In this episode I interview the one and only Eric Metaxas! He is author , speaker, and conservative radio host. He has written three biographies, Amazing Grace: William Wilberforce and the Heroic Campaign to End Slavery about William Wilberforce (2007), Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy about Dietrich Bonhoeffer (2011), and Martin Luther: The Man Who Rediscovered God and Changed the World about Martin Luther (2017). He has also written humor, children’s books, and scripts for VeggieTales. Metaxas is the host of the NYC-based event series, “Socrates in the City: Conversations on the Examined Life” and the host of the radio program, The Eric Metaxas Show!

What are the limits of reason in moral thinking and living? How do we understand God in light of the critique of Immanuel Kant? In this episode of LogicallyFaithful, Dr. Chris Firestone helps us see what we cannot with our eyes alone. He is Chair of the Philosophy Department at Trinity International University and is the co-writer and co-producer of the short film Last Wish (2010) and the feature film Killing Poe (2017) and the author of Kant and the New Philosophy of Religion, coedited with Stephen R. Palmquist, Indiana University Press, 2006,Theology at the Transcendental Boundaries of Reason, Ashgate Publications Ltd., 2007, In Defense of Kant’s Religion, coauthored with Nathan Jacobs, Indiana University Press, 2008, Kant and Theology at the Boundaries of Reason, Ashgate Publications Ltd., 2009, The Persistence of the Sacred in Modern Thought, coedited with Nathan Jacobs, Notre Dame University Press, 2012, Kant and the Question of Theology, coedited with Nathan Jacobs and James Joiner, Cambridge University Press, 2016, Immanuel Kant: A Companion to His Philosophy and Its Prospects for Theology, Wipf &Stock, forthcoming 2021. He is the father of five and most of all my friend

How can one have a holistic faith yet still have nagging doubts?

• This podcast is on a talk I delivered on doubt from the book of John 20: 24-31. “In faith there is enough light for those who want to believe and enough shadows to blind those who don’t.” “Pensées” by Blaise Pascal,

This is the outline

• 1. YOU ARE NOT ALONE
• 2. DOUBT CAN LEAD TO GENUINE FAITH
• 3. ABSOLUTE CERTAINTY IS ABSURD
• 4. BELIEVE, FIRST THAT YOU MAY UNDERSTAND
• NOTE: IF YOU APPRECIATE THESE PODCASTS, WILL YOU DO ME A SMALL FAVOR? PLEASE SHARE ON SOCIAL MEDIA AND LEAVE A GREAT REIVEW ON iTUNES

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How do we deal with religious oppression in society? I was part of a Social Justice Education Town Hall on the Historical Context of Religion and Oppression 11/12/20 at Northern Illinois University. It was with Dr. Ted Williams at the Professor of Political Science and Dr. Bonnie Harrison, Anthropology, an African indigenous religious expert. Here is the audio.

Find out how to restore your peace in this podcast. The Hebrew word for Peace, Shalom (Hebrew: שָׁלוֹם‎ shalom) is not just an absence of trouble, but a restoring of wholeness.

It refers to a stone that has no cracks. Life is a complex web full of moving parts and circumstances, when you are lacking peace—it means you are missing someone, or something is broken like a relationship. It needs to be restored. To make complete, to restore is to have peace. To make shalom, is to make peace, or restore what was lost. Peace is tranquility—or restoring of brokenness.

If you seek peace, apart from God, you may find it—temporarily, but in the end you will not only lose God, but also your peace as well.

“God made us: invented us as a man invents an engine. A car is made to run on petrol, and it would not run properly on anything else. Now God designed the human machine to run on Himself. He Himself is the fuel our spirits were designed to burn, or the food our spirits were designed to feed on. There is no other. That is why it is just no good asking God to make us happy in our own way without bothering about religion. God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there.” ― C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

–We are foolish to try to align God to what we want, but we should align our heart to Him. Prayer is not a control of God but a submission of my will to his. In this recorded talk, I dive deep into this issue from the text of Isaiah 57: 17-20

When A loves B and B does not or refuses to love A back, A loses something. But when God loves B, it is not God who loses, it is B.

God hurts, not because he has lost, not because he does not hurt, he hurts because you have lost something of infinite worth.

The great Augustine…proposed the following little thought experiment to show you, his reader, that your deepest desire is indeed the desire for a relationship, and that is found in God not from God [Augustine, Ennarationes in Psalms 127:9] .Imagine God appeared to you and said, “I’ll make a deal with you if you wish. I’ll give you anything and everything you ask: pleasure, power, honor, wealth, freedom, even peace of mind and a good conscience. Nothing will be a sin; nothing will be forbidden; and nothing will be impossible for you. You will never be bored and you will never die. Only…you shall never see my face.” Would you accept this challenge?

If you LOVE anything more than God your life will be like a tossing sea, you will always be in anxiety or it will come. You will have restlessness. Once you love God first, as your priority….then you enjoy everything else. And then and only then is peace found. But that peace is not easy to maintain.

Look forward to your, hopeful, peaceful feedback!

Choose the world, lose God, Choose God, you gain both.

It is my honor to interview the great Max McLean on his role as C.S. Lewis Onstage in The Most Reluctant Convert for the New Season 3.1 of LogicallyFaithful!

He is an award-winning actor and founder and artistic director of New York City-based Fellowship for Performing Arts.

Max adapted for the stage The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis Onstage: The Most Reluctant Convert, The Great Divorce, Genesis and Mark’s Gospel. His recent writing and producing credits include Martin Luther on Trial.

UPDATE: Max recently completed a movie on this very issue in Oxford! We look forward to that production.

As an actor, he created the roles of Screwtape in New York, on national tour and in London; C.S. Lewis in The Most Reluctant Convert on national tour and in an extended 15-week run in New York; Mark in Mark’s Gospel; and Storyteller in Genesis. Max received the Jeff Award—Chicago theatre’s highest honor—for his performance of Mark’s Gospel.

He has been nominated for four awards from the Audio Publishers Association for his narration of The Listener’s Bible. His creative work has been cited with distinction by the New York Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune, Wall Street Journal and CNN to name a few media outlets.

In this podcast we cover the conversion of the most cited writer in the 20th century, and my favorite author C.S. Lewis. It is fascinating!

For more information, go to Fellowship for Performing Arts

What makes a religion peaceful?

Is Islam a “religion of peace?” How should we address this issue with wisdom, truth, and grace?

Now, please note, we cannot adequately understand and deal with this controversial issue without people being offended. But being offended does not make you or me right. We must look at the truth in the most objective way we can with grace and humility. There is a difference between a person who claims to be a Muslim and the teachings of Islam (and there are many varieties of this teaching Sunni, Shi’a, Ibadi, Ahmadiyya, and Sufism, to name a few!). One can give a critique of one without necessarily insulting the other. Sadly it is a question of maturity where a person is not able to understand a critique of the ideology that they follow and that of insulting them as a person or people.

So we must understand that a great many people cannot tell the difference between these two. With that said, we can either remain silent or speak up and trust God.

Just like in Christianity there are many different interpretations of what Jesus said and meant, the same is true in Islam of Muhammad. So what can we do to understand it. The best thing is to look at the primary texts yourself.

The psychological reason people cannot question this ideology or any one that is powerfully connected to its society, language and culture, is what psychologists call group think. Group think is the practice of thinking or making decisions as a group in a way that discourages creativity or individual responsibility–and in tight communities the person who goes against what a group thinks is ostracized, abandoned, rejected, and in some cases killed.

So it is dangerous to ask questions of an ideology that can and is interpreted by some of its followers to crush decenting points of view about it.

So with that said, we can ask this question of Islam and peace in a multitude of ways. To test this, we need to examine the teaching of Islam in the Qur’an and the hadith, and the life of its founder, its prophet, Muhammad.

In this podcast, I consider these questions. It is a lecture I gave on this issue in 2015 in Romania. Your feedback is appreciated.

In his article Tim Dieppe, wrote,

“If a religious group had a long history of peaceful relations with other neighboring groups and religions, this might be grounds to claim it as a peaceful religion. Sadly, the history of Islam is not one of peaceful relations with others. However, it is also the case that so-called ‘Christian’ nations have been far from peaceful themselves, and not just in self-defense. So this marker may not necessarily be a reliable guide.

What about if most of the followers of a religion are peaceful and law-abiding? Would this make it a religion of peace? Perhaps. But what if a significant minority claim inspiration from the teaching of their religion to commit acts of war and terrorism? What if this minority has a strong claim to be following the example of the founder of their religion? What if this minority can also point to multiple religious authorities and examples through history as setting a precedent for their religious understanding?

It is indeed the case that the majority of Muslims are peaceful, law-abiding people. But it is also the case that the majority of Muslims are unfamiliar with the teaching of the Qur’an and the life of Muhammad. They are not usually encouraged to read the Qur’an in a language they can understand. Many Muslims self-identify as such because of culture, birth or relationships. Therefore if we critique the teaching of their religion, we are not thereby criticizing the behavior or beliefs of every adherent of Islam.” The rest of this great article is here…