In my experience, unwillingness to accept feedback necessarily creates growing isolation, and even paranoia and anger. This downward spiral can only be arrested by humble repentance—something that always brings joy, shows us our sin (and limitations!) but even more, Christ’s glory and work and the Father’s love. Last year I greatly enjoyed getting to know... Continue Reading

How do Christians speak of Jesus to this rising generation of very spiritual people who have had a “personal experience of the pantheistic “god-within”? This new Postsecular context demands a worldview approach to our Gospel presentation. When I came to the United States in 1964, the great enemy of the Christian Faith was Marxism, with... Continue Reading

Without a common descent we lose any firm basis for believing that all people regardless of race or ethnicity have the same nature, the same inherent dignity, the same image of God, the same sin problem, and that despite our divisions we are all part of the same family coming from the same parents. In... Continue Reading

Roger Williams, the Puritan who founded Rhode Island, insisted on the state refraining from intervening in the relationship between humans and God. In January, while conservative Christians and GOP presidential candidates were charging that “elites” have launched “a war against religion,” a federal court in Rhode Island ordered a public school to remove a prayer... Continue Reading

To what extent should a member of the PCA expect he could worship with a comfortable conscience regardless of what congregation he may attend on a Sunday? How much uniformity can we expect? How much diversity can we live with? I do not think this is in any way the only issue. But, I think... Continue Reading

In ministry, we are not unlike dentists. There is room in our relationships for general conversation. (“The weather and the state of the roads,” as Jane Austen put it.) But if we never bring our chatter around to the matter of spiritual decay and disease and the Remedy for both, we aren’t very useful. My... Continue Reading

Suppose you’re traveling to work and you see a stop sign. What do you do? That depends on how you exegete the stop sign. 1. A postmodernist deconstructs the sign (knocks it over with his car), ending forever the tyranny of the north-south traffic over the east-west traffic. 2. Similarly, a Marxist sees a stop... Continue Reading

My own theory revolves around a single bad idea. For generations people have been told: Think for yourself; come up with your own independent worldview. Unless your name is Nietzsche, that’s probably a bad idea. Very few people have the genius or time to come up with a comprehensive and rigorous worldview. A few weeks... Continue Reading

But eschatology and discipleship in the church is kind of like sex education in the home. Just because you don’t talk about sex with your kids doesn’t mean they will grow up ignorant of sex. It means they’ll hear about sex from somewhere else. On Thursday I launched a new semester of my Doctrine of... Continue Reading

In other words, if as a Christian one is intent upon easing the conditions of the poor and pushing back the boundaries of poverty and destitution, then democratic capitalism has far more to recommend it than any other system of political economy ever devised. Reality is resilient. Ignore it, reshape it, mistreat it as we... Continue Reading