Studies on the Fringe of Christianity
Someone would be hard-pressed to imagine something more troubling or macabre than the taboo of eating human flesh. Now, in the animal kingdom, cannibalism is fairly common and found in more than fifteen hundred species, but this activity is rare in humans, just maybe not as rare as you might expect. Once, during a study …
A belief in ghosts is very common. Worldwide, more than half the population believe in ghosts or spirits of the dead. A lot of years ago, I did, too, although I never had any personal contact. Before a study of God’s word to guide me, I thought this belief was true, because that concept was …
Most Christians believe in something called a human soul that survives death. The questions of when and how a person obtains that soul, whatever it is, have been discussed and debated throughout Christian history. It is no different today, especially for those who are trying to determine abortion law. Although atheists don’t believe in God, …
My experiences with death started at a very early age. In New Orleans, where I was born, small children were not sheltered from the dying and death events of others, as they are in many places. For instance, I was a pallbearer at my grandmother’s funeral when I was twelve years old. I remember going …
The Church has changed a lot since the time Christ walked on earth, especially since the Bible came to be easily available to almost everyone. But there are a few things that haven’t changed much at all. Take the subject of sex, for example. We talk about sexual immorality as a problem and can look …
Someone asked me, the other day, if I believed that aliens were here. They weren’t talking about legal or illegal people from a foreign country living in the United States, but of intelligent beings, other than human, from outside the earth’s boundaries. This isn’t the first time I’ve been asked this question and it is …
The patriarch of the three Abrahamic religions is the prophet Abraham, from which Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all claim a shared ancestry. This story about him begins in Mesopotamia at the beginning of the Middle Bronze Age (c. 1900 BC), when Abram (Abraham’s name before God changed it) was called by God to become the …
Do you believe in ghosts? According to the Huffington Post, nearly half of Americans do. A HuffPost poll “shows that 45 percent of Americans believe in ghosts, or that the spirits of dead people can come back in certain places and situations.”1 In the U.K., 52 percent of respondents indicated that they believed in ghosts, …
What is your first thought, when I say Christmas? Go ahead, be honest with yourself, I’ll never know. Is it Christmas trees, shiny decorations, or children unwrapping their presents? Or, is it the holly-jolly music or the holiday pastries and candies? Is it Christmas parties or Santa Claus? Most everyone thinks about those things and …
Fall has arrived, as I write this, and the once-bright green leaves on trees are beginning to change into a variety of brilliant colors. Before long, the city streets and rural highways will be lined with many shades of splendid yellows, oranges, reds, and browns. For me, Fall always seems to come and go at …