Difficult Passages Series: Judges 19 and The Gospel
Unlike the Levite in Judges 19, our Lord will never leave us or forsake us (Hebrews 13:5).
Similarly, today, women associated with the dehumanizing acts of sexual abuse, or perhaps enslaved to sexual sin, suffer greatly with identity struggles, due to inherent objectification in society and finding themselves defined by past sexual relations. The shame they bear, both spiritually and culturally, often causes women to become silent, hidden, or even go underground.... Continue Reading
Is Christianity Rational?
The God of Christianity addresses people’s minds. He speaks to us. We have a Book that is written for our understanding.
When I say that Christianity is rational, I do not mean that the truth of Christianity in all of its majesty can be deduced from a few logical principles by a speculative philosopher. There is much information about the nature of God that we can find only because God himself chooses to reveal it to... Continue Reading
Private Confession and Rebuke
What do we do when a fellow Christian sins against us?
A great deal of tension in Christian congregations would be eased if we obeyed this plain command of Jesus: “Go and tell him his fault between you and him alone.” Instead of having the courage to face a person with his fault, frankly but privately, we whisper behind his back and poison other people’s minds... Continue Reading
A Spiritual Inheritance
It would serve us well to consider what sort of inheritance we are storing up for our children
“When we approach the subject of leaving our children a spiritual inheritance, we should be asking ourselves a series of diagnostic questions. These are only a few of the questions that we should be asking ourselves as we evaluate what sort of inheritance we are preparing for our children.” When I was a teenager,... Continue Reading
Angered At and Angry With
As I work my way through the Proverbs, I see anger everywhere
“I’m not naturally given to anger. I tend to be pretty easy-going and unlikely to spark a conflagration. But that’s not to say I can’t be too easily riled up, especially when living and ministering among people who may be a little bit more prone to anger. It’s when I’m sinned against in anger that... Continue Reading
Why I Went Back to Church
At the age of 37, what motivated me to seek out a church community where I’d feel safe—spiritually and culturally—to be baptized and, more importantly, have my daughter baptized?
The baptism itself was anticlimactic. Perhaps it had to be. I was too distracted by my wet shirt and too worried about my daughter’s tears to be present in the moment. And then there’s the fact that, for at least twenty years since my teenage conversion experience, I’d been imagining the day when I’d be... Continue Reading
Spiritual Growth Comes From Community
My spiritual growth over the last 18 years is mostly due to the accountability I have had in the local church rather than my own personal drive to grow.
Left to my own drive and motivation I would have sidelined my Bible study for a better time later in the day, or I would have sat out whole semesters of women’s ministry because it wasn’t a good season, or I would have stayed home from church because I just wasn’t up to it. But... Continue Reading
Happy Birthday, Calvin!
"Nature would certainly be satisfied with water to drink; and therefore the addition of wine is owing to God’s superabundant liberality.”
This view was part of his persuasion on Christian liberty – the conviction that, in matters which are not mentioned in the Bible, men can act according to their own personal conscience and in wisdom. To Calvin, this liberty was “a matter of primary necessity, one without the knowledge of which the conscience can scarcely... Continue Reading
You May Not Love What You Think
Our loves and longings and wants and hungers are not the result of our conscious, rational choices — they are the drivers of those choices.
We like to imagine ourselves as enlightened, rational, truth-seeking knowers — “thinking things,” as Descartes put it. But in fact, the engine that drives us under the hood of our conscious awareness is our loves. You aren’t defined by what you know. You are what you love. Where do you want to go today?... Continue Reading
Five “Fake News” Stories That People Believe about Early Christianity
We need to be careful to examine the facts before we repeat the claim.
Given this rash of “fake news,” I thought it might be interesting to observe that an analogous phenomenon can be seen in the study of early Christianity. There is quite a bit of “fake news” out there regarding the person of Jesus, the origins of the church, or the development of the Bible. Even though... Continue Reading