Dr Paul Allen

  "On the third day, he rose from the dead." Etched in my memory from childhood are those lines from a familiar Easter hymn in evangelical circles, "He Lives": "You ask me how I know he lives? He lives within my heart." Despite the warmth that such sentiment offers, it hardly fits the bill sketched out by the Apostle Peter: "Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have" ( 1 Pet. 3:15 ).  Many ideas can be, and often are, embraced by the heart that are simply wrong. Santa Claus and the tooth fairy may be harmless childhood myths, but when we are making claims about eternal matters, emotionally useful fantasies will not suffice.  Eventually, we grow up, and if our understanding of the Christian truth-claims does not mature as well, we are likely to be blown about by the trendy gusts of whim. In an informal survey of evangelical Christians recently, nearly everyone agreed with the statem...

Few things can cripple people like fear. Fear makes people shrink from doing what they know they ought to do. Fear can also make us do things we ought not to do. Fear is not simply self-protective or self-preserving; fearful concern for the well-being and protection of those we love can cause us to worry, lie awake at night, and even do things that could be perceived as either very brave or very foolish.  So, what overcomes fear? The Bible offers a clear and potent solution—faith in God's promises. “By faith, he left Egypt, not afraid of the king's anger” (Hebrews 11:27). This verse stands in the middle of Hebrews 11 and in the middle of the author’s commentary on Moses's life. It briefly reflects on Moses's faith in the face of a very real and present danger (humanly speaking)—the king of Egypt. Moses was like any other man; blood flowed in his veins just as in yours and mine. He was truly human and thus capable of knowing the reality of fear in the face of an imminent...

Fear of God Then there’s the other fear: The fear that it might be true after all. I respect those atheists who’ve been honest about it. Thomas Nagel is an eminent professor (now emeritus) of law and philosophy at New York University. He famously wrote, I speak from experience, being strongly subject to this fear myself: I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers. It isn’t just that I don’t believe in God and, naturally, hope that I’m right in my belief. It’s that I hope there is no God! I don’t want there to be a God; I don’t want the universe to be like that. My guess is that this cosmic authority problem is not a rare condition and that it is responsible for much of the scientism and reductionism of our time. One of the tendencies it supports is the ludicrous overuse of evolutionary biology to explain everything about human life, including everything about the human mind …. This i...

In 1934, writer Clare Harner, grieving her brother Olin’s death after a sudden illness, published a poem with these lines: “Do not stand by my grave and weep. / I am not there, I do not sleep. / I am a thousand winds that blow / I am the diamond glints in snow. . . . / Do not stand by my grave, and cry—I am not there, I did not die.” Before you criticize Clare for her wishy-washy theology, stop to consider whether you’ve heard or uttered a “more biblical” version of her comforting words yourself. “Don’t cry. She’s in a better place.” Or, in the negative, “God is going to bring something beautiful from his death. Prolonged grief shows a lack of trust in God.” When it comes to death, we all long to tell a different story than the one we truly see through tears, in dust and ashes before us. When we’re neck-deep in trials, we grasp for these platitudes hoping they’ll offer us a lifeline. Whether we’re offering flimsy hope to a friend or to ourselves, the myths we tell ourselves about grief...

As the Apostle John comes to the end of his gospel, having just described the events of Jesus’ resurrection, he pauses to state his purpose in writing his account of Jesus’ life. He declares, “Jesus performed many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book; but these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God and that by believing you may have life in his name” (John 20:30–31). John states what Jesus and His Apostles consistently declare: the hope found in coming to Jesus is nothing less than life in His name—a life that is new, abundant, and eternal in Him (John 10:10; Eph. 4:4–5; Rom. 5:20–21). How do we receive this abundant new life? John puts it succinctly: by believing that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God. But what exactly does John mean by believing that Jesus is the Messiah? What is involved in such a belief? This question is not merely academic or exegetical. As a pastor, I have watched many wrestle wi...