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“How should the church deal with gossip?”
Words can be a deadly poison. The gossip presents himself in public as a friend, then stabs you in the back when you’re not expecting it. He betrays confidences, reveals secrets and causes endless unnecessary heartache. Jeremiah said that tale-bearing is characteristic of the “stubbornly rebellious”. That’s not a inscription I’d want on my tombstone.
Let’s not kid ourselves. Gossip happens among Christians too.
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“Is God opposed to pleasure?”
The Bible paints a consistent picture of a God who both experiences pleasure and designed his creatures to experience it too. The same is true of delight, if there is any difference between the two concepts. (Personally, I think delight is a little more intense, but I won’t insist on it as an article of faith.) A simple concordance search for either term turns up numerous references to things that give God delight and things that don’t. Likewise, scripture contains many references to things in which humans take pleasure, whether or not we should.
It would be strange indeed to find God comprehensively opposed to something he not only created, but which originates in him.
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“How should a Christian respond to unreciprocated romantic interest?”
Christians are called to love one another, but it’s a very specific kind of love. “Just as I have loved you,” the Lord Jesus told his disciples, “you are to love one another.” That was the “new commandment” he gave them, and one of its purposes was to identify Christ’s followers to the world. “By this all people will know that you are my disciples.”
If the love the Lord commanded and commended is like his own, it should be obvious there is no element of romance in it.
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“Is it wrong to be pessimistic?”
The New Testament epistles have much to say about Christian joy. Paul mentions it six times in each of 2 Corinthians and Philippians, and five times in 1 Thessalonians. Our joy is one of the ways the world know we are different. Peter, John, Jude, the writer to the Hebrews and even grumpy old James mention joy too. By my count, that’s every NT letter. Joy should characterize the Christian life.
Of course, joy is not mere optimism. It’s far more than that.
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“Why is finding true love so difficult?”
The list of possible answers to this question is lengthy, so I won’t pretend to get to them all. Perhaps we can start with some of the features of our society that work against us when we are in the process of trying to pair up for life.
First on that list is an affliction sometimes called “oneitis”.
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“What is apostasy?”
The word “apostasy” comes from the Greek ἀποστασία, transliterated apostasia. Very few English translations of the Bible use it much. Strong’s defines it as falling away or defection. It’s closely related to the word commonly translated “divorce” in the New Testament. One place we do find it is in 2 Thessalonians 2:3, where it refers to a major future event in which the “man of sin” is revealed to the world.
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“What principles can we put into practice when it comes to Sabbath rest?”
I am finding this question and variations on it increasingly common in online forums with large numbers of younger commenters from theological systems in which Replacement Theology is a major tenet. In a way this makes sense for them. If indeed, as their system teaches, the people of God are a continuum from Abraham (or earlier) to present day — if the Church is Israel and Israel the Church — then why not practice Israel’s Sabbath rest in some form?
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“Is Mary the mother of God?”
There is a kind of childish logical syllogism drawn by some in which the budding theologian goes from the true statements “Mary was the mother of Jesus” and “Jesus is God” to “Mary is the mother of God”. The final claim is simply untrue, not to mention blasphemous, depending on what those who say it or write it intend by it. The error is a decent example of the informal fallacy we call false equivalence, which involves consciously or unconsciously substituting one term for another in a syllogism where the terms are not precisely identical. Asparagus is a vegetable. That does not make it the only type of vegetable in existence.
Think of it this way: if Jesus is God, does that mean God is Jesus?
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“Is nagging a Christian tactic?”
Nagging is often associated with frustrated wives and mothers, perhaps unfairly. Passive aggressive men do it too. Try the words “If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a hundred times” with a little ‘Y’ chromosome on them, and you’ll quickly think of somebody male in your life with the habit of saying considerably more than is useful or necessary. I definitely did.
In any case, neither of my parents were inclined to nag. My early home life was happily unmarked by the irritation that persistent verbal harassment provokes.
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“What does the Bible say about ice ages?”
Weather and climate are two different things, a fact deliberately obscured by the Global Boiling true believers and those who make financial use of them.
Weather is short-term. It’s the state of the atmosphere at a given time and place. It happens today, tomorrow or next week. Ask me what the weather has been like this winter and I’ll answer that it’s been close to normal temperatures with perhaps a little more snow than usual.
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“Does Israel have a divine right to ‘much of the Middle East’?”
The shifting borders of modern Israel generate endless public debate. Last Friday, Tucker Carlson referenced a passage from Genesis in an interview with US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee. He asked the ambassador if Israel “had a right” to territory outside its current borders. Huckabee responded, “It would be fine if they took it all.”
From the standpoint of American interests, Huckabee was probably correct. But it was a bit of a foot-in-mouth moment. You can’t say that out loud these days. As usual, the media foamed at the mouth. Politico reported the exchange here.
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“Hey, I’ve been trying to learn more about living in Christ. What books or resources do you personally read or follow?”
I almost posted photos of my bookshelves, but I’m not sure how useful a complete rundown of my collection or my regular online reading list would be as an example for a younger believer. I’m an older Christian and I write for online publication almost every day my life. I am at my sharpest when reacting to error, so I buy and read many books written by people I don’t agree with in whole or in part in order to get the view “from the other side”. I try to use the experience the Lord has given me to test good arguments and bad, and pick apart the ones that need it.
Then I often keep the books that contain them around for reference afterwards. I will leave most of these off my recommendation list. No pictures today!
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“Is it biblical to choose the lesser of two evils?”
In the ancient Hebrew of the Old Testament, the word translated “evil” [raʿ] has two distinct meanings. One is wickedness, an ungodly moral choice made by a living being. The other is misfortune, a sad practical consequence of living in a fallen world, about which we often have little or no choice at all.
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“What are the windows of heaven?”
We find the metaphor “windows of heaven” several times throughout the Old Testament. It describes how God responds to the actions of men in two very different ways.
What they have in common is abundance.
In the first book of the OT, the “windows of heaven” describes the outpouring of rain during Noah’s flood. In Genesis 7, the windows of heaven were opened. In Genesis 8, the windows of heaven were closed, and the rain ceased to fall. Forty days and forty nights of rain is what we might reasonably call an abundance, but it was an abundance of judgment. God used it to destroy a wicked world. Nobody wants that sort of abundance. You wouldn’t pray for it, and God has promised never to do it again.
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“Is the ‘Name It Claim It’ philosophy biblical?”
I had to look up this phrase since I’m entirely unfamiliar with the concept. A Google Ngram search shows it began appearing in English literature just prior to 1980 and took off in popularity post-2000, peaking after 2020. Having established that, I looked for a book by that name in hope of finding a popular proponent of the teaching. The one that crops up most frequently is a 2008 publication by Dag Heward-Mills entitled Name It! Claim It!! Take It!!! (with all those crazy exclamation marks), available since 2024 as a free PDF online in what I think is its entirety.
The book certainly falls within the Ngram timeframe, but late enough to suggest the phrase probably did not originate with Heward-Mills. TV evangelists like Kenneth Copeland have popularized the concept to the point that it may not be possible to figure out exactly where it came from. For our purposes, it hardly matters one way or another; the basic teaching has been around for centuries.
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“Are religious icons idols?”
For readers with limited exposure to “high church” traditions, an icon is an artistic depiction of Bible persons or events in paint, mosaic or wood. Icons are common among the Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholics and some Lutherans. The Lord Jesus, Mary, ‘saints’ and angels are the most frequent subjects.
Depending whom you ask, what makes an icon ‘iconic’ is that, rather than simply being decorative, it serves as an object of devotion.
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“When did the Church begin?”
Two answers to this question are common among evangelicals. The Dispensational answer is “At Pentecost in the early first century AD.” The answer of Replacement Theology (“RT”) is “The people of God are one throughout the entire Bible.” Since “church” [ekklēsia] means a congregation (i.e., more than one person), the Church can then be said to have begun with the second human being ever saved, perhaps Eve or Abel. Others argue Abraham is “the father of us all”. Either position adds thousands of years to the age of the Church.
If you think the difference is a mere numeric technicality, think again.
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“What is the Synoptic Problem?”
The word ‘synoptic’ refers to the gospels written by Matthew, Mark and Luke, coming from the Latin synopticus, literally “seeing all together”. Wikipedia describes the Synoptic Problem this way:
“The ‘synoptic problem’ is … the question as to the source or sources upon which each synoptic gospel depended when it was written.”
You too may have noticed passages from the three gospels that are similar to one another. I’m not quite sure why commentators describe it as a problem. I think of it more as a curiosity.
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“Why does God allow deception?”
Google the phrase “Why does God allow”. Stop there. The number one answer by a long, long shot is “suffering”. Even my browser’s AI response assumes that’s what my open-ended question is really asking. Second highest is “evil”. Third is “tragedy”, which may or may not have a malevolent component. I often associate tragedy with natural events that hurt people, or things like dying young.
Way down the list is “Why does God allow me to struggle and fail?” Hey, I sympathize.
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“Why did Job’s wife tell him to curse God and die?”
The day the Sabeans killed Job’s servants and took all his oxen and donkeys was the same day fire fell from the sky and killed all his sheep and shepherds. It was also the same day the Chaldeans stole his camels and the same day the house fell on his ten children during a party and killed them all. Job lost every outward sign of God’s blessing in a matter of minutes. Shortly thereafter, his entire body broke out in pustules.
The pustules apart, it should be obvious that everything that happened to Job also happened to his wife. We don’t think about that aspect of the story quite so much.