Anonymous Asks (293)

“Is the sanctity of human life a biblical concept?”

Scripture is clear throughout that human life has intrinsic value. God made man in his own image and after his own likeness, a statement made about no other created beings in the universe.

That alone should make us cautious about taking the life of another.

Time and Chance (41)

Bible readers whose systematic theology requires them to downplay or overlook the distinctions scripture makes between the Old and New Covenants are faced with more than the occasional conundrum in interpreting Ecclesiastes. And yet any number of older commentators read and exposit the book as if its primary value is as directly-applicable advice to modern Christians.

It most surely is not.

Time and Chance (26)

The much-maligned Donald Rumsfeld, former U.S. Secretary of Defense under President George W. Bush, once said this: “There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things that we know we don’t know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don’t know we don’t know.”

That may sound like bafflegab, but it’s actually a fairly lucid breakdown of the possibilities.

Time and Chance (11)

In interpreting any given statement in Ecclesiastes, we are wise to look carefully at the Preacher’s current train of thought. Unlike the book of Proverbs, for the most part Ecclesiastes is not a collection of unrelated bits of wisdom. It is primarily an orderly series of arguments and observations.

Even where the direction of the writer’s thought flow does not immediately jump out at us and we are tempted to think he may have drifted off topic, he inevitably loops back to his theme. It is more than likely, then, that the meaning of any obscure thing the Preacher says may be at very least tangentially connected to his larger subject, as opposed to coming at us right out of the blue.

Knowing this is fairly helpful when we consider our next two verses.

On the Mount (33)

The house on the rock. We all know what that’s about, right? As the lyrics of the old Sunday School song put it:

“So build your life on the Lord Jesus Christ, and the blessings will come down.”

Well, yes, that’s certainly one application: your life. But I don’t think we need to stop there, do we? You never know, we might miss something.

On the Mount (30)

The way is hard that leads to life. Ain’t that the truth. Maybe in more ways than we are usually inclined to consider.

Matthew 7:13 is generally read as having to do with a man or woman’s ultimate fate: eternity in hell on the one hand; eternal life in fellowship with God on the other. These are the highest and most personal stakes for which human beings have ever played. In the face of everlasting separation from God and all that is good, it should be obvious that the horrors of war, the nuclear arms race and our current inability to cure cancer pale into comparative insignificance.

Understandably, we will wish to choose carefully.