of matter, but of the world of ideas, or reason, mind. [continue reading…]

Blackstone is perhaps the most famous common law commentator, and he is often looked to as a hero by conservatives and Christians in our time.  This veneration is not undeserved.  However, Blackstone wasn’t perfect, and he didn’t always get things right.  (None of us are and none of us do.)

One such example is his view of the origins of private property and property rights.  Blackstone believed that all property was once owned in common by all men. [continue reading…]

There are lots of different eschatological views in the church today.  It is probably fair to say that the dominant view among the Reformed is a-millennialism, and the dominant view among virtually all others is premillennial, pretribulation dispensationalism.  One can, of course, also find historic premillennialists (which would apparently include John Piper) and postmillennialists (such as Doug Wilson.)  (And, if you have no idea what this is talking about, you might check out the introductory material to the book of Revelation in the The ESV Study Bible.  While not perfect, as I sure each camp would take some issue with how its view is presented, it will give you at least a workable understanding of the terms and the frame of the debate.)

The point of this post is not to argue for one of these positions (which may well be beyond my abilities and is certainly beyond the scope of this one blog post,) but rather to note how much things have changed. [continue reading…]

“The first point to be considered is the true design of prophecy, and how that design is to be ascertained. Prophecy is very different from history. It is not intended to give us a knowledge of the future, analogous to that which history gives us of the past. This truth is often overlooked. We see interpreters undertaking to give detailed expositions of the prophecies of Isaiah, of Ezekiel, of Daniel, and of the Apocalypse, relating to the future, with the same confidence with which they would record the history of the recent past. Such interpretations have always been falsified by the event. But this does not discourage a certain class of minds, for whom the future has a fascination and who delight in the solution of enigmas, from renewing the attempt.”^[1]

Kids Baptism Part 3 from Rodney D. Chrisman on Vimeo.  (If you need the mobile version of this video, you should be able to get it by following the links to the video on Vimeo.)