But in my view, there comes that “God Proposition” once again. The dirty little secret, deep down in all our souls, is that our natures are sinful, and many humans have tended to kick and scratch and resist God… but there is also a part of us that yearns for the God who sees good... Continue Reading

Reformed theologians have often argued about the order in which God decreed certain things to happen. The debate is not over the temporal order of the decrees. After all, we are talking about what God has determined in eternity past. Time is not the issue. Instead, the debate is about the logical order of the... Continue Reading

Most congregations have at least one member who is serving as a caregiver of a loved one. Many caregivers are women. The single mom who puts her child with cerebral palsy in daycare so she can work. The woman who is rearing her teen aged daughter and her daughter’s daughter at the same time. The wife who had to put... Continue Reading

Moses was approximately eighty years old when he met God at the burning bush (Acts 7:30). Eighty! By the time most people hit eighty they are getting ready to sink the last putt on the last hole. Their life is winding down, literally and figuratively. They’ve accomplished just about everything they’re going to accomplish. They’re... Continue Reading

Unfortunately, they have things exactly backwards. A good marriage is the sort of thing that almost anyone can aspire to, regardless of skills, education, or status. The most important ingredients for marital success are within any individual’s power to attain. Professional success, by contrast, does reflect hard work and commitment, but it also depends on... Continue Reading

I don’t think this demands that every individual become a parent—clearly some will not and are no less capable of experiencing imago dei—but I do think that it changes the tenor of the discussion and how we view children. So that ultimately, the decision to have children is not one we make simply because we... Continue Reading

When you read the last five chapters of Judges with its refrain about having no king in Israel, so everyone does what is right in his own eyes: Does that seem like modern America? “Everyone does what is right in his own eyes” sounds very much like modern skepticism or relativism or postmodernism, in that we... Continue Reading

“Pastors, the most important thing we can do on Sunday mornings in our pulpit is not to pull out the latest story from Reader’s Digest, not to pull out the latest story from National Geographic, not to tell the latest story on Duck Dynasty, but the best thing we can do … is hear the... Continue Reading

In the end, the “I am” language in John is a likely reference to God’s self-declarations in Isaiah, and thus a dramatic claim by Jesus to be the one true God of Israel.  By appealing to Isaiah, Jesus is not portraying himself as another God, but the one and the same God of the Jews.   One... Continue Reading

Last month my parents were visiting us when the police called them, from their home phone. There had been a fire at their house; their youngest son, still living at home, his friend, and my mother’s father had all been hospitalized. My brother had been badly burned on his hand and foot rescuing my grandfather... Continue Reading