Depression, far from being a purely physical or purely psychological or spiritual problem, affects every part of the person who is experiencing it. Physical remedies - everything from eating right and becoming more active to perhaps taking doctor-prescribed medicine to break out of a damaging cycle - should be a part of anyone’s grappling with chronic emptiness or sadness. But since humans were created by God to be both bodies and souls, it should come as no surprise that depression can only be dealt with by also examining and addressing the spiritual problems at the root of that depression. And one of the best spiritual ways to cope with depression is to counterintuitively resist the urge to isolate which every depressed person feels. Living in community, being drawn outside of ourselves through relationship with others and with God is an essential part of growing out of the dark valley. Hosts: Aaron Mueller and Chuck Rathert Subscribe to the show at https://cacg.saintjamesglencarbon.org. To comment on this episode, visit https://saintjamesglencarbon.org/cacg-ep67.

Skeptics claim that there are contradictions between the texts of the four Christian gospels. But on closer inspection, what are frequently called contradictions are better understood - not as errors - but as differing perspectives on the same events. The resurrection narratives are perhaps the most notable example: four separate accounts of the same event that differ in details - the sort of details that are easily understood as perspectival differences, but fundamentally agree in the main feature - that Jesus of Nazareth rose from the dead. Whether or not that event truly happened, it’s not the case that these accounts are contradictory. In fact, it would be suspicious if four separate people reported exactly the same thing. In other words, the gospels are best seen as these stories not as contradictory but complementary. Hosts: Aaron Mueller and Chuck Rathert Subscribe to the show at https://cacg.saintjamesglencarbon.org. To comment on this episode, visit https://saintjamesglencarbon.org/cacg-ep66.

One of the defining features of our current postmodern world is an increase in selfishness, a rise that has resulted from the lack of a controlling belief system. With nothing larger than oneself to believe in, our natural tendency will be to act, think, and speak in ways that serve ourselves. The Bible describes this desire as the primal problem of the human situation - the centering of ourselves over against all others; fundamentally, the desire to be God. The solution to this problem is to A) realize that happiness lies in the happiness of others and B) finding the fuel to be selfless in the one truly selfless act in the history of the universe - Jesus willingly giving up his life to save our lives. Hosts: Aaron Mueller and Chuck Rathert Subscribe to the show at https://cacg.saintjamesglencarbon.org. To comment on this episode, visit https://saintjamesglencarbon.org/cacg-ep65.

The key to understanding the Bible is recognizing the genre: it’s not primarily a book of rules, it’s not primarily a book of inspiration, it’s not even primarily a book of religious belief - it’s primarily a story, narrative. And the Bible claims to be the story of everything, the story of how God created a beautiful world which humans messed up and which he is redeeming back to himself. Another key is to realize that this story invites us to become an active participant, in fact to enter into a relationship with the author by becoming a co-participant in the story. Hosts: Aaron Mueller and Chuck Rathert Subscribe to the show at https://cacg.saintjamesglencarbon.org. To comment on this episode, visit https://saintjamesglencarbon.org/cacg-ep64.

There are roughly two parts to Christian fundamentalism: a commitment to the fundamental truths of the Bible, and a strong impulse to separate from the surrounding culture. Aaron and Chuck talk about what’s biblical and what’s unbiblical with this definition of Christianity, and discuss Aaron’s background in a particular version of American Christian fundamentalism. The difference between biblical Christianity and fundamentalist Christianity is not in the details of what is believed, but in biblical Christianity’s insistence that Jesus calls the Christian Church to love the world by living in it, living with it, communicating with it, speaking the truth of the gospel in language that is understandable, etc. Hosts: Aaron Mueller and Chuck Rathert Subscribe to the show at https://cacg.saintjamesglencarbon.org. To comment on this episode, visit https://saintjamesglencarbon.org/cacg-ep63.

Just about everyone agrees that evil exists, but why it exists causes much disagreement. According to the Bible, the evil things that happen in our universe - things like genocide and wars - cannot be explained in purely materialistic terms; after all, if the universe is nothing more than matter, than what humans call evil - including genocide and wars! - are just natural events that can be explained on purely empirical grounds. And if this is the case then there really is no such thing as evil. But the Bible insists that what we all sense - that there are evil things that happen, and appear to happen intentionally - is Satan. The good news from the Bible is that Satan cannot conquer God, and Jesus has promised to put an end to him on the last day. Hosts: Aaron Mueller and Chuck Rathert Subscribe to the show at https://cacg.saintjamesglencarbon.org. To comment on this episode, visit https://saintjamesglencarbon.org/cacg-ep62.

The heart of Buddhism is the Four Noble Truths: the reality of suffering, the reality of desire, the goal of nirvana, and the solution of the eight-fold path. In the case of suffering and desire, Buddhism and Christianity agree that all of life is broken, and at the heart of that brokenness is human desire. But they disagree in two important areas: first, the Buddhist goal of nirvana is an impersonal one - salvation in Buddhism is a matter of losing one’s identity and ceasing to exist; but for Christians, salvation is a redemption and repairing of the human person. And second, the path toward this salvation for Buddhism is a matter of doing good things (the eight-fold path); while for Christianity, salvation is purely a gift of God’s grace on behalf of Jesus. So at the heart of the difference is the resurrection of Jesus, who forgives and rescues the whole human being, spiritual and physical, and who gives us this salvation not based on anything we could do to earn it but purely as an act of his grace and mercy. Hosts: Aaron Mueller and Chuck Rathert Subscribe to the show at https://cacg.saintjamesglencarbon.org. To comment on this episode, visit https://saintjamesglencarbon.org/cacg-ep61.

One of our most basic assumptions in the West is that each person should be allowed to judge for themselves what’s right and wrong. This, along with the companion belief that God - if he does exist - does not interact with our world means that anything that happens, even those things we know are evil, are just random events without any sort of correspondence to good and evil. But if God is real, and he has spoken to us, telling us what to do, then what he wants is good and what he forbids is sin. And while this seems oppressive to the postmodern mind, the freedom it brings is the possibility of addressing evil as evil, and the possibility that there is a God who also hates sin, and is willing to deal with it in ways we know we’re unable to. Hosts: Aaron Mueller and Chuck Rathert Subscribe to the show at https://cacg.saintjamesglencarbon.org. To comment on this episode, visit https://saintjamesglencarbon.org/cacg-ep60.

The Bible claims that there is one creator God, Yahweh, who made everything that exists. Some people wonder then if there was someone or something that made God. But the uncreatedness of God is, in fact, one of the most basic ways to understand what or who God is, since if there is someone who made God that person would by definition be the creator of everything and therefore, God. Chuck and Aaron also discuss the ontological argument for the existence of God - the idea that the fact humans can contemplate the Infinite is an argument that such a Being exists. Although this doesn’t prove the existence of the uncreated Creator, it does highlight the reality that if God is infinite it will not be possible for humans to completely understand him, although we desperately crave this sort of transcendent understanding. Hosts: Aaron Mueller and Chuck Rathert Subscribe to the show at https://cacg.saintjamesglencarbon.org. To comment on this episode, visit https://saintjamesglencarbon.org/cacg-ep59.

One of the most common misunderstandings about the Bible is that it can’t be trusted because it’s been translated so often. The English versions one can buy in any bookstore or online are not translations of translations, but are translations from the oldest manuscripts of the original biblical languages, Greek and Hebrew. Some question whether we can really know anything about Jesus since the gospels, it’s commonly thought, were written long after the events they claim to describe. But we know that the stories of Jesus found in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were told and written down within 30-50 years after Jesus’ life - far too soon to develop into legend. Others have been led to believe that the New Testament writings were picked by the theological side (namely, the orthodox Christians) who were strong enough to eliminate its opponents. But historically, the four gospels were recognized as authoritative already in the early second century, and the rest of the New Testament was recognized soon after. In other words, the early church didn’t choose the books of the Bible; they recognized the books that the whole church was already reading as God-given scripture. And many people believe that the Bible can’t be believed because it has many contradictions, but this false belief is usually based on a misunderstanding of the Bible’s genre - many contradictions are just the result of different parts of the story. Actually, many of the supposed differences are actually good evidence that the events they describe have not been fabricated and their descriptions choreographed. Hosts: Aaron Mueller and Chuck Rathert Subscribe to the show at https://cacg.saintjamesglencarbon.org. To comment on this episode, visit https://saintjamesglencarbon.org/cacg-ep58.

If God wanted people to believe in him, it seems like it would be wise on his part to show himself to everyone. But everyone agrees that knowledge of God, if he exists, hasn’t happened in that sort of way. But while God doesn’t typically appear to people in visions or dramatic circumstantial experiences, the Bible insists a couple things: first, the reason he doesn’t is because it’s not safe for weak and sinful humanity to be exposed directly to the powerfully holy person of the deity; and second, that God has figured out a way to accommodate himself to his human creatures by becoming human in the person of Jesus of Nazareth and joining his eternal power and glory to him in such a way that we - by knowing Jesus in the way that all historical personages are able to be known - can have access to God himself. Hosts: Aaron Mueller and Chuck Rathert Subscribe to the show at https://cacg.saintjamesglencarbon.org. To comment on this episode, visit https://saintjamesglencarbon.org/cacg-ep57.

When the Bible says that no one is good, it’s comparing fallen humans to the greatness, power, and moral purity of God. This doesn’t mean that there is no such thing as a good human - when we compare ourselves to other humans it’s hard to escape that some of us are well-behaved and some of us are scoundrels. The trick in defining human goodness is to not confuse these two relative categories: compared to each other we are more or less good, but compared to God none of us are good at all. So, when we think about why bad things might happen to good people we have to insist, along with Scripture, that none of us actually deserves ultimate goodness, and this is primarily because by rebelling against the creator God we’ve willingly chosen to live in a world of evil on the chance that we can have personal power in that world, and we’ve rejected living in a world of goodness because that choice would entail giving up our personal power to God, a thought which horrifies us. The problem of course, is that none of this takes away the sting of the evil that inevitably happens to us. And, unfortunately, the Bible doesn’t give a cognitively satisfying answer to this question. Instead, it insists that the solution isn’t a logical reason, but a person - specifically, the God who became a human being in order to walk with us through all the evil things that have ever or could ever happen, up to and including all death. So the main question is not why do bad things happen to us, but why bad things happen to God. And the answer must ultimately be because he loves us enough to suffer with us. Hosts: Aaron Mueller and Chuck Rathert Subscribe to the show at https://cacg.saintjamesglencarbon.org. To comment on this episode, visit https://saintjamesglencarbon.org/cacg-ep56.

Christmas is unavoidable. Politicians utilize it to create a good vibe of accessibility and gentleness around themselves; the entertainment industry uses it to churn out cheap movies and even cheaper music, gobbled up by millions of consumers every year; and of course the commercial interests have nearly successfully turned Christmas into an essential end-of-year financial harvest. But because the annual Christmas celebration - in spite of its shallowness - is ubiquitous, the question of what it means is always on the table. And as long as people are asking the question of Christmas, the answer that God has decided to write himself into the story he’s writing of the world, become the major character, swallow up in his own human body all the evils and sins of the world, destroy all that evil by dying, and rise from the dead to create universal new life. In other words, Christmas is about God’s plan to personally show up and fix everything and all of us. Hosts: Aaron Mueller and Chuck Rathert Subscribe to the show at https://cacg.saintjamesglencarbon.org. To comment on this episode, visit https://saintjamesglencarbon.org/cacg-ep55.

Happiness is vitally important to the human experience, but in spite of our culture’s conviction of the primacy of happiness, and in spite of our culture’s current ability to easily acquire those items and experiences we all are convinced have the ability to make us happy, we now find ourselves in the position of being profoundly and chronically unhappy. The problem, from the Christian viewpoint, is that God has created us to be happy only in him, and that all attempts to find happiness outside of him are doomed to failure. However, by locating our ultimate value - our ultimate source of happiness - in God we will find happiness in him and in all the things he’s given us. In other words, if we pursue God instead of happiness we will have God and be happy, but if we pursue happiness over God we’ll get neither. Hosts: Aaron Mueller and Chuck Rathert Subscribe to the show at https://cacg.saintjamesglencarbon.org. To comment on this episode, visit https://saintjamesglencarbon.org/cacg-ep54.

The modern west holds that “all men are created equal and are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights,” and that this enlightenment principle of human liberty is “self-evident.” But this deistic idea of God-created principles of freedom which are available to humans without revelation from God (“self-evident”) is founded on the misguided belief that humans are equipped and desire to provide freedom for each other on their own. The failures of this system are evident all around us now in the proliferation of wilful addictions in our society - whether to overtly addictive things like drugs and alcohol, or to quieter addictions like those of career accomplishments, money, or entertainment. The biblical solution is the promise that Jesus offers us freedom in himself, and that by dying on the cross and rising from the dead all the cultural and political forces, and all the personal addictions we all struggle with, have been stripped of their power to enslave us and we are now free in him. Hosts: Aaron Mueller and Chuck Rathert Subscribe to the show at https://cacg.saintjamesglencarbon.org. To comment on this episode, visit https://saintjamesglencarbon.org/cacg-ep53.

We all know people who are good people, and we all know people who are bad people. But does the human race as a whole tend to be one or the other? While the tendency, in our Instagram culture, is to see people as either good guys or bad guys, Christianity insists that humans are both beautiful and good because we’re made to look like God, but we’re also broken and evil as a result of our collective rebellion against the creator God who designed us. The Bible says that while we all can do good things for each other - things that are genuinely good and helpful things, before God we can do nothing that would be good enough to win his satisfaction. But because of what God has done in Jesus Christ, those humans in Jesus are seen by God as completely good and acceptable. Hosts: Aaron Mueller and Chuck Rathert Subscribe to the show at https://cacg.saintjamesglencarbon.org. To comment on this episode, visit https://saintjamesglencarbon.org/cacg-ep52.

If God is God then his human creatures shouldn’t be surprised that he isn’t completely comprehensible. So when the Bible says that he is sovereign and does whatever he wants but also that he genuinely engages his people in conversation in prayer and adjusts what he does based on their requests, the argument that this is necessarily a contradiction because we can’t understand how it works is illegitimate. It seems strange to us that God could be completely in charge of everything that happens in human history - even, mysteriously, evil things, and at the same time react to the prayers of his people and make decisions based upon what we ask him. But the God of the Bible is big enough to do what we humans can’t comprehend. And in fact, this type of God is the God we all need and want: a God who is completely in control of all things and strong enough to fix everything, but also a God who relates to me where I’m at and takes my thoughts and feelings and desires seriously. Hosts: Aaron Mueller and Chuck Rathert Subscribe to the show at https://cacg.saintjamesglencarbon.org. To comment on this episode, visit https://saintjamesglencarbon.org/cacg-ep51.

The Bible describes God as a God of love, but also frequently describes him angrily judging sins. For many people, Christians as well as non-Christians, these descriptions are very disturbing. If God is a God of love we don’t like to think about him getting angry. But if we reflect on our own relational experiences we know this is not possible. God gets angry precisely because he is a God of love, and when something he loves is hurt he rightly gets angry. In other words, God is not vindictive or petty or mean-spirited, but always acts out of his deep love for his world and his human creatures. Hosts: Aaron Mueller and Chuck Rathert Subscribe to the show at https://cacg.saintjamesglencarbon.org. To comment on this episode, visit https://saintjamesglencarbon.org/cacg-ep50.

In the Bible Christians are told to not love the world, but we’re also told to bear God’s image, and God describes himself as loving the world. This makes sense if we understand what St. Augustine meant by not loving anything or anyone out of order; in other words, loving what we should love in the right order: God first, our fellow image-bearers next, and his good creation third. So Christians should love the world, but not more than they love God. But we must also understand that the Bible uses the word “world” in different ways. First, it is God’s good creation, and so should be loved and served and enjoyed (though, again, not more than God himself); but second, the “world” sometimes refers in the Bible to the world’s system which is controlled by and feeds on lust, power, greed, and pride, and this world system. The former should be encouraged and nurtured by all humans, but the latter must be rejected by Christians, who are called to fight in Jesus’ name against all idolatry. Hosts: Aaron Mueller and Chuck Rathert Subscribe to the show at https://cacg.saintjamesglencarbon.org. To comment on this episode, visit https://saintjamesglencarbon.org/cacg-ep49.

Christians agree that God created the whole universe, but what does this mean for how humans are to rule over or take care of his environment? The Bible says that God created humans to be his representative on earth, which means we are to take care of the world like he does, with care and love and stewardship, not manipulation and selfishness. So Christians, of all people, should be leading the way in caring for and stewarding God’s creation. This servant-based leadership is counterintuitive in a world where power means manipulation, but Jesus empowers us to serve the environment by his self-sacrificial death on the cross. But more than that, Jesus’ death and resurrection is the guarantee that the universe he created will also someday “rise from the dead” and be made new, and Christians have been called by God to be a part of this new creation project. Hosts: Aaron Mueller and Chuck Rathert Subscribe to the show at https://cacg.saintjamesglencarbon.org. To comment on this episode, visit https://saintjamesglencarbon.org/cacg-ep48.