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Wednesday, March 31, 2021
When Analogies Fail
We do the best we can when we try to
explain the word of God to others. It’s not always an easy task, and frequently
we are in over our heads.
Sometimes we come up with our own
illustrations to try to clarify a scriptural concept for our audience; to put
it in terms to which they may find it easier to relate. I have heard the
occasional helpful analogy over the years. I have also heard plenty that had
the potential to leave a listener with entirely the wrong impression.
For instance, even with the best of
intentions, the apostle Paul and the other writers of holy writ are not aptly
compared to word processing programs or keyboards.
Labels:
Figurative Language
/
Inspiration
/
Recycling
Tuesday, March 30, 2021
A Mistress Forever
Isaiah 47 is a harsh message from the Lord for the “tender
and delicate” virgin
daughter of Babylon.
Stop and think about that imagery for a bit. If you know
anything about the Chaldeans and the city of Babylon from either history or the
Bible, the picture of an attractive, chaste young woman is not exactly what it brings to mind. From the never-completed Tower
of Babel in Genesis to the “Fallen,
fallen” of Revelation 18, Babylon is associated with predatory mercantilism,
false gods, colossal hubris and even murder. In Babylon the great is the blood
of prophets and saints.
Where symbols go, the “great prostitute” seems more apt than the virgin daughter.
Labels:
Isaiah
/
Security
/
Stewardship
Monday, March 29, 2021
Anonymous Asks (138)
“Was Jesus black?”
Great.
Thanks a lot. This is almost guaranteed to get controversial …
A little
history: the traditional way of classifying the various nations that make up
the human race, which was based primarily on biological commonalities (Caucasoid,
Mongoloid, Negroid, Australoid), has recently fallen out of favor, mostly
for political reasons. It is politely referred to as outdated and impolitely
referred to as racist.
Nevertheless, because the old system was biology-based
rather than ideology-based, it remains in use among anthropologists and in learning
disciplines where observing distinctions between people groups is a meaningful
exercise. If you are going to try to answer the question “Was Jesus black?” at all, it remains the only sane way of framing the issue for discussion.
Labels:
Anonymous Asks
/
Christ
/
Racism
Sunday, March 28, 2021
The Rest is Detail
The gospel is a funny
thing.
At least the way we
often define it is a bit odd, particularly when we include the word in the
phrase “gospel meetings”. You know, those very simple, explicit “Come-to-Jesus”
messages promulgated in evangelistic tent meetings and in gospel halls all over
North America for the last century or more.
Not that there’s
anything wrong with that.
I mean, there isn’t,
really. It just isn’t the whole gospel picture, is it?
Saturday, March 27, 2021
Mining the Minors: Amos (8)
Relationship
is the foundation of all appropriate correction.
Where there
is no set of mutual obligations established, and no agreed-upon standard to be
abided by, we are generally fairly careful about playing judge — or at
least we ought to be. “Who are you to pass judgment on the servant of another?”
asks the apostle Paul. Of course; it is before his own master that each servant stands or falls. It
is quite appropriate for a father to punish his own children when they
misbehave, a little less so for an uncle to do it, even less so for the
neighbors, and wholly inappropriate for strangers to interfere with someone
else’s children.
I try
to apply this principle in my interactions with other people’s kids, no matter
how irritating they may be. After all, nobody likes busybodies and meddlers.
Labels:
Amos
/
Discipline
/
Family
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Mining the Minors
Friday, March 26, 2021
Too Hot to Handle: The ‘Construct’ Argument
In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more
volatile than usual.
Immanuel Can: Tom,
a week ago we did a post called “Virginity as Social Construct”. But I’m
wondering if there aren’t perhaps a lot of Christians who have heard somebody
in school or in the media say that this or that thing is “a construct”,
and maybe wondered what that actually means. Does everybody know?
Tom: Good
question.
IC: It’s become a
very important word lately, so maybe we should talk a bit about where it comes
from, what it means, and perhaps why Christians should be especially alert when
somebody claims that something is “a construct”. Should we spend some time on
that?
Labels:
Constructivism
/
Too Hot to Handle
Thursday, March 25, 2021
The Foulness is Downstream
I like to fish.
I’m very fortunate. In the town where I live, a river runs
nearby. It starts above the town, and it meanders its way through, coming out
at the far end and continuing for some distance. I live in the upstream
end, very near the river. In a few moments I can be out fishing on any
summer’s day; and the fishing is pretty good. The river’s clean, flowing and
healthy.
Labels:
2 Peter
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False Teachers
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Neo-Calvinism
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Social Justice
Wednesday, March 24, 2021
The Time of Their Visitation
In August 1914 after 24 days on the
open sea, a German schooner crew with a cargo of oilcake aboard sailed casually
into a Scottish harbor — and found themselves under arrest the moment they
docked.
Their surprise was understandable. It was
long before the invention of the cellular phone or even the wireless, so the
crew had no way of knowing that they had picked an exceptionally poor time to
visit the UK. Britain had declared war on their homeland as they crossed
the North Atlantic. They were at war and didn’t know it.
Many of our neighbors and coworkers today
are — no pun intended — in the same boat.
Labels:
Jerusalem
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Luke
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Reconciliation
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Recycling
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War
Tuesday, March 23, 2021
Colorblindness, Privilege and Inspiration
Whenever I find myself
with nothing obvious to write about, it’s a huge relief to know that in a pinch
I can always rely on Rachel Held Evans to have written something worthy of polite dissection.
Today is no exception.
The inimitable
Ms Evans holds forth here on the subject of her own “sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity” after
an unfortunate non-PC slip of the tongue at Princeton Theological Seminary.
Labels:
Inspiration
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Prejudice
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Privilege
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Rachel Held Evans
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Racism
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Recycling
/
Slavery
Monday, March 22, 2021
Anonymous Asks (137)
“Does the tree of life still exist?”
Many religions
have stories about symbolically-important trees, but these trees rarely
symbolize precisely the
same things. The Buddhist tree, for example, is associated with enlightenment,
while the Mayan tree serves as a connection between underworld, earth and sky. The
Taoist tradition is closest to the biblical depiction of the “tree of life”. It
tells of a tree that produces a peach every 3,000 years, the eating of
which confers immortality.
Just like
the one in the garden of Eden … minus the peach reference, of course.
Labels:
Anonymous Asks
/
Tree of Life
Sunday, March 21, 2021
When the Holy Spirit is Silent
We love building
narratives, don’t we.
Sometimes the tales we
tell each other represent reality. Other times we are simply reading our own
impressions, default assumptions and prejudices into the text of scripture.
I was in a conversational
Bible study recently. Our subject was Acts 15 and the “sharp disagreement”
between Paul and Barnabas over whether or not John Mark, who had previously
deserted them in Pamphylia, should accompany them to encourage the believers in
Asia where they had planted churches and preached Christ. The
disagreement, if you recall, was sharp enough that Paul and Barnabas parted
ways. Barnabas took Mark and went with him back to Cyprus. Paul chose Silas and
went through Syria and Cilicia.
Saturday, March 20, 2021
Mining the Minors: Amos (7)
In making his case against the nation of Israel through his
prophet Amos, God has first laid out the reasons for which Israel is about to
come under God’s judgment: their ongoing oppression of the poor, systemic
injustice, culturally-pervasive sexual immorality and rampant religious
hypocrisy.
Most importantly, God’s people have rejected all his
previous efforts at course correction. They refused to hear his prophets and
corrupted his Nazirites. The way they have treated one another is bad enough,
but when God’s voice can no longer be heard, then the time for judgment has come.
Now the prophet
moves on to the form this coming judgment would take.
Labels:
Amos
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Assyria
/
Mining the Minors
Friday, March 19, 2021
Too Hot to Handle: Virginity as Social Construct
In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more
volatile than usual.
Christians who frequent the major social media sites are finding
it difficult to miss the sudden and precipitous increase in closed accounts, shadowbannings
and deplatformings of Christian, conservative and even centrist voices. When so
many are being abruptly silenced, it is not unreasonable to wonder which opinions
are still acceptable in the public square.
Wonder no more. A mother of five girls is using her TikTok
account to try to put an end to the “social construct” of virginity, which she claims
is “designed
by men to control women’s bodies and ultimately make women feel bad about
themselves”. [Caution: coarse language in
link.] She says she is raising her daughters to believe there is no such
thing as virginity.
Well, not in her home at any rate.
Labels:
Premarital Sex
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Sexuality
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Too Hot to Handle
/
Virginity
Thursday, March 18, 2021
If There Were No Christians
Nag, Nag, Nag …
My friend WiC has been after me for some
time to publish a list of the things Christians have achieved for
modern, Western society and for the world in general. I think he has the idea
that it would be handy for many of us to have easy access to such a list. And I have
stalled as long as I can. Lest he wear me out with his insistent asking, I am
now capitulating to his request. I trust his conviction that many of you will
find it helpful will prove true.
Labels:
Christianity
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Recycling
/
Western Civilization
Wednesday, March 17, 2021
Indirect Evidence for Inspiration
In an era when not just politicians, lawyers and Muslims but average men and women increasingly play fast and loose with truth, one may forgive a little scepticism when someone makes a claim.
“All scripture is breathed out by God”, Paul once wrote to Timothy.
That is a pretty significant assertion, and it is not one that can be substantiated by direct evidence. Christians cannot produce Polaroids of Paul or David in the process of writing the words of God surrounded by a nimbus or with an angel handing them a scroll. Nor can eyewitnesses confirm the presence of any Spirit Being overshadowing, indwelling, controlling or directing the authors of scripture. They are all long gone, if such witnesses ever existed.
Tuesday, March 16, 2021
The Right to Costly Speech
Douglas Wilson is hard at work making the case for the
right to free speech from a Christian foundation, and I give him full credit
for grappling with the abstract with all the enthusiasm of Don Quixote tilting
at windmills.
But in explaining his position, Doug is making an undefended
assumption — or at very least one he does not attempt to defend in this
particular post — which may sound perfectly reasonable to many Christians:
that biblical law ought to serve as a foundation or framework for modern
society.
Labels:
Douglas Wilson
/
Freedom of Speech
/
Great Commission
Monday, March 15, 2021
Anonymous Asks (136)
“Where is the true church?”
When Jesus told his disciples, “I will build my
church”, we now know that he did not have in mind Judean sects, institutions,
denominations or even faithful local gatherings of God’s people. Still less was
he talking about a literal building of any sort. All of these may possess or
reflect the truth to some degree, and any of these may have at various times
faithfully represented God to the world, but none of these nouns truly captures
the scope of what the Lord Jesus meant to do. He intended to take Peter’s
accurate testimonial statement, “You
are the Christ, the Son of the living God”, and to build
around it a community of individuals set apart from the world to himself, a heavenly
nation that would span from the first century to our present day and beyond,
and from Judea to the farthest corners of the world.
Labels:
Anonymous Asks
/
Church
Sunday, March 14, 2021
Escapism in a Time of Trouble
Christians are
sometimes accused of escapism, primarily with respect to the doctrine of the “rapture”
(or parousia) taught in the New Testament.
After all, why should
a bunch of Gentile believers expect to get a free pass on the judgment of the world?
Doesn’t that seem just a little unfair?
Not all those who dislike
the idea of Jesus Christ making a special trip to this planet specifically to
carry away his people to be forever with him object to the notion for exactly
the same reasons. Some feel believing in a parousia
is elitist. Others see it as baseless and wishful. Still others, like Kurt
Willems, are troubled by the idea that Christians with a psychological safety
net like the “rapture” will give up trying to make society a better place —
or worse, will mislead others about what Willems believes are God’s plans for
this world. He says, “Our world’s future is hopeful.
Let’s tell that story and not the escapist narratives that many of us grew up with.”
Nice idea. Tough to see where he gets that “hopeful”
bit from these days though.
Labels:
Amillennialism
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Daniel
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Prophecy
/
Rapture
/
Recycling
/
Supersessionism
/
Tribulation
Saturday, March 13, 2021
Mining the Minors: Amos (6)
Ten of twelve spies sent into Canaan by Moses came back complaining about the presence
of giants. The Philistine Goliath, slain by David, may have descended from
the same race that produced the oversized Amorites to which Amos refers in his
denunciation of Israel. But Goliath maxed out at about 10' 6", and could easily have been a foot
shorter, depending on whether you use the 18" or 20" cubit as
your standard of measurement.
This is not an unrealistic height. Robert Wadlow [pictured right], the tallest man measured in the twentieth
century, was 8' 11", which is not so far from the low-end
biblical estimates of Goliath’s height. The Amorite giants described by the
spies may even have been slightly taller, having lived several generations
earlier.
Whatever
their actual size, these Amorites scared the ten spies silly. They towered
over the Israelites.
Labels:
Amos
/
Guidance
/
Mining the Minors
Friday, March 12, 2021
Too Hot to Handle: The Fat Lady Sings
In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.
![]() |
Preparing to cut loose at your church and mine. |
David B. is a regular reader/commenter
here. A few weeks back he (politely) asked Immanuel Can, “Why do you choose to
fellowship in a church where you clearly disagree with how they operate?”
IC responded, “Maybe I’ll do a post on that …”
Tom: Maybe that time is now, IC, not least because I feel like it might
be a useful topic for a number of our readers who have found themselves in
similar positions.
As you suggested to David in your response,
churches do not suddenly become heretical overnight. It’s my experience that
almost anything can be smuggled into a local church provided it is done
incrementally.
Labels:
Apostasy
/
Church
/
Recycling
/
Too Hot to Handle
Thursday, March 11, 2021
Magination Run Wild
Ah, liberal Christians.
How they do let their Maginations run wild sometimes.
You’ll see what I mean in a minute.
First, a little history ...
Lining Things Up
The Maginot Line was a massive French fortification that ran 943 miles between the Alps and the English Channel.
The brainchild of Minister of War André Maginot, it was designed to repel
attacks from Germany. The horrors of the trench warfare in the first “War to
End All Wars” had persuaded the French of the need for better national
defenses. The Maginot Line had everything going for it: super thick concrete,
steel-wedge gun turrets that were impervious to bombardment, large,
air-conditioned living areas for troops, supply storehouses, its own railway …
Labels:
Interpretation
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Jordan Peterson
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Literalism
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Myth
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Recycling
Wednesday, March 10, 2021
Recommend-a-blog (31)
Do you have difficulty with the concept of hell? Or, even if
you are personally okay with the idea, would you have difficulty defending the
reasonableness and fairness of eternal damnation to the unsaved?
Tim Barnett at Stand to Reason has written an interesting and thoughtful post on the subject
called “Hell: A
Solution, Not a Problem” in which he points out that the existence of hell
solves two problems: the problem of evil, and the problem of our
existential longing for justice. I’m glad he took the time. It’s worth a
read if only to prompt our own reflections on the subject and to consider how
we too might make such a case.
Labels:
Hell
/
Recommend-a-blog
/
Stand to Reason
Tuesday, March 09, 2021
Burning Sons
God commanded Abraham to offer his son Isaac as a burnt
offering on a mountain in Moriah. Most of us know the story very well.
And yet over the generations since the account was written down, readers continue to express outrage and
doubt, both about the character of a God who would make such a demand, and especially about the character of any man who would comply with it. Even Søren Kierkegaard had great difficulty with the passage, referring
to the act as an “ethical
rupture”. More recently, James Goodman writes, “Could there be better evidence that God is a
tyrant, Abraham a sycophant and Isaac an utterly abused child?”
Monday, March 08, 2021
Anonymous Asks (135)
“Do Christians need a marriage license?”
Kurt
Russell is 70. Goldie Hawn is 75. While working on a movie together in 1983, the
two actors spontaneously spent the night in a hotel room (details
thankfully not disclosed) and have gone on to live under the same roof — by
all accounts faithfully — for the last 37 years, producing
two children over their years together. Both were previously married, but
their current very deliberate non-marriage has outlasted both their original “legitimate”
unions combined, has soundly beaten the U.S. average
marriage duration by almost 30 years, and seems to have made them both a
good deal happier than any previous relationship. Neither Kurt nor Goldie expresses
any desire to legalize the successful partnership they currently enjoy.
As a
Christian, would you want to publicly critique that? I sure don’t, not with the
limited information I have about it.
Labels:
Anonymous Asks
/
Government
/
Marriage
Sunday, March 07, 2021
Strangers and Sojourners
Abraham was a sojourner, as were Isaac, Jacob and their
children. Moses too was a sojourner. They acknowledged themselves to be “strangers
and exiles”, and thus their history provides a useful and familiar
illustration of the relationship of believers to the world in which we live. Jesus
said of his disciples, “They are not
of the world, just as I am not of the world.” The apostle Paul wrote
that “our
citizenship is in heaven” rather than in any earthly nation. The Hebrews
were urged to “go to him [Jesus] outside
the camp and bear the reproach he endured”.
That’s one side of the story. There is another.
Labels:
Faith
/
Sojourners
Saturday, March 06, 2021
Mining the Minors: Amos (5)
Evil takes various forms, as does God’s judgment.
For example, Paul tells Timothy, “The sins of some people
are conspicuous,
going before them to judgment, but the sins of others appear later.” There are
obvious sins and there are secret sins. Many of these await judgment in
a future “day of wrath”, as Paul tells the Romans. The self-seeking and
disobedient will indeed receive their due, not always during their lifetimes
but upon being resurrected
to judgment at the end of the age.
Labels:
Amos
/
Injustice
/
Mining the Minors
Friday, March 05, 2021
Too Hot to Handle: The Wrong Set of Chromosomes
In which our regular writers toss around
subjects a little more volatile than usual.
Bill C-16 amends the Canadian Human Rights Act to add gender identity and gender
expression to the list of prohibited grounds of discrimination. It also amends
the Canadian Criminal Code to protect any section of the public that is
distinguished by gender identity or expression against “hate propaganda” and to
increase sentences accordingly against those who violate it.
Tom: The bill was rammed through Parliament with little discussion, no
public consultation and no recorded vote. Thank you, Justin Trudeau! Last I heard it’s before the Canadian Senate for final approval. If the bill becomes
law, people who say they’re transgender become a specially protected class of
citizens in Canada.
How do you feel about that, Immanuel Can?
Labels:
Government
/
Political Correctness
/
Recycling
/
Too Hot to Handle
/
Transgenderism
Thursday, March 04, 2021
A Profound Apology
So I was supervising
some young Christians, along with at least one unbeliever. They were viewing an
apologetics video. It was one that had been professionally produced — you
know, the kind that had enough money put into it to reasonably approximate Hollywood or TED Talk production values. Their local church had
made it available, off that Christian video-streaming service that some
churches seem to like.
The topic was “Why Does God Allow Suffering and Tragedy?”
What a great topic, I thought. Whether
you’re a Christian or an unbeliever, that’s got to be something you’ve asked
yourself, because you don’t live long in this world without running into some
kind of suffering. If you’re fortunate, it’s small; but it’s astonishing how
huge the things some children face can be.
Labels:
Apologetics
/
Recycling
/
Suffering
Wednesday, March 03, 2021
Foreigners and Citizens
The Law of Moses has much to say about how the people of God
were to treat foreigners.
Though there is some overlap in the Hebrew terminology,
context makes it clear foreigners were of two very different types. There was:
(1) the person of foreign origin who resided among the people of God,
often referred to as a sojourner; and (2) the true foreigner, whose place
of residence was elsewhere.
The latter term is sometimes translated “alien” or
“stranger”.
Labels:
Church
/
Deuteronomy
/
Foreigners
/
Israel
/
Sojourners
Tuesday, March 02, 2021
Responsive Law
Much is made of the fact that Christians are not obligated to keep the Law of Moses, and those who have come to understand the freedom believers experience in Christ are immensely grateful that the
unbearable burden of compliance with its innumerable regulations has not been placed on us as a condition of salvation.
That said, disconnecting from the concept of law altogether, as certain modern evangelical preachers encourage us to do, is an impossible task.
Labels:
Law
/
Ras Shamra
/
That Wacky Old Testament
Monday, March 01, 2021
Anonymous Asks (134)
“Do I have to believe the Bible is inerrant to
be saved?”
I believe the Bible is the product of men who
“spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit”; that all scripture (as the Christians of the first century understood the word “scripture”) is
breathed
out by God and is not only profitable but fully sufficient to equip those
who seek God for everything he will ever require of them. I believe the
scripture cannot be broken. Its own writers claim repeatedly that God was
speaking through them and that what they wrote and said was trustworthy.
Labels:
Anonymous Asks
/
Inerrancy
/
Salvation
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