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Does the end ever justify the means? Secular ethicists classically divide ways of making ethical decision-making into two categories: deontological and consequentialist. The deontologist judges an action right or wrong on the basis of whether it conforms to a set of rules or principles. Immanuel Kant was one of the...
Understanding God's word is a life-long task and we are all on a journey in our understanding. But there are some general principles, which will help us not to make too many errors. 1. Scripture is authoritative as originally given. Translations which distort the original meaning of the text do not...
It's useful to review the ways that non-Christians make ethical decisions, not just so that we can understand others better, but because many Christians fall into exactly the same traps in the ways they come to develop their own opinions. Gut feeling - It just feels right In a society as...
The status of the embryo is fundamental to discussions on fertility treatments, genetics, contraception and abortion. If the embryo is nothing other than 'human tissue' then clearly it is expendable, but if it is 'a human being with potential' then it should be treated with the utmost respect. The issue...
Anticipate conflicts before they happen We should expect conflicts to occur (2 Tim 3:12) and try to anticipate them ahead of time. We should ideally think through the issues involved biblically well ahead of time, so we know exactly where we stand and why. Some conflicts arise completely out of the...
Christians often disagree, even leading Christians. Peter and Paul fell out over the circumcision issue (Gal 2:2). Paul and Barnabas divided over Mark (Acts 15:37-40). Syntyche and Euodia's dispute split the church in Philippi (Phil 4:2-3), and throughout Christian history disagreements have continued - over baptism, charismata, eschatology, ecclesiology, worship,...
Some Christians hold that Christ speaks to us by his Spirit in ways other than by the written word which has faithfully been passed down to us. There is good support for this thinking in Scripture itself but also much which should lead us to exercise caution. Everything must be...
Everyone, whether they care to admit it or not, has a world view; a set of presuppositions about the nature of reality, that has profound effects on the way they think. Behind a rabid 'rights for gay whales' campaigner may be the beliefs that: God doesn't exist Death is the...
'If caring were enough, anyone could be a nurse' read a 1990's American nurse recruitment advertisement. It promoted nursing as an intellectual, science-based profession rather than a caring-based profession. The implication is that caring is no longer valued within our society. But if that really is the case, why...
Discovering God's will When Christians make decisions about what is right and wrong their underlying rule is that what God wants and says is best. This does not necessarily lead to their conclusions being wildly different from those who leave God out of the equation. The Christian explanation is that...
