Dr Paul Allen

Thoughts on why an astounding number of college students are abandoning their faith in Christ The percentage of college students today who grow up in Christian homes and later turn their backs on Christ is stunning, almost beyond belief. I believe it’s vital that parents and church leaders understand some of the major reasons behind this trend—and know what they can do now to help their children prepare for the challenges ahead. Issue #1: The Problem of Evil and Suffering Many times the faith of students from Christian families is shaken because they have professors who argue, “Well, if you were in charge of the universe and all powerful, would you allow children to starve and be raped? I would think not.” As a young believer, C. S. Lewis was the first one to help me grapple with big and difficult questions like these. In  The Problem of Pain , he described how he himself used to argue against the Christian faith : Not many years ago when I was an atheist, if anyone had ask...

The statue of C. S. Lewis in front of the wardrobe from his book The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe in East Belfast, Northern Ireland (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Craig Hazen’s comments in Biola Magazine on a book by Callum G. Brown titled The Death of Christian Britain should serve as both a warning and an encouragement to us: There is another part of Brown’s study that is truly provocative. And that is the speed at which he claims this massive shift took place that discarded the national Christian identity. Upon his analysis, and against traditional theories, Brown believes Christianity was lost in a single generation and maybe in as little as a 10- or 20-year time span.  His data is quite convincing on the question of the velocity of change. It was a catastrophic and abrupt cultural revolution. Of course, he then tried to paint a picture of how such a thing could happen so rapidly and he offered up a number of factors with special focus on the “feminization of Christian...

Portrait of a Woman Suffering from Obsessive Envy (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Envy  Competes Who is Envy? What does Envy do? How do we define Envy? Something like this: Envy makes you feel resentment or anger or sadness because another person   has  something or another person  is  something that you want for yourself. Envy makes you aware that another person has some advantage, some good thing, that you want for yourself and, while he’s at it, he makes you want that other person not to have it. This means that there are at least three evil components to Envy: the deep discontent that comes when you see that another person has what you want; the desire to have it for yourself; and the desire for it to be taken from him. It’s crucial to understand that Envy flows out of Pride . (A commenter said it well: “In my wretched experience pride has always been envy’s father…”) Pride says, “This is what I deserve” or “Let me boast about all I hav...

Rev. Jonathan Edwards, a leader of the Great Awakening, is still remembered for his sermon "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God." (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) We get a job so we can buy our kids shoes, so they can go to school, so they can get a job someday, so that they can buy their kids shoes, so that they . . . " In other words, work is meaningless.  In fact, from this perspective life itself becomes rather meaningless—simply an endless cycle. Or we work so that we can support ministries that do the real work—kingdom work. Now, I'm not opposed to giving to ministries. In fact, I think you can make a strong biblical case that we are obligated to do so. But I wonder if this fully captures the meaning of work. So again, why do you work? I find the start of the answer in Psalm 104. Psalm 104 is a reflection on creation and maybe even a further reflection on the flood of Genesis 6–8. We see the psalmist poetically describing not just God 's creation of th...

English: Richard Dawkins at New York City's Cooper Union to discuss his book The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) For a theist there’s nothing quite like watching an atheist get an intellectual walloping from a preacher. There’s just something apocalyptic about it, and it most easily occurs when the atheist tries to chop up religion to irrelevancy without realizing that he is himself awfully religious. It happened again recently at the Cambridge Union debating society when former Anglican Archbishop Rowan Williams took on the best known name in contemporary atheism, Richard Dawkins. They were debating whether religion has a role in the 21st century. Dawkins said it didn’t. Williams said it did. In the end, Williams was handed a decidedly strong victory with more than two times as many votes from the audience as the infamous atheist, Dawkins. It was a triumphant day for the faithful and a shameful one for the irreligious. But actu...

Cover of Surprised by Suffering The overwhelming majority of Christians who suffer with significant doubts in their faith do so due to the pain and suffering they experience in their lives. The late Christian philosopher Ronald Nash once said that it is completely irrational to reject the Christian faith for any other reason than the problem of evil. This expresses the respect he gives to this issue. The “problem of evil” is the problem of pain and suffering. This is, indeed, a tremendous problem. C. S. Lewis , the great Christian writer, wrote a very academic book on pain, suffering, and evil called The Problem of Pain . It was a wonderful, monumental work and I recommend it without hesitation. But after he wrote this work, he experienced pain and suffering at a different level. It is one thing to evaluate something from the outside; it is quite another to personally experience it. C. S. Lewis lost his wife after a battle with cancer filled with ups and downs. It broke him and...

What are life's most pressing questions? According to Peter Weyland, head of the Weyland Corporation which is funding an inter-stellar space voyage, they include: "Where do we come from? What is the soul? What happens when we die?" Seeking answers to these questions represents the initial reason behind a trillion-dollar space expedition in the film Prometheus . Millions of theater-goers are encountering these questions for a few dollars at their local movies theater. All three questions represent the kind of thought-provoking inquiry that should occupy us in our most introspective moments and amidst our deep conversations with like-minded friends. The answers Prometheus offers represent a cautionary tale , but it does not follow that those who see it must come to similar conclusions. Prometheus, in its quest for God , is looking in the wrong place, searching with the wrong tools, and seeking the right end with a wrong attitude. Fortunately, we need not look to cave pa...