Anonymous Asks (337)

“Are lustful thoughts natural, and how do I deal with them when they keep coming back into my mind?”

God made the average young man to procreate. There are always exceptions to the average, of course, as the Lord Jesus noted to his disciples — that’s how it becomes an average in the first place. You need the outliers on both ends to put you smack bang in the middle of the pack.

You sound like you’re right there in the middle, Anonymous: a normal human, Christian male.

Anonymous Asks (336)

“Should Christians from different denominations date or marry?”

As with so many questions, the answer very much depends on your personal situation. Why do you attend the church you currently attend? Obviously, the most desirable answer is “Out of conviction about the interpretations of scripture taught there.”

But that’s not always why people are where they are, is it?

Anonymous Asks (335)

“What does leaven symbolize in the Bible?”

Lots of things, none of them good. Let me try to make that case.

Symbols can be tricky things. Where our Bible interprets a symbol, we generally have no difficulty at all, but there are also times when the meaning of a symbol is open to question because the Holy Spirit has not told us plainly, “This signifies that.” Leaven was unacceptable to God in some contexts and acceptable in others. We will need to find an explanation for that.

The Old Testament uses leaven as an illustration. The New Testament unpacks its meaning.

Anonymous Asks (334)

“If Jesus was/is omniscient, why did he ask questions?”

Good question. You can find several lists online of the questions Jesus asked in the gospels. Curious Bible students have dug up at least 300, minus a few repetitions from overlapping accounts. No single explanation accounts for them all, but one thing we can say with absolute certainty is that Jesus never asked a question to which he didn’t already know the answer.

Anonymous Asks (333)

“Is the name you give your child important?”

In the beginning, names signified destiny. Adam is simply the word for “mankind”, while Eve sounds like the Hebrew for “life-giver” and resembles the word for “living”. Genesis explicitly tells us Adam named his wife Eve “because she was the mother of all living”.

Nowhere does it say God named either member of the first couple. He certainly named the species, but not the individuals. He left that up to our questionable judgment.

Anonymous Asks (332)

“Is not reading the Bible a sin?”

As with so many answers to questions asked here, let’s say it depends on the situation. There have been times throughout history, both during and after the period when scripture was in the process of being written, when large numbers of its intended audience were illiterate, and not by their own choice. Literacy is a privilege and an opportunity not offered to all men and women, and surely the Lord would no more charge people who can’t read with the sin of not doing what they are unable to do than he would charge the innocent poor man for being poor.

Likewise, I don’t see him adding the charge of not reading the Bible to every one of the dead scheduled to appear before the great white throne, though it will certainly leave those who had opportunity to do so without excuse. But they have plenty on their plates without that.

Anonymous Asks (331)

“Are mono-ethnic churches biblical?”

I have never been to a truly mono-ethnic church. I have no evidence they exist. To remain truly mono-ethnic for more than a few weeks, a church would have to find a way to enforce ethnicity-based membership. Which leads to the obvious question: What makes a person, for example, Chinese? Is 100% racial “purity” required? Or would it be permissible for him to have one Tibetan grandparent, or if not a grandparent, perhaps a great-grandparent?

How would you prove such a thing, and why should you have to?

Anonymous Asks (330)

“Was Jesus a Palestinian?”

The word “Palestine” has an interesting etymology. It appears five centuries before Christ in the secular history of the Greek Herodotus as Palaistínē [Παλαιστίνη]. The similarities to our modern noun are obvious. The Greek word in turn derives from pᵊlištî, a Hebrew word that appears as early as Genesis.

Other ancient languages like Akkadian and Egyptian had similar constructions, so it’s probable Hebrew simply transliterated it from another local tongue as “Philistine”. To the Hebrews it meant “immigrant”, to the Egyptians “sea people”.

Anonymous Asks (329)

“What is a post-Christian society?”

I remember first using the term “post-Christian” in the early 2000s. A Roman Catholic co-worker my own age with whom I shared a fair number of views about society was trying to pin down where and when Western culture began to slide into the abyss.

“Post-Christian” popped into my head as a good description of Canada in the new millennium. I probably picked it up from somebody else along the way, but it seemed apt.

Anonymous Asks (328)

“What does it mean to be baptized for the dead?”

The so-called Latter-day Saints or Mormons practice something they call proxy baptism, literally baptism for the dead. They believe individuals who have not been water baptized cannot enter the kingdom of God — “Even Jesus Christ himself was baptized,” they say — and so, under ecclesiastical supervision, members of their church will baptize a living person on behalf of the unbaptized dead. In doing so, they believe they are putting in place a critical component of God’s salvation requirements for those who can no longer do it for themselves, but would if they could.

The authority they claim for this practice is the apostle Paul and, more importantly in their view, an alleged revelation to the “prophet” Joseph Smith.

Anonymous Asks (326)

“What’s the difference between contentment and stoicism?”

I was recently thinking through how believers ought to deal with change. Denial is obviously not a Christian option, though it’s a very natural one. Intransigence is also generally unhelpful; there are situations in which no movement is good movement, but these are rare. Stoicism is a third common reaction to change, even among followers of Christ.

Oh, we wouldn’t call it that. Most of us haven’t read the stoics to know what they believed.

Anonymous Asks (324)

“Why should we restore a brother caught in a transgression in a ‘spirit of gentleness’?”

A gentle spirit is appropriate to restoration. Paul gives us one reason right in these first few verses of Galatians 6: Because you or I could so easily make the same error. “Keep watch on yourself, lest you too be tempted,” the apostle writes. He adds, “For if anyone thinks he is something, when he is nothing, he deceives himself.”

“That would never have happened to me” is dangerous thinking, and it makes you useless at the job of helping a fallen brother learn to stand again.

Anonymous Asks (323)

“What should be the focus of a Christian funeral?”

I always remember attending a Roman Catholic funeral at which a sobbing relative hurled herself on the casket, her howls of grief painfully and embarrassingly audible in an almost-empty room with high ceilings and a lot of stained glass. She probably lay there for less than a minute, but it seemed like forever.

I’ve never seen that sort of thing at an evangelical memorial, but you can never rule it out.

Anonymous Asks (322)

“Who is the ‘friend who sticks closer than a brother’?”

The line comes from a section of Proverbs attributed to King Solomon. Many Hebrew proverbs state a truism twice in slightly different words. Other times, the two statements contrast. Either way, the first line usually provides a clue to the interpretation of the second, or vice versa. In interpreting proverbs or poetry, I try to let whichever part is easiest to understand guide me through the bit that’s a little tougher.

In this case … hoo boy, good luck.

Anonymous Asks (321)

“I just graduated Bible college without finding a partner. Would taking a pastorate improve my prospects?”

Having only just graduated, and being presumably somewhere in your mid-twenties, if your primary concern is attracting women, I recommend starting a rock band. That’s a sure-fire profession for wannabe chick magnets. A pastorate, not so much.

Of course, if you can’t sing or write music, that’s a bit of a problem. Let’s work with your original suggestion a little.

Anonymous Asks (320)

“Is hell a literal lake of fire?”

For the average reader with limited Bible exposure, it’s probably useful to distinguish between hades, which is a holding place for the human dead prior to the final judgment, and hell [γέεννα, sometimes pronounced gehenna], also called the lake of fire, the final destination of the wicked dead, the place of permanent separation from God. Hell was not created for mankind at all, but for the devil and his angels. After man’s final judgment, death and hades will be thrown into the lake of fire for all eternity. This is called the “second death”.

Anonymous Asks (319)

“Where is the increase in anti-Jewish sentiment coming from, and how should Christians respond to it?”

It should be evident from the long history of worldwide antisemitism that there is no single, definitive answer to this question. “The Gazacaust”, as critics labeled the IDF’s siege of Palestine in the wake of the October 2023 Hamas attack on Israel, is just one more in a long line of excuses for virulent Jew-hate. Plenty of others exist. If they didn’t, dedicated enemies of Israel would simply make them up.

Anonymous Asks (318)

“Why isn’t the obvious obvious to everyone?”

This isn’t an actual question. It’s my way of summing up the confusion of a number of different friends and other Christians who are frustrated with their fellow believers. One is frustrated because his church keeps recognizing elders who do not qualify by the standards set out in Timothy and Titus. Another is frustrated because his Christian friends are contemplating not voting in November’s election, thus increasing the likelihood of a Democrat win. Another is incensed that none of the Christians who heaped online abuse on the vaccine-hesitant during COVID have ever apologized for the foolish, uninformed and unchristian things they said. Yet another is frustrated by a pastor who believes the unwillingness to use a gun to defend one’s wife from rape is a biblical virtue.

Each sees the obvious and cannot understand why others don’t. The result is a potential breakdown in fellowship between believers.

Anonymous Asks (317)

“What does it mean that there is ‘one baptism’?”

I can see how this expression might confuse a new Christian. Technically, there is not “one baptism” in scripture; there are many. I read somewhere once that there are seven.

That would be a neat thing ... if true.

In fact, let’s count and see.

Anonymous Asks (316)

“Is it important to know Greek and Hebrew when studying the Bible?”

My father used to caution us to beware of “little Greeks”. Seminary students know a little Greek in about the same way I know “a little French” because I studied it for five years in high school. If I went to Quebec today, I wouldn’t dare utter a word of it. Around any genuine expert, my paucity of actual language knowledge would be laughable.

Anonymous Asks (315)

“Why does God test us?”

Regardless of your personal beliefs about the origin of man, it’s evident bad things happen to good people. The difference between a Christian worldview and a naturalistic one is that the latter offers no explanation for suffering and unpleasant choices beyond the luck of the draw. If randomness rules, then these serve no higher purpose than weeding out the weak. If God does, then perhaps misery has meaning.

I could offer all kinds of anecdotes and speculations in response to a question like this, but it’s one that scripture answers in plain language very early on. Who needs my opinion when we can read the words of the Holy Spirit through men like Moses and Job?

Anonymous Asks (314)

“Is it wrong for a woman to propose marriage to a man?”

Funny story, or maybe not. When I tried to generate a suitable picture to accompany this post, I made 25 attempts with my usual AI tool to show a woman proposing to a man. Eventually, I gave up. No combination of carefully worded prompts could induce the algorithm to produce anything but the most traditional image of a man on one knee holding a ring. I could get the woman to change positions, but I could not get the man to stand up and appear to be the object of feminine desire. Every one of the terabytes of data to which this tool has access was telling it I couldn’t possibly want what I appeared to be wanting.

I had an easier time generating an image of Israel being nuked. Hmm. Maybe we can learn something from that.

Anonymous Asks (313)

“Is there any way the new heavens and new earth could be happening now?”

The idea that the new heavens and new earth prophesied in scripture exist today “in seed form” is a concept embraced by a subset of the post-millennialist prophetic school. They would say this seed “grows and spreads and becomes more and more manifest until it finally culminates in the Final Coming of Christ, which introduces the Eternal State”.

I feel like that’s a major stretch.

Anonymous Asks (312)

“What does it mean to take communion unworthily?”

Today’s question comes from 1 Corinthians 11:27, which reads, “Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty concerning the body and blood of the Lord.”

Anonymous Asks (311)

“Why are Christians homophobic?”

Homophobia is a ridiculous pejorative that applies literally to almost no Christians in the real world. It fails miserably as language, in that if it means anything at all, it means “fear of that which is the same”. The term is a convenient way to deflect arguments that address the dangers and evils of a lifestyle that exalts sodomy. I do not use it.

That said, if you don’t celebrate perversion, anyone who inquires why that might be will probably use the word, so we may as well formulate an answer for them.

Anonymous Asks (310)

“What does it mean to ‘call upon’ the Lord?”

The expression “to call upon” the Lord sounds admittedly archaic today. We don’t talk about calling upon the doctor, the lawyer or the bankruptcy trustee.

With reference specifically to God, the words “call upon” are a translation of the Hebrew qārā' or qārā' šēm, which means to address by name, to single out or identify. The first time the phrase appears in scripture is in Genesis 4, where the statement is made, “At that time people began to call upon the name of the Lord.”

What time was that? So glad you asked.

Anonymous Asks (309)

“Why did God punish David and Bathsheba’s innocent child with death?”

I came across this question at the GotQuestions website and was curious how they would answer, as it’s something I’ve reflected on at length. It’s a reference to the events of 2 Samuel 12, in which God afflicts the bastard child Uriah’s wife bore to David, who subsequently dies of the illness much to David’s sorrow.

The sad death of comparative innocents is one of the more perplexing mysteries we ever encounter, and the GQ writers usually offer solid, biblical answers to difficult inquiries. Moreover, scripture doesn’t tell us God’s motivation in this instance, it simply tells us what happened, which means the writer of the post was obliged to conjecture.

Anonymous Asks (308)

“In a theocracy such as the Christian Nationalist movement would like to see established, what would be the most biblical way to treat people with non-Christian religious beliefs?”

I’m never a huge fan of hypotheticals, and this is a big one. Notwithstanding the efforts of our postmillennialist friends, I believe the next (pseudo-) theocracy we’re going to see on this planet will be global beast-worship, to be followed shortly by the glorious millennial kingdom of the Lord Jesus, who will not require my advice about how to administer justice.

Anonymous Asks (307)

“Why are there so many atheists in the world?”

The impression that the world is full of atheists is actually quite false. It has several causes, not least the vocal efforts of a small minority of “true unbelievers” to keep their hobbyhorse in the public eye and to blame religion for every feature of the world they dislike. The high profile of men like Stephen Fry, Bertrand Russell and Richard Dawkins leaves many with the impression their beliefs are scientific and their numbers statistically significant. That is simply wrong.

Anonymous Asks (306)

“Is it really possible to be overly righteous or too wise?”

New Christians may be inclined to exclaim, “Of course not!” How could one have too much of a good thing? But those who have read the complete works of King Solomon may find the wording of this question familiar. He speaks of both.

Anonymous Asks (305)

“Does the Bible predict an EMP attack?”

Early on a Friday in mid-April this year, Israel allegedly attempted a missile strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities. News services documented multiple explosions, and some reported a successful strike. The Iranians claimed their high tech air defenses had done the job for which they were designed, and that whatever the Israelis had launched in their direction had been summarily shot down. End of story, for now at least.

The comparatively small scale of the attack prompted internet speculation about an EMP.

Anonymous Asks (304)

“Are some words better than others when describing people who are not Christians?

I recently had a fellow believer give me a thirty-second lecture about my use of the word “unsaved”. He was technically correct in the sense that, of all the English translations currently available, that word appears only in The Amplified Bible. To the extent that I was using an extra-biblical term, he had a point, though I’m not sure his preference was better in all contexts.

But some words are indeed better than others. Let us consider …

Anonymous Asks (303)

“What does it mean to be spiritually dead?”

Let’s start with the fact that scripture doesn’t use the phrase “spiritually dead”. Not once. Spiritual death is a concept we’ve derived from the word of God, but it is not the language of the Bible. First, then, we need to figure out what “spiritually” means as the Bible uses it.

Anonymous Asks (302)

“How should parents who are divorcing/separating deal with child custody issues?”

How does one do a bad thing in the best possible way? This the dilemma for divorcing Christians. Finding the will of God in one area of your life when you are already rejecting the revealed will of God in another area is always going to be a losing battle. The Lord never intended Christians to divorce, and his word does not provide a great deal of direct guidance to those in the process of demonstrating they don’t want it.

The best we can do is derive some general principles from scripture about behavior patterns that are always good, and leave it at that.

Anonymous Asks (301)

“What causes church splits?”

Let’s start with this proposition: God is gracious, and may continue to bless the efforts of his people even when they make mistakes, often in spite of them. But I think we can safely say the Lord is never behind factionalism. Even Martin Luther worked to reform Roman Catholicism from within for fifteen years before settling for the alternative.

In short, there is no such thing as a good church split. Some other outcome is always preferable, and something irreplaceable is lost in every fracture of a local testimony.

Anonymous Asks (300)

“What does ‘I shall not want’ mean?”

This famous line from Psalm 23 has been translated many different ways, from the NIV’s “I lack nothing” to the NLT’s “I have all that I need” to the CEV’s “I will never be in need.” Most translations follow the traditional KJV rendering, if for no other reason than that generations are familiar and comfortable with it.

It should be evident this is not always true in the most literal sense that we might take it.

Anonymous Asks (298)

“Does the Bible support the pre-existence of Jesus?”

I love trick questions. I don’t suppose the author of today’s intended it to be tricky, but it’s tricky all the same. It’s much like the line I read some years ago in Catholic Answers about levirate marriage being an “ancient Jewish law” at the time of Onan. The only part they got right was that the custom was ancient: the word “Jew” would not come into popular usage for another millennium or thereabouts, and even the Law of Moses was still four hundred years away.

So this is going to sound like niggling, or a distinction without a difference, but it’s really not. The phrase “the pre-existence of Jesus” enables us to unpack a rather important truth.

Anonymous Asks (297)

“What does it mean to test the spirits?”

When Paul wrote to the Thessalonians not to despise prophecies but to “test everything; hold fast what is good”, it was around the middle of the first century in one of the first books of the New Testament committed to parchment. The infant church was still in its initial growth spurt, most of the second half of our Bibles was still unwritten, and God spoke frequently through Christian prophets when the Old Testament was insufficient to meet the spiritual needs of gathered believers and provide them with necessary direction from the Head of the Church.

Because prophecy was so frequent, false prophecy was also frequent, so it was necessary to determine when God was really speaking and when he was not.

Anonymous Asks (296)

“What should I do when falsely accused?”

Accusations have never been easier to spread than in the internet age. They can ruin careers, drive their victims into bankruptcy and affect the lives of family members, friends and associates in extremely unpleasant ways. Even when true, accusations are often hurled willy-nilly and frequently prosecuted with nothing remotely resembling due process or compelling evidence.

When false, you have real worst-case scenario. Good luck proving your innocence.

Anonymous Asks (295)

“Should churches be seeker sensitive?”

A few weeks ago, I went to a church I’d never attended before. I took a couple of friends, one of whom is searching for meaning in her life and finally considering the possibility that her problems may have a spiritual component. From my perspective, the main attraction of this particular church was that it was close to her home and the online statement of faith looked orthodox.

The perfect is the enemy of the good and all that, right? I just wanted to get her there, and get her some spiritual food.

Anonymous Asks (294)

“Should I join an accountability group?”

Jeremy Myers says accountability groups fail miserably in that they “force” members to lie. His sexual temptation accountability group fell apart when police arrested a fellow member and successfully prosecuted him for molestation. Naturally, his attraction to minors had never come up once in all the group’s conversations about lust.

Understandable? I think so. I mean, would you talk about it? I wouldn’t. I’d spend all my energy trying not to even think about it.

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.

Anonymous Asks (292)

“Why are there so many Christian interpretations?”

Knowledge is fundamentally divisive. The moment any of us determines to “get to the bottom” of this or that subject, he begins to depart from the popular narrative about it. One possibility is that he gets labeled a conspiracy theorist and marginalized by society. Another is that he becomes an expert and people start turning to him for advice.

Any exposure to increased information, true or false, creates divisions.

Anonymous Asks (291)

“How should a Christian respond to being in a loveless marriage?”

People have different personalities and experiences, as well as different levels of character development and maturity, so it should not come as a surprise that we enter married life looking for different things. In general, men are looking for respect from their wives, and women are looking for love from their husbands.

I am getting that from a couple of places.

Anonymous Asks (290)

“What does it mean that the Holy Spirit will guide you into all truth?”

The Lord Jesus promised his disciples that when the Spirit of truth came, the Helper from the Father who would convict the world of sin, righteousness and judgment, he would guide them into “all truth”.

Before we look into the meaning of this promise, we need to remember that every member of the Lord’s audience at the discourse that began in the upper room was in a unique and impossible-to-duplicate position.

Anonymous Asks (289)

“How can we know the Holy Spirit is present with us when nobody is expressing strong feelings?”

Some Christians — often women, let’s be honest — evaluate the spiritual temperature of a religious gathering by its perceived emotional intensity; by whether participants spring a leak while praying, singing or sharing their thoughts. If they had their way, there would be a box of Kleenex in every pew and we would take our spiritual temperature by how often they need replacement.

Is this actually a biblical idea?

Anonymous Asks (288)

“When does grief become excessive?”

Grief is appropriate in a fallen world. The Lord Jesus taught that those who mourn are blessed, and will be comforted, and that the poor in spirit will inherit the kingdom of heaven. Scripture teaches that God himself may be grieved by the sins of his children.

Anonymous Asks (287)

“I know the Bible says we’re not supposed to depend on our feelings, but sometimes, honestly, it gets hard to feel my faith. Any thoughts?”

Feelings? Yes, they’re tricky things. You’re right to wonder about whether it’s not just a little too optimistic to simply suppose Christians never ought to feel down. We all have moments in life when things are not just a little dark, but really, really dark. What’s interesting, though, is that the writers of the Bible are far from unaware of this.

Anonymous Asks (286)

“Should Christians in democracies feel obligated to vote?”

Voting is not mandatory. Depending on how you think about it, voting can be anything from a privilege to a perceived civic duty, or even an exercise in futility.

Let me give you an example of the latter. In Canada, a “riding” is an electoral district with fixed boundaries rarely adjusted by the reigning Powers That Be unless it favors their party’s re-election chances.

Anonymous Asks (285)

“Why would God release Satan after 1,000 years?”

Any answer to a “why” that is not clearly spelled out in the text of scripture itself is bound to be somewhat speculative, but it seems to me that the text of Revelation 20 does indeed give us a few clues with which to formulate a reasonable suggestion.