Dr Paul Allen

Amazement is one of the best feelings in the world. The problem is, you can’t choose to be amazed at any given moment. Amazement comes over you like a downpour from a passing storm cloud, washing you in wonder. What brings on amazement is surprising. Sun on water. Green leaves waving to an impossible sky. A trained voice sustained a note so pure that you could almost see it in the air. A person doing some unexpected act so generous that you immediately recognize it as a glimpse of an ancient thing called love. Because amazement keeps us going to the silver screen to be immersed in worlds unlike ours. We want to be amazed but don’t know how to amaze ourselves. AMAZED BY DESIGN God designed us with the capacity for amazement. This post is part of a series that attempts to show how Scripture gives a framework for addressing different ways our hearts respond to the world. The introductory post laid out our guiding principle: God designed people to respond from the heart to the unique situa...

We are living in a time when nothing is true and when everything is true. Our current cultural mindset says that nothing is ultimately true. There is no absolute truth or objective reality. There is nothing to be known as it is because there is no such thing as knowledge. There are only perspectives, interpretations, experiences, feelings, and opinions. To claim that something is objectively true is in one sense the greatest heresy of our society’s preferred religion, which places self at the centre of the universe. But on the other hand, because nothing is objectively true, everything is true. Truth has been detached from objective reality, from what is, and now it simply is an expression of what one feels. And so whatever you feel is defined as your truth. This worldview has made its way into every form of media, into our educational institutions, into politics, into religion, into sports, and literally into every corner of our society. People can make the most outlandish claims, and...

Books are written by those who claim to have had an out-of-body experience of going to heaven. They often tell of blinding lights, seeing loved ones, and hearing God or seeing Christ. They record their experiences, true or false, for us at great length. This pattern contrasts sharply with how little attention Paul gives when he was “caught up into paradise.” Why doesn’t he say more? Suppose you had an absolutely stunning supernatural experience, like being in a car accident and having an out-of-body experience so that you were sure you had died and gone to heaven for a few minutes before returning to your body and being brought back to life. How would you handle that experience? Most of us would be consumed with telling others about it. We might even write a book about it and go on a speaking circuit. It’s just too amazing to keep to ourselves.  And more than likely we would feel empowered to use that very experience to authorize our views of heaven. We might feel as if this extrao...

We’re living in a day when personal experience has been elevated above everything else as the final criterion of right and wrong . Just think of all of the people who try to justify themselves on the basis of what they feel. Divorce is routinely excused on the basis of a married couple’s no longer feeling like they are in love. We are told that homosexuality should be embraced as a moral good because some homosexuals report having felt an attraction to the same sex from a young age. Even many professing Christians make their decisions about right and wrong based on what they feel. It’s hard to have a discussion with someone who makes their experience the final arbiter of reality. Many people embrace the old adage that “a person with an experience is never at the mercy of a person with an argument.” Ultimately, we have to disagree with this assertion, but not because experience is not a valuable tutor. It can help us connect theory to practice and abstract concepts to concrete situ...