Blog - Page 189 of 318 - John H Armstrong

The Sad Legacy of Sammy Sosa

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:20:13-05:00June 21st, 2009|Categories: Baseball|

The breaking Chicago news, on Tuesday evening, was: “Sammy Sosa took performance enhancing drugs to become a superstar slugger.” Surprise, surprise! And this is the same guy who told the U.S. Senate committee that he never took drugs. But the June 16 New York Times report on baseball players who tested positive included Sammy's name. Now we know.

Anyone who watched Sosa’s career as I did, living here in the Windy City, knew Sammy was not built the way he became in the late 1990s because of simple hard work. He went from a slender young ballplayer to a huge slugger within about two years. Following the 1997 season, when Sammy saw Mark McGwire getting all those accolades for hitting big home runs, things changed for Sammy big time. Sammy drank up what he saw in the Cardinal star and Sammy needed the same attention. Says Barry Rosner, a great Chicago baseball writer, “Sosa craved attention and drank it up […]

President Obama Leads America into the New Global Context

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:20:13-05:00June 20th, 2009|Categories: America and Americanism|

While Iran is rocked by the biggest public protests since the revolution of 1979, President Obama is pursuing a policy called “wait and see.” His priority, as with most concerned world leaders, is to prevent the Iranian regime from acquiring a nuclear bomb. His method of choice is to negotiate directly with Iran’s leaders. Until he knows who these leaders will be he is biding his time.

While Senator McCain, and leading Republicans are calling the Iranian election a sham, President Obama displays his characteristically cool personality. He seemed to measure his words when he said this week that he was “deeply troubled” by the violence he had seen on television. He added that he could “not state definitively” what had happened in Iran since there were no international observers there to give him real information. And the president stressed that “it is up to Iranians to make decisions about who Iran’s leaders will be.” It is safe to say that this is a […]

The New Medicine Meets the New Physics, Part Two

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:20:13-05:00June 19th, 2009|Categories: Science|

I come from a family of physicians and dentists. I believe in the great advances of modern medicine. Heart surgery alone should convince everyone that modern Western medicine has made incredible progress and advanced human health in many ways. Furthermore, I do not reject the role that medication and drugs can have in the healing process. But I do question our almost total reliance upon these accepted patterns of treatment without being open to new science.

Anyone who reads the history of science in general, and the history of medicine in particular, knows that a great deal has been advanced, accepted and then changed over the years. This is the nature of real science and thus a major part of what makes it so exciting for earnest researchers and practitioners.

To site just one example, there was a time when electrotherapy was used extensively in treating various illnesses. Toward the end of the nineteenth […]

The New Medicine Meets the New Physics, Part One

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:20:13-05:00June 18th, 2009|Categories: Science|

Let me be totally honest at the outset. Science is not my special interest, nor is it a field that I have a great deal of competence in professionally. When I listen to scientists talk I often feel like the amateur I am. If I do serious reading about scientific theory I am an outsider who needs a handy lexicon. But this hasn’t stopped me from seeking to gain a better grasp of the amazing developments in modern science, especially in the new physics, or what was called quantum physics.

Quantum theory, if you wonder, is the idea that energy is not absorbed or radiated continuously but discontinuously, and only in multiples of definite, indivisible units. Physics, of course, is the science that deals with properties, changes, and interactions in matter and energy. In classical physics energy is considered to be continuous while in quantum physics subjects like atomic, nuclear and solid-state physics have challenged some of these older assumptions about continuity. […]

The Taking of Pelham 123: Denzel vs. John

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:20:13-05:00June 17th, 2009|Categories: Film|

The Taking of Pelham 123, so named because of a subway train in New York city, is a summer action film that stars two of the biggest names in the business: Denzel Washington and John Travolta. Many reviewers, besides not liking the plot all that much, have made a great deal out of Denzel and John starring in the same film.

The plot is basic. It revolves around the taking of a New York subway train, with hostages, in an elaborate scheme in which the hostage taker (Travolta) meets a subway supervisor (Washington). The hostage taker negotiates with the supervisor and then they end up meeting him face-to-face in the last half hour or so of the film. (I will not spoil the plot entirely but it is predictable, very predictable!)

Every single hostage movie cliché seems to have made its way into this script. (There was an earlier version of this film in 1974, which I admit I have not […]

The Christian Right and the American Jeremiad

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:20:14-05:00June 16th, 2009|Categories: American Evangelicalism|

I am currently publishing a series of articles on the Christian Right, the history of the American jeremiad and civil religion. Today, June 16, another installment should be posted on our ACT 3 Website before the day is over. This series is available as a free subscription and/or as a podcast.

The central point that I have made in previous articles in this series is that a major part of our American religious identity is rooted in the unique role the jeremiad has played in our culture. It has served as our unique grand narrative by which we indict national sin. If you are deeply influenced by the American jeremiad you will tend to see America as a prodigal nation. The particular jeremiad the Christian Right offers is simple: American has fallen and faces certain destruction unless we repent! One Christian Right advocate notes that we once enjoyed a favored place in God’s economy but now says “the encroaching forces of […]

Evangelical and Catholic?

By John Armstrong|2009-06-15T05:00:00-05:00June 15th, 2009|Categories: Roman Catholicism|

The Center for Applied Christian Ethics (CACE) is one of my favorite teaching forums in America. It is connected to Wheaton College and led by Dr. Vincent E. Bacote, a member of the Bible and Theology faculty at Wheaton. Vince has spoken for ACT 3 several times and is deeply rooted in the theology of Abraham Kuyper. He is also a wonderfully gracious Christian man who understands how to conduct a civil and meaningful dialogue. This makes him a perfect choice to lead CACE at this time.

On Thursday, September 3, CACE will host a debate on the question: "Catholic and Evangelical?" The speakers are two of my favorite people to discuss this subject intelligently and irenically. Dr. Francis Beckwith, formerly an evangelical and now a Roman Catholic, will speak on: "Confessions of an Evangelical Catholic." Dr. Timothy George, a great Reformation scholar and dear friend, will speak on: "Confessions of a Catholic Evangelical." Then the debate will follow their presentations. Vincent Bacote informed […]

Another Surgery on My Foot

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:20:14-05:00June 14th, 2009|Categories: Personal|

Ever so often I share a personal prayer request, as with those I have shared related to my good friend David Stopke. Today I ask you to offer an earnest prayer for me as I face my third foot surgery, in four years, tomorrow morning. This procedure, to begin at 6:00 a.m. with preparation and surgery at 7:00, is designed to correct a previous surgery that appears not to have been done correctly by my first surgeon four years ago. In March of 2008 I had the same procedure I am having tomorrow on a different part of the same foot. Now we are going back to the first place, where the first surgery was performed, to correct some nerve damage that creates quite a bit of pain in my lower foot, especially when I stand or walk, both activities I engage in with regularity.

There is no expectation of complication but one never knows. I am not nervous about the procedure but […]

When Coexistence Is Compromise

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:20:14-05:00June 13th, 2009|Categories: Evangelism|

During the time of King Ahab (1 Kings 16:31-33) the leader of Israel married a princess of Tyre. When the princess arrived in Jerusalem she brought with her the worship of the Phoenician God Melkaart. She had a temple built for Melkaart in Jerusalem. She did not want to do away with Israel's God but rather to create a condition of mutual peace and co-existence. She was an ancient pluralist. Everyone can worship the god they choose, the god they desire, so long as we all follow our own truth and way. But God revealed himself to Israel as the one, true God and all other gods were vanity according to him. As the minister/theologian D. T. Niles noted in his classic little book, The Message and Its Messengers (Abingdon, 1966), "Coexistence may be good policy, but it compromises the nature of truth." (Niles was the president of the Methodist Church in Ceylon and was a very active leader in the World Council of Churches.)

I believe in tolerance in our social and legal stance […]

The Road to Re-Understanding Is Through Misunderstanding

By John Armstrong|2009-06-12T05:00:00-05:00June 12th, 2009|Categories: Reformed Christianity|

Somewhere, from a friend whose name I cannot recall, I recently heard it said: “The path to re-understanding is often through misunderstanding.” I profoundly agree with this insight. My own journey to what I call missional-ecumenism has followed a path of re-understanding what the church has taught in previous centuries, especially in the early centuries, that began when I plainly began to see that things I misunderstood where the very things I assumed to be correct. So my path to re-understanding followed a road that began with my misunderstanding.

I find myself hoping and praying, almost every day, that more and more Christian leaders would acknowledge their limited perspective regarding many things that they assume so confidently they clearly know. What I call “epistemic humility” is always appropriate. We know what we know, especially when it comes to the revelation of Christ by the Holy Spirit, but even what we know is never so certain that we cannot understand more than what we know. Why is this so difficult to grasp?

Paul says “knowledge […]