Dr Paul Allen

English: Steven Spielberg at the 2011 San Diego Comic-Con International (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Steven Spielberg ’s masterpiece motion picture, Schindler’s List , is a true-life chronicle of the German Nazi, Oskar Schindler , who used his connections with the Nazi regime in the Second World War to preserve the lives of hundreds of Jewish prisoners. When Hitler set his unstable mind on the annihilation of the Jews he had them sent to concentration camps where the prisoners did hard labor until they were executed en masse in gas chambers. Schindler, even as a Nazi himself, grew to find this reprehensible. But he couldn’t just come out and say so. To resist Herr Hitler was to risk finding yourself in a concentration camp, or dead. So, Schindler used his entrepreneurial acumen as a ruse to save the lives of the condemned Jews. He procured a steelworks factory that had formerly produced pots and pans and converted it into a munitions factory, cranking out countless casin

English: Damian. "Jesus Christ and St. John the Apostle". A detail of the Last Supper fresco from Ubisi, Georgia (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) A few weeks ago I wrote a short piece entitled  How Do I Know I’m a Christian?  The post flowed from a semester of preaching through 1 John . Like John Stott (and others), I see 1 John as a letter about assurance, a brief book in which the Apostle John outlines (over and over) three signs that confirm what John already knows: namely, that the recipients of his epistles are beloved children of God. The first sign is theological. You should have confidence if you believe in Jesus Christ the Son of God (5:11-13). The second sign is moral. You should have confidence if you live a righteous life (3:6-9). The third sign is social. You should have confidence if you love other Christians (3:14). There is nothing original about these points. Stott calls the three signs “belief” or “the doctrinal test,” “obedience” or “the moral

The release of the Fifty Shades of Grey movie, timed for Valentine’s Day , is a more important and lamentable event than many Christians may realize. What the movie represents is nothing less than the evolution of pornography in an age increasingly distant from a biblical vision of sexuality and human dignity . One of the hallmarks of the Christian worldview is an affirmation of the unity of the transcendentals — the good, the beautiful, and the true. Christianity affirms — and demands — that the good, the beautiful, and the true are actually one, unified in their source. The source of what is good, beautiful, and true is none other than God himself, who alone is infinitely good, beautiful, and true. Our very knowledge of beauty, goodness, and truth are due to God’s gifts of revelation and creation. He defines the good, the true, and the beautiful by his being, and they are unified in him. This means that Christians believe the radical truth that nothing good can be ugly, that