Finally, the sad fact is that talk of ‘Jesus plus nothing’ usually ends in holding to a form of Christian faith that is ‘Jesus minus something.’  Most often it represents a faith with an inadequate grasp of truth or too little theology and thought, or a faith that is ‘all Jesus’ but no God the... Continue Reading

Now, I love to doodle, but I think it’s highly inappropriate to doodle all over God’s Word. And this is doodle-for-show. I get it when people like to add a visual element to learning, but this is not really a method that would help someone truly study God’s Word. So you paint an abstract scene... Continue Reading

“I do this in part for the amusement factor but in part to remind myself of the nature of Amazon reviews. I read a lot of books and do much of my research and purchasing at Amazon. I find myself prone to look at a book’s star-rating and draw conclusions from it. Reading the 1-star... Continue Reading

“In recent months, campuses across the country have exploded with such conflicts, with Yale and the University of Missouri prominent among them. Then as now, questions about race, gender, and sexual orientation were at the forefront.”   In some ways it is a mixed blessing for a book to be timely—and not just in the... Continue Reading

It’s becoming harder for us to focus on reading a whole article, much less an entire book. But we don’t have to give in to that. We need to exercise our brains to keep the firing paths moving for endurance in our attention spans and capacity to think deeply. Just like a constant diet of... Continue Reading

“But if we do not take sufficient time to take the roof off, the twentieth-century man will not comprehend what we are trying to communicate, either what his death is caused by, or the solution.  We must never forget that the first part of the gospel is not ‘Accept Christ as Savior’ but ‘God is... Continue Reading

I hope that Canon Press and the authors involved will be more careful in the future with their citations. I also think it would have been wise for Canon to have kept to their original statement on the plagiarism in A Justice Primer. It was clear and concise. I don’t believe their current statement has done... Continue Reading

While these themes have taken center stage at particular periods in the church’s history, that is only the tip of the iceberg. They are perennially relevant because underneath them lies the most fundamental question of all: Who is the God whom we come to know in Jesus Christ (John 17:3)? What is he really like,... Continue Reading

Like everyone else, I thought that the celebrity writers of these bright, flowery studies were biblical. They certainly contained some familiar Bible verses and talked about God – and sometimes Jesus. But the narrative almost always seemed to point to the author, and her life, and her countless anecdotes about her kids, her husband, her... Continue Reading

The end of “Out of the Woods” makes sense to people today. If the highest purpose of life is to discover yourself, then everything – including our relationships – must be reoriented to that view of self-discovery and self-exploration. The dissolution of the relationship is now a good thing if it prompts that crucial moment of... Continue Reading