Born To Win Podcast - With Ronald L. Dart

People get some really strange ideas about the Bible. There are those who believe, for example, that the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden was sex or that Cain was the result of some union between Eve and the serpent. They pay no mind to what the Bible says.There is a law called the Law of Parsimony which says roughly that of two arguments presented the shorter and simpler one is more likely to be true. Why make something complicated out of something simple?But we can always learn more—even from relatively straightforward stories—and clear up some misconceptions. So let’s take another look at Genesis, chapters four through six, from the lives of Cain and Abel to the calling of Noah.

If there’s one story in the Bible that is familiar to everyone, it’s the story of Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden. For one thing, people who start out to read the Bible naturally start at the beginning. A lot of times they make it about to Leviticus 6 and they just get lost or give up. Some time later, they return and they go back to Genesis. There’s no point in going back to Leviticus 6, is there? And they read the story of Adam and Eve all over again.It would be a rare person who doesn’t know who Adam and Eve were, and that they lived in the Garden of Eden. But this familiarity means that there are hundreds of different theories about Adam and Eve—none of them really compelling. Was the Forbidden Fruit an apple? It is generally taken for that. Or was it sex? Was the Devil a snake?I’ve advanced a few theories on Genesis, myself. Everyone who believes in God is an implicit theologian. And who’s to say your theories are not as good as anyone else’s? It’

Here we are once again in the political silly season. And you know, it’s a hard time for Christians to keep our hats on straight. And there’s no time that’s more important that we do keep our hats on straight because our’s is a government of the people and by the people. And, since we Christians fall in that broad category called the people, we are responsible before God for what this government does.Now, what do I mean when I say it’s hard for us to keep our hats on straight? Well, there are two broad categories of Christians at large in the world. (Listen to this carefully now.) There are Christians who read the Bible regularly and there are Christians who don’t. Now I can throw the numbers at you, but you know I’m right on that. About a third of Christians read something from the Bible at least once a week. About a third reads something from the Bible once a year or less. The other third, well, they’re somewhere in between.Now, I don’t’ have any s

You aren’t under any stress, are you? The funny thing about that question is that most people will answer that question with something like, No. Not really. But, in reality, far too many people are suffering from things like anxiety, high blood pressure, insomnia, depression, chronic fatigue, and an array of stress-related conditions.How did we get here? Why are we being eating up with these illnesses? The answer could be that we work hard. In fact, the problem is that we think we have to work harder than God.But God actually gave us a tool to deal with stress. But it is all too often ignored. What is it? Turn to chapter 2 of Genesis and we’ll take a look.Referenced Works:From Sabbath to Sunday: A Historical Investigation of the Rise of Sunday Observance in Early Christianity by Samuele Bacchiocchi

Most people believe that there is a God. Strangely, many people have not considered the consequences of that belief. If God exists, and if he created the world and everything in it, then that raises a really fascinating question: Why did he do it?Somewhere in time, God arrived at a decision or series of decisions that lead to all this we see. Why did he do it? Why did he create the heavens, Earth, and man? What is he up to?The apostle Paul informs us that the invisible things of God can be understood through the creation—the things which are visible. So maybe we should take a deeper look at that book of beginnings—the Book of Genesis, starting in chapter one.

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.Genesis 1:1–2 KJVThere’s a theory that in the original creation the world was not without form and void (the Hebrew suggests chaotic and in confusion) and, according to this theory, since God is not the author of confusion, something must have gone wrong. This theory allows any number of years between the original, pristine creation of the heavens and the Earth and the chaos and confusion that followed.What may have happened during this period is hinted at in several passages of both the Old and New Testaments. Let’s take a closer at this theory and the idea of a great rebellion and war between Good and Evil.

What in the world is God doing? I don’t think any religious system on Earth has even scratched the surface. Now, we owe a staggering debt to those who have gone before and received and passed onto us the testimony of God. The Bible is a book of enormous value and a revelation of God. But we should never assume that those who came before have comprehended God.Why God conceals things from us is not entirely clear, but it is clear that he does. The Bible does not answer directly what God has been doing for the last 15 billion years, but it does give us hints. More importantly, it authorizes us to search, to think, to reason, and to come to conclusions. As Solomon put it:It is the glory of God to conceal a thing: but the honor of kings is to search out a matter.Proverbs 25:2 KJ2000So if the Bible does not answer directly, what makes me think I can answer it? Well, maybe I can’t—you be the judge. We have to start with what we know about God from the Bible and another, often-overlooked source.

I honestly don’t know what people expect in terms of a prophet. I don’t think many people even know where to look for one. You certainly would be making a mistake if you looked for one in a pulpit of a church or speaking in a stadium in front of 60,000 people. You aren’t likely to find a real prophet in those environments.One ancient prophet, for example was a sheep-herder and a fruit-picker before God spoke to him. And he seems to have been a reluctant prophet, at that. He wasn’t schooled, trained or taught. On one occasion, when he had delivered an unpleasant prophecy concerning Israel, he was told to knock it off, go home, and shut up.We’ll find his reply, as well as a most interesting principle regarding how God chooses to reveal his secrets to man, in the Book of Amos.

Would you agree that Jesus was a good man? I doubt that we could find anyone who would argue to the contrary. Would you then agree that Jesus was a righteous man? I am reasonably sure you would. But what exactly does that mean?I have asked the question: If you only had a short time to tell someone about God, what would you want to be sure and tell them. Each of us might have our own list, but God gave us his in Jeremiah 9. [T]hat they have the understanding to know me, that I am the Lord, who exercises kindness, justice and righteousness on earth, for in these I delight[.]The last thing on God’s list of things he wants us to know and understand about him is that he exercises righteousness in the earth. And since Jesus is God in the flesh, we would surely expect him to be an example of righteousness. But again, I have to ask, what does that mean?

If you sit down to read the Old Testament, you’re very likely to come across some events that are profoundly disturbing. There are instances where God commands Israel to wipe out whole cities—men, women, children, and animals. And it is not easy to reconcile these events with what we otherwise know about the nature of God.People make two big mistakes when they tackle this issue. They try to justify God or they condemn God for allowing bad things to happen. As to the first error, God is sovereign and can do as he wishes. My task is not to justify God, but to understand and know him. As to the second error, this arises from the human desire to have our cake and eat it too. We want to be free to live our lives as we choose without anything bad happening to us.But the freedom to live our lives as we choose means that we each have the freedom to harm one another—which we often do. The presence of evil in the world is relatively easy to understand. Man is free. Man commits sin. When we commit sin,

We know from God’s own testimony that it possible, not only to know God, but to understand him. But to really know and understand God at a personal level, one has to know Jesus. On the night of the last supper, Jesus had a rather long dialogue with his disciples. He said something quite remarkable and puzzling, recorded in John 14. It almost sounds as if Jesus is saying that he is the Father. But that can’t quite be true. Jesus is on earth and the Father is in heaven, and they talk to each other.The Gospel of John is very strong on this point. He even starts out with it. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. Now this poses a logical problem. How can the Word be God and be with God at the same time? What was Jesus explaining in this passage?Christian theologians have wrestled with this down through time and have come up with the idea that God is a Trinity—three persons in one. The precise nature of the Trinity is said to be a mystery, so we can’

When you have a limited time to tell someone about God, what are the important things for a person to know? For a person who knows nothing about God, I would be hard-pressed to start anywhere except with the simple concept of God as creator.What is interesting is that this is precisely the place the Founding Fathers of our country started in laying out their case for independence.We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.The very guarantor of our most fundamental rights is, according the Founding Fathers, the Creator.The Founding Fathers concluded some very important things from the idea of God as creator. They saw logically the same thing that Paul outlines in Romans 1—that the creation is a self-evident fact. Something that is self-evident needs no proof. It is there and its self is evidence. Let’s look at how this simple concept&m

Would you buy a used car from a salesman who had lied to you on previous deal? No way. Not only that, but I wouldn’t do any business with that dealership again. I think we could agree that it is not wise to buy a used car from a known liar.Now why do I raise this question? It seems to me that there are people out there who would never trust a used car salesman who was a known liar, but they will vote for a politician who has lied to them more than once.Why do we get played for suckers by professional liars? Because they tell us what we want to hear. What I am describing here is a colossal lack of wisdom—what we sometimes call common sense—but what is increasingly uncommon sense. It came to mind recently when I was reading the introduction to the Book of Proverbs.

Speaking to the young prophet named Jeremiah, God had this to say about himself:But let him that glories glory in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the Lord who exercises lovingkindness, justice, and righteousness, in the earth: for in these things I delight, says the Lord.Jeremiah 9:24 KJ2000Now I would be the first to admit that there is a problem with this, at least on the surface. There is a tension between a God who exercises loving-kindness on the one hand and judgement on the other. Take Sodom and Gomorrah, for example. It isn’t immediately apparent that Sodom is an example of the loving-kindness of God.The tension between the first two aspects of God’s character, loving-kindness and judgement, is resolved in the third aspect of his character—righteousness. In Hebrew, it comes from a root that means straight. Some of the instructions of God don’t become clear until much time has passed—or, when ignoring them, after much harm has been done. We have to depend

Have you ever heard of the Wicked Bible? No, I am not making a joke. Back in the very earliest days of printing with movable type, someone made a mistake in setting the words of the seventh commandment, and out came a Bible which read, Thou shalt commit adultery.And as ridiculous as it sounds, I have a legitimate question: Why not? There are those who argue for the abolition of divine law, but for that to be possible, the law itself must be arbitrary. That is, God could just have easily said Thou shalt steal as to say Thou shalt not steal.Now I’ll guess that you intuitively know that is not the case. God said Thou shalt not steal because it is intrinsically wrong. And it is intrinsically wrong because it is harmful. Now, what does that tell us about the nature of God?

Some people are fond of speaking of God as omnipresent, everywhere at once, present in every blade of grass, existing throughout the entire universe. But they never seem to consider that in the process they depersonalize God and that they are advocating a kind of pantheism.Yet the Bible reveals a God is a person and acting in time and space. You can think of God presenting himself as standing alongside a road talking to a man named Abraham about his plan. This aspect of God is revealed in the pages of your Bible.Now if God is a person, then it is logical that he has a personality and character. In fact, that is precisely what the Bible reveals to us. So the question naturally follows: What kind of person is he? What is he like? God himself tells us what we must know about him. Let’s begin by reading his words to Jeremiah.

If you only had a short time to tell someone about God, what would you tell them? What is the most important thing to know about God? In a way, we may think we don’t know much about God—that God is some great mystical being of whom we only have the faintest idea.But if we think very long about this, we are liable to find that some of the things we know about God are contradictory. This suggests that we may have taken a wrong turn somewhere and that leads to an important principle found in Deuteronomy:The secret things belong unto the Lord our God: but those things which are revealed belong unto us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law.Deuteronomy 29:29 KJ2000So there are things we can know about God and things that are unknowable for us. The curious thing about man is that we become quite sure of things about God that we really can’t know, while we are doubtful about the things we can know. So instead of busying ourselves with the secret things, creating dogma

Several years ago I knew a young woman who was frustrated in her marriage and wanted a divorce. Her family pleaded with her not to do it, to seek counseling, and to try to work things out. So many couples, they said, tough it out during the hard times and later they find themselves with good, strong marriages. Her husband did not want the divorce and was prepared to do almost anything to keep the family together. They said, Think about your little boy. He needs a father in the home. But she had married young, felt restricted, and wanted to spread her wings. Her reply considering the little fellow was dismissive, Oh, he will be all right. You know, I don’t think she knew the risks she was taking.Children without fathers in the home are almost twice as likely to be hyperactive as kids in homes with two parents. I don’t think she knew that 63% of youth suicides are kids who grew up with no father in the house. I don’t think she knew that 90% of all the runaways and homeless kids out there grew