But contending that all same-sex attraction is immutable is a distortion of reality. Attempting to characterize all sexual reorientation therapy as “unethical” violates patient choice and gives an outside party a veto over patients’ goals for their own treatment. A political agenda shouldn’t prevent gays and lesbians who desire to change from making their own... Continue Reading

While we mock the legalistic moralism of our ancestors (wearing suits, not wearing makeup, not drinking or smoking, not watching TV, or going bowling) we’ve simply replaced the legalistic moralism of the pharisees with the internal moralism of the post-modern (“live audaciously”, “live missionally”) not so that you won’t “go to hell” like our ancestors,... Continue Reading

For these reasons, I find Aslan’s latest book of recycled popularization focusing on the sociology of Jesus to be less interesting than the sociology of the Reza Aslan phenomenon itself. In recent years we have seen a number of photogenic Middle-Eastern men carve out significant market share in America as authoritative commentators and media figures.... Continue Reading

I have a feeling that this whole conversation gives way too much credit to the millennials leaving church. I have yet to hear anyone say the thing we’re all thinking: people don’t believe and would rather not go to church. The shortest distance between two points. The simple answer.   There are cold hard facts... Continue Reading

Put simply, preachers need to make a distinction between mining and sifting.  Mining is the hardcore research that draws the raw material of a passage together. Sifting is the hard work of picking the jewels out of that material that are needed by your congregation. We do mining because we are textually-oriented. We do sifting because we are people-oriented.... Continue Reading

Years ago, I read a great sermon by Francis Schaeffer, “No Little People, No Little Places.”  It explains what the Bible teaches about each of us having significance.  There may be a lot of people, but that doesn’t mean each person is without significance.  Besides being made in the image of God, each life affects... Continue Reading

The very concept of chaplaincy is cloaked in the idea of religious belief and orthodoxy. It is difficult to even conceive of a function an atheist chaplain could provide that the Armed Forces’ secular services can’t provide. How many atheists really desire an irreligious thought leader to preside over their weddings? How many of them... Continue Reading

The CWAGA folks have confused love with niceness. In this aspect, they have drunk the culture’s Kool-Aid that states that everyone’s opinion is okay, except for the person who denies that statement. That person is unloving (says the culture). And, of course, the CWAGA folks have also swallowed the idea that culture is almost always... Continue Reading

But God’s ways are not our ways, and God’s wrath is not like our wrath….British scholar Tony Lane explains that “the love of God implies his wrath. Without his wrath God simply does not love in the sense that the Bible portrays his love.” God’s love is not sentimental; it is holy. It is tender,... Continue Reading

What infuriated the establishment most were the claims to Lordship, the posture of authority, the exalted titles, the exercise of Messiahship, the presumed right to forgive, the way in which Jesus put himself in the center of Israel’s story, the delusions of grandeur, the acceptance of worship, and the audacity of man being God. Jesus... Continue Reading