WELCOME!
Hello and welcome to my website. My name is Brandon Andrews and this is where I host my WordPress blog, aquietnight.com. You can find my bio here.
What’s In A Name?
I’ve titled this website and blog, A Quiet Night, because it captures the essence of when and under what circumstances I most often find myself contemplating and writing on the issues I do. I’ve worked the night shift for most of my adult life, and am something of a night owl. I often find myself up late, alone, and well into the early morning hours. Those dark hours in the dead of night have a tendency to provoke serious reflection and thought and introspection in light of the day’s events. Here are those thoughts!
About Content and Form
I use this site to share articles, essays, general thoughts, and critical evaluations of things relevant to ethics and culture, theology, philosophy, religion, and the daily Christian life. My goal is to post longer articles periodically and shorter reflections more frequently. I invite comments and interaction from readers. I hope that you would be challenged and encouraged by the content I share.
Site Navigation
You can find my blog posts here. There you can scroll down the page to see articles as they are posted chronologically. If you would like to search by topic, you can click on the Menu button in the top-right corner, and under “Posts By Topic”, select the topic which interests you.
A Word About Worldview
Readers might be interested to know about my worldview, the lens by which I view and interpret reality. We all have one, and there is no shame in saying so. I would argue that there can be no objective claim about truth or the physical world apart from the subjective interpreter. That doesn’t make truth unobtainable, nor the claims of those subjective interpreters false. Simply, it means that one has a particular manner of approaching and understanding the data.
Myself, I am a conservative Christian from the Protestant tradition (Southern Baptist). Southern Baptists are famous, or perhaps, infamous, for taking seriously the Divine-authority and factual-historical accuracy (i.e. infallibility & inerrancy) of the Holy Bible. I affirm this claim about the inherent nature of the Bible. It most certainly shapes how I perceive and understand the world in which we live. But it’s not because belief in the authority and accuracy of the Bible is some kind of shibboleth for Southern Baptists. Rather, the Bible exists as an integral part of God’s unfolding revelation to mankind. It is, as generations of Christians have declared, God’s Word. Being God’s Word, the word and utterance of the sovereign being for whom all creation is His handiwork, it accurately defines, describes, and represents reality as it really is. This can be known partly through rational evaluation of the truth claims it makes, and partly through the inner testimony of God’s Spirit engaging the intersection of the divine nature of Scripture and the corner of our being that is made in His image (i.e. imago dei). For this reason, I use the Bible as my foundation for understanding and knowing truth.
Of course, there are certain limits to that practice. For example, the Bible does not address the issues of television, social media, and modern technologies. Nor are certain scientific discoveries discussed, which would later shape our knowledge of the physical laws that govern the universe. These, I believe, don’t render the Bible an antiquated book of moral philosophy. God’s Word is eternal, accurate, and authoritative in the past, present, and future. It may not speak to every specific detail of present day life, but it does speak to every area of life, providing the necessary moral foundation for understanding our own time and issues within God’s eternal-unchanging law. Yes, I do take some issue with certain scientific claims, though not solely because they conflict with teachings of Scripture, but because they have in themselves logical inconsistencies or foregone conclusions.
With that said, the basic thrust of Scripture is neither to enslave mankind to a rigid morality, nor to provide a futile hope in the confusing and often tragic circumstances of human existence. The basic theme of Scripture is to declare God’s glory through His relationship with fallen mankind by offering His Son, Jesus, on the cross, to die for our sins, to be raised from the dead, and to return at the end of human history to judge the righteous (those who depend on Jesus for their righteousness) and the wicked. (1 Cor.15:1-8). This is called the Gospel.
Here are some good-short videos explaining this Gospel.
Thoughts from a quiet night 