5. No God at All: Western Humanism and the New Atheism
“Nothing comes from nothing — nothing ever could.”
— Maria Von Trapp (Julie Andrews), “Something Good,”
in The Sound of Music (1965)1
“Nothing comes from nothing — nothing ever could.”
— Maria Von Trapp (Julie Andrews), “Something Good,”
in The Sound of Music (1965)1
“What I told you was true, from a certain point of view. . . . Luke, you’re going to find that many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view.”
— Obi Won Kenobi, to Luke Skywalker, in The Return of the Jedi (1983)
“Hey! I’m depraved on account of I’m deprived!”
— West Side Story (1961)
You ask how to fight an idea. I’ll tell you: with another idea.
-- Massala (Stephen Boyd), in Ben-Hur (1959)
The next section we will study will be Matthew 11:1-19, which is the account of John’s question from prison and Jesus’ response to it. I have passed over Matthew 10, not because it is not important, but because I wish to focus on a wider variety of kinds of passages in this series.
The next passage in the chapter records the healing of the blind men. While this is a relatively short narrative and seemingly not as significant as some of the longer ones, it is worth taking some time with it because of the importance in the Bible of the theme of blindness, both physical blindness and spiritual blindness.
In this chapter in Matthew the miracle of causing the blind to see shows yet another realm of the authority of Jesus the Messiah--the authority to give sight.
The Gospel of Matthew now continues its development of the theme of Jesus’ authority with the report of two incidents that show His authority over death: He healed a woman who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years and then He raised a little girl from the dead. In both cases He was restoring life to them.
Needless to say, there are many divorced pastors serving in churches today -- in evangelical, Bible believing churches. The fact that divorced pastors still serve as pastors does not prove the matter biblically.
My assumption is that the primary biblical texts are going to be those which deal directly with divorce (especially Matthew 5:27-32; 19:3-12; 1 Corinthians 7:10-16) and those which set down the qualifications for elders (1 Timothy 3:1-7 and Titus 1:5-9).
پہلا یوحنا:5باب11تا12آیت
اور وہ گواہی یہ ہے کہ خدا نے ہمیں ہمیشہ کی ذندگی بخشی اور یہ زندگی اس کے بیٹے میں ہے۔ جس کے ساتھ بیٹا ہے اس کے ساتھ زندگی ہےجس کے ساتھ خداکابیٹانہیںاس کے ساتھ زندگی نہیں یہ آیات ہمیں بتاتی ہیں کہ خدا نے ہمیں ہمیشہ کی زندگی بخشی ہے۔ اور زندگی اس کے بیٹے یسوع مسیح میں ہے۔ دوسرے لفظوں میں ہمیشہ کی زندگی کو حاصل کرنا یعنی خدا کے بیٹے کو پانا ہے۔ سوال یہ ہے کہ کس طرح خدا کے بیٹے کوپاسکتاہے۔