Help! They Changed My Bible!

Bible translations have a way of changing over time, and it can make some Christians quite frantic.

Textual criticism is a discipline about which many believers know very little. The average regular churchgoer can probably tell you that the Bible was written primarily in Greek and Hebrew, not English (and the average reasonably intelligent person might simply assume it), but beyond that basic piece of information, how our Bibles came to us is not all that widely understood.

Given the quality of history courses in the average high school since 1970, fewer still know that when we speak of “the originals”, they are not sitting in some airless, climate-controlled museum display case. Would they be shocked to discover such manuscripts no longer exist and have not existed for centuries? Probably not, with a few seconds consideration.

But no, they don’t exist so far as we know. Some people are fine with that idea.

Crazy Uncle

Normally, I’d leave something like this alone. It is, after all, the Huffington Post, and anything they have to say on the subject of Christianity is almost guaranteed to be dismissive, frivolous and poorly informed.

But hey, it provides a useful lead-in to something I’ve been thinking about for a while.

In an article entitled “3 Reasons Why Apostle Paul Is the Crazy Uncle No One Wants to Talk About”, Pete Enns argues that “Paul’s handling of his Bible makes him look like the crazy uncle you make excuses for or avoid entirely”.

Too Hot to Handle: Let’s Make Sure They Hate Us Enough

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Vain Salvation

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Too Much for Sunday School

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“My Church Believes …”

What does your church believe?

“Oh, you mean like a creed, or a statement of faith?”

Not really. I’m thinking more generally. A statement of faith usually attempts to be concise, whether it’s eleven paragraphs or seven pages. It may cover only basic theology or it may go into detail about home life and personal conduct. But it cannot possibly include everything the New Testament teaches. It cannot tell you all that a church really believes, though it may set off spiritual alarm bells by what it does or does not contain.

Doing It the Hard Way

The Wailing Wall: Last vestige of Herod’s temple

How much does the church matter to the Lord?

When we look at the condition of most local churches today and compare them to Christ’s original intention as laid out in the epistles and patterned for us by believers in the first century, we might well wonder why the Lord continues to bother with the church at all.

Most of us do not really understand why we’re here and what we’re supposed to be doing. Great numbers of professing Christians atrophy in the pews, putting in an hour or two a week listening to a lecture and going home to a largely secular existence into which God is only allowed to intrude when things have gone disastrously wrong.

Failure to Choose is a Choice Too

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Fulfilling or Destroying

A couple of days ago I posted some thoughts on the place of the Law of Moses in the life of the Christian.

Most Christians who have read Romans or Galatians understand that we are not under law but under grace. However, because the teaching of the Lord Jesus is traditionally bundled with our New Testament, some believers have difficulty recognizing that things like the Sermon on the Mount are really addressed to people living under and seeking to obey the rules of the Old Covenant.

Confusion on this subject leads to inconsistent interpretation and maybe even inconsistent living. It’s worth a careful and prayerful look.

Too Hot to Handle: Diluting the Faith

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Progressive Revelation and Paradigm Shifts

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Authentic Me

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Forgive or Die

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Dispensing With Dispensations

If you are the average, practical Christian just looking to apply practical Christian principles practically to your life, feel free to tune out here.

This post will not help you much.

If, on the other hand, you are keen on understanding the whys and wherefores in scripture, being able to make distinctions in the way God has behaved towards mankind throughout history has helped me tremendously, and has made a lot of things clear that would otherwise be terribly foggy. I’ll give you a very real-life example of that tomorrow.

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William Lane Craig has one of the better-reasoned takes I have come across on the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision in Obergefell v. Hodges that has redefined marriage.

Like Roe v. Wade, this is a seismic event for the U.S. and the consequences for Christians who seek to follow scripture will be significant. Craig’s analysis and advice to believers is eminently more sensible than David Brooks’ column in last week’s New York Times, which may as well have been entitled “Resistance is Futile”. (My thoughts on Brooks’ advice may be found here.)

Enemy Territory

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Too Hot to Handle: American Laodicea

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Ezekiel and the Future of Palestine

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It Ain’t Personal

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Culture War and Surrender

Someone recently recommended this David Brooks column in the New York Times as the “correct true Christian response” to the ongoing culture war.

For those unfamiliar with the name, Wikipedia refers to Brooks as a “non-observant” Jew and “conservative political and cultural commentator” — in other words, not exactly a leading spokesman for the Christian faith. Having read his op-eds on occasion, I was pretty sure what I’d be in for.

Still, my morbid curiosity won out, as it often does. Brooks starts with the obvious: the decline of Christianity in the United States, the decreasing percentage of the electorate made up of evangelical voters, millennial disinterest in institutional religion, etc., etc.

Short version: “Christians, you’re losing”.

You Worship WHAT?

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Media and the Gospel

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A Hill to Die On

Lately I have begun to suspect that the notorious “mark of the beast” is not a literal number 666 tattooed on one’s forehead or hand, but rather an ideology.

Kidding, of course. I know full well that the social justice grievance mongers currently monopolizing the media with their view of the ideal society are not the fulfillment of New Testament prophecy.

You know the prophecy I mean. It’s made its way into popular culture.

Too Hot to Handle: Spirit and Truth

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The Change Is Gonna Do Us Good

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Binary Thinking

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Inbox: Cultural Shenanigans

The role of women in the church is one of those topics that I’ve spent little time examining in this forum for various personal reasons.

But you may remember that despite my general enthusiasm expressed a few weeks back for Frank Viola’s “reimagination” of the church in all its various aspects, I found myself unable to get on board with all his views in the area of church authority and decision-making, and also expressed concerns about what I suspected might be Viola’s view of the role of women in the church (though in the pages of Reimagining Church, he never quite spells it out).

Other than that, I love much of what he has to say.

“I Have a Right ...”

This generation is all about its rights. And indeed, the 1982 Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms sets out a bunch of them: the right to vote, the right to life, liberty and security of the person, the right to legal counsel, the right to an interpreter, the right to equal treatment before and under the law and so on — as did the Canadian Bill of Rights before it.

People seem to love making these things official.

Minding Our Own Business

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Too Hot to Handle: Unsanctioned “Churches”

In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.

I just came across a blog entry by a Christian fellow named Danny Eason. 

Danny had this silly idea of inviting a bunch of random (I believe his own description is “ragamuffin”) believers into his home for “Coffee and Jesus”. He describes their get-togethers like this:

“... fellowship, studying the Word (we’re walking through Ephesians), corporate confession and prayer, and worship through song. The time together is incredibly relaxed with no official format.”

That and, oh yeah, “Breaking of Bread”.

Tom: Well, Immanuel Can, maybe you can tell me: How can we put a stop to this sort of thing? I mean, it hasn’t been approved!

Who’s Afraid of Science?

[Originally presented February 1, 2014]

I often refer to Wikipedia, that unassailable bastion of compiled wisdom, not because I believe it to be particularly accurate, but because it provides as good an understanding of how people currently use language as can possibly be obtained. A Wikipedia definition is the gold standard for lowest common denominator human knowledge. So while it may not represent what everyone down through human history understood by the term “science”, let’s give their definition a browse:

“Science (from Latin scientia, meaning ‘knowledge’) is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe.”

Sounds reasonable, no? So let’s get some things clear here:

Vessels of Another Sort

[Originally presented February 1, 2015]

Stephen Fry alleges that of all languages English “has the largest vocabulary … by a long, long, long, long way”. The language columnist of The Economist disagrees, or at least provides sound reasons why Fry may not be correct.

Regardless, there are only so many available words in any given language, and sometimes a writer of scripture elects to use similar language to describe vastly different spiritual scenarios.

In such instances, studies that depend on exhaustive investigation of the etymology of similar words are less useful than those that explore the context of each usage.

In short, dictionaries will not help anywhere near as much as meditation.

The Limits of Toleration

[Originally presented February 14, 2014]

“When He entered the temple, the chief priests and the elders of the people came to Him while He was teaching, and said, ‘By what authority are You doing these things, and who gave You this authority?’ ”

“And Jesus came up and spoke to them, saying, ‘All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.’ ”

We live in a society that enshrines “tolerance” as its highest virtue. At least, it thinks it does.

But it’s a weird conception of tolerance. Modern “tolerance” has less to do with allowing people the right to free choice, and more to do with pretending that you actually approve of and admire all their choices — whatever they may be. You’re never to contradict anyone, tell them they’re wrong or that what they’re doing is bad; no matter what, you’re to smile and pretend it’s all sunshine and roses.

But this change is quite recent.

Debunking Heavenly Mythology II: Saint Peter and the Pearly Gates

[Originally presented March 25, 2014]

In a previous post I spent a few hundred keystrokes on the things of heaven, trying to point out how very ill-equipped the best of us is to fully comprehend them, even with the aid of the imagery of Scripture, since “no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him”.

But our inability to fully apprehend everything about heavenly things is not a license to manufacture any old view of heaven wholesale. The only reliable source of knowledge about things outside current human experience is the word of God itself.

How Depraved Can We Be?

[Originally presented April 24, 2014]

That’s a good question.

Our society is clearly messed up. It can be sick enough to think that promiscuity is normal, debauchery is freedom, and that homosexuality is love. It can be twisted enough to call killing the elderly “dignity” and butchering infants in utero “choice”. Morally, things look pretty bad.

That’s what the dictionary definition of “depraved” is. It means “very morally bad”.

Opting Out

It seems to me there are more than a few Christians out there looking for God to give them a personal pass on many of the hard things entailed in being a true follower of Christ.

I’m not looking down on this crowd from any position of superiority: I’m one of them through and through. But a careful reading of the New Testament explains to us why it should not be so. The Christian life was never intended to be a cakewalk. In fact, the Lord Jesus plainly told his followers to have peace in the face of the reality that in the world we will have tribulation.

Then, having set what seems to us an intolerable standard of self-abnegation and perfection of character, he immediately met and vastly exceeded it. Having told us the world was our enemy, he went right out and overcame it.

There was no “pass” to be had for the Son of Man.    

Too Hot to Handle: Atheists in Foxholes

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Dear Preacher: On Calvinism and Pride

Dear Preacher Bob:

[Originally presented March 26, 2014]

This isn’t a complaint, just a reflection. My point is not to object, but rather to expand the range of possible answers to a question you raised a couple of weeks back. Would you bear with me while I do that?

You gave a message on the subject “The Sovereignty of God”. I agree that this is an essential topic and for the most part, I found myself rejoicing in your take on it.

Yet I must confess that there was a moment or two in which I found myself hesitant — moments when the language you chose seemed to take the teaching about God’s sovereignty in the direction of what is called in theology “Neo-Calvinism”, and which philosophers call “Hard Determinism” — namely, the view that human freedom is an illusion, and all events are preset by God before they happen. And thus having merged “sovereignty” more-or-less with the interpretation of Neo-Calvinism, you then concluded with the following …

You said, “As far as I can see, the only reason for not believing in it is pride”.

The purpose of this letter is simply to suggest some different ways of seeing things.

The End of Evangelism

[Originally presented March 10, 2015]

There is general fear being widely expressed among evangelicals today that we are not reaching people the way we used to. Certainly the numbers of people in the modern West who are becoming Christians seems to be slumping, and a lot of us are a bit nervous about the trend.

Is the Age of Evangelism Ending?

According to Bible.org, one problem is that the professional clergy people and leaders are not stepping up, and that church ministries and programs are not going out to reach people. Meanwhile, The Evangelism Institute has found that while 85% of evangelical churches have a pro-evangelism statement in their constitution, less than 5% of the people are actually involved in doing something with it. All these worriers are agreed that Christians do still have a message worth getting out to the world, but for some reason we’re just not getting it out. So while this may not yet be the end of the church, it’s starting to look like it’s the end times for outreach, for evangelism, for the gospel.

Repent or Perish

[Originally presented July 12, 2014]

Most people understand (or intuit) as they read a Bible that its chapter and verse divisions are choices made by translators or copyists. They may be good choices or bad ones, but they are not part of the revelation of God. They are not ‘inspired’ in the sense the Word itself is.

Usually they are pretty decent. However, I probably would’ve broken up the Lord’s speech in Luke 12 and 13 a little differently.

Just saying.

Scientific Materialism and the Good Wife

[Originally presented April 15, 2014]

Popular culture is an ocean of leftist muck, propaganda and uncritical thinking.

Still, there are rare occasions when you run across something so thought-provoking and strikingly out of place in its lucidity that you just can’t believe it’s actually on TV.

It is sadly common these days to leave entirely unexamined the real life implications of one’s philosophical and religious beliefs, or the lack thereof.

There are about 100 comments that come to mind about the following scene, but maybe I’ll just let it speak for itself.

Courtroom drama from The Good Wife:

Alicia: When we left off, Professor, you said you believed in right and wrong, and that it was wrong to hurt people. Professor?

Promiscuous Freedom and Enslavement

“… promising them freedom while they themselves are slaves of corruption …”

[Originally presented April 11, 2014]

Imagine yourself sitting in the center row of a darkened theatre, in an evening performance of a show entitled Cabaret. Tonight’s offering is a musical, and yet it is a musical unlike most others. It’s almost entirely devoid of the kind of cheerfulness that is usually associated with that particular genre, focusing as it does on the excesses of the Weimar Republic in the days just before the outbreak of World War II. Such humor as the play has is heavily ironic, filled with innuendo, and ultimately black.

As you may recall, the government of the Weimar Republic was a notorious failure. Beset by massively complex political challenges, splintered by factions, weighed down with incompetence and undermined by corruption, the Weimar administration dragged Germany through a period of widespread economic, social and political debasement. This debasement was felt on many levels, from the heads of state all the way down to the social conditions and private lives of the citizens. Cabaret revels in some of the more unsavoury aspects of this society, which became truly sick with sin. Using the metaphor of the infamous cabaret shows of the ’30s, the play follows one society’s decline into unrestrained individualism, indulgence and debauchery.

In the two hours in which you have been in the theatre you have been dragged through the bowels of German interbellum night-life.

Inbox: Dawkins and Calvin Go to Hell

Or not. Tertius writes:

“Our Lord spoke three parables in Luke 15. They form His three-pronged answer to the criticism, ‘this man receiveth sinners and eats with them’ found at the end of the previous chapter. Jesus protests that anything lost (a sheep, a coin, or a son) evokes grief but the finding of them calls for celebration. I have heard subpoints of teaching made from the illustration of the two sons which miss that emphasis and I remember a discussion as to whether the prodigal was a lost sinner or a backslidden Christian!”

Tom Takes a Breather

You’re currently reading our 568th consecutive daily blog post since December 2013.

Whew! That’s a lot of writing. Too much, some might say. We’ve done a little recycling of older material now and again when surprised by life, but by my count that only represents a little over 3% of our output.

I’m going to take a couple of weeks to recharge the batteries and work on a few pieces without an immediate deadline looming. We’ll hope to have new posts for you next Saturday and Sunday (the regular Too Hot to Handle exchange between me and Immanuel Can moves to Saturday instead of Friday for two weeks only).

That’s so we can use our next ten weekdays to count down ...

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Fatal Friends: Dawkins and Calvin

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Too Hot to Handle: Snakes, Mistakes and Better Takes

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Quote of the Day (5)

Last week, Tertius and I discussed the first chapter of Romans, comparing its language to statements about faith in Hebrews. Specifically, we were interested in how much about God may be known from nature, and how that knowledge is different from what may be known by faith.

Paul says in Romans, “For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made.”

Tertius and I agree that “eternal power and divine nature” takes in quite a bit.

Between Boredom and Bedlam

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The Power of Two

How do we make decisions in the church? What is the teaching of the New Testament?

In his book Reimagining Church, Frank Viola contends that the normal method of making major decisions in the church is by consensus, not just of leadership but of every believer in a local church. (You can find my review here.)

He uses the council at Jerusalem in Acts 15 as his sole scriptural evidence.

Reimagining Decision-Making

How does your church go about making decisions?

Perhaps you don’t actually know. In very large churches, the process of deciding what is going to be done may be quite opaque to those who meet there. Where there is a very distinct hierarchy in place, perhaps decisions are made unilaterally, or maybe they are initiated by a ‘head pastor’ or equivalent and signed off on by a board or council of elders. Then again, maybe they are arrived at by discussion among elders and presented fait accompli to the congregation. Or perhaps opinions are solicited and discussed, and a decision is later made with the promise that “all voices have been heard and all opinions considered”.

Maybe there are lots of ugly politics involved that nobody really wants to talk about. I don’t know your church, so I won’t presume.

Reimagining Church

I wouldn’t normally be the type to start writing a positive review before completely finishing a book, but I’ve been enjoying Frank Viola’s Reimagining Church: Pursuing the Dream of Organic Christianity immensely.

Viola is not merely a theorist. In 1988, he left what he calls “institutional Christianity” and began meeting in “organic churches”.

Organic churches are not the latest vegan trend. They are local gatherings mapped to what we read in the New Testament. They seek to practice Christianity as it was practiced in the first century, minus any details that were merely a product of the culture(s) in which the early church grew and thrived. The result is a church that, at least on paper, seems both relevant and authentically “New Testament” in ways I’ve never seen before.

What Sort of Heart?

This quote has stuck with me over the past couple of weeks, maybe because it is not just those who would like the Bible to teach universal salvation that see this type of thinking as the ultimate expression of moral goodness:

“What sort of a heart could approve of eternal death for some? The doctrine of Universal Salvation teaches that all will have eternal life, including Satan and the demons. And that one day, all will have the same nature as God. What sort of a heart could not approve of Universal Salvation, eternal life for all?”

It boils down to this: anyone who wouldn’t grant eternal bliss, joy, happiness and God-likeness to Satan, Hitler, Stalin and every liar and murderer in human history that hates and rejects the Son of God is, well ... insufficiently morally developed.

Too Hot to Handle: Hmm … What Should I Wear to Church Today?

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Keeping It Relevant

Is this old enough for you?

In a previous post, I set out the evidence from scripture that elders ought to be, well ... older.

Bit of a disappointment, I know. It is the nature of our society to obsess over youth: to make a big deal of energy, enthusiasm and an absence of wrinkles.

That’s actually a pretty modern quirk. Societies all over the world used to have great respect for the wisdom that comes with age, even though such sagacity was rarely accompanied by a six-pack or a pretty face.

No more. We’re so happy to see young people contribute in our churches that even if what they offer is mediocre and half-hearted, we’re pole-vaulting over each other with joy and pronouncing them the next big thing.

Almost always to their detriment, and ours.

Get the Message

“I am the Lord.”

That’s Ezekiel summed up in four words.

God has a point he wishes to make, and we are wise to hear it in a day when most recognize no final authority beyond their own opinions, prejudices and desires.

The phrase “they will know” (or “you will know”) that “I am the Lord” occurs 72 times in Ezekiel. Only 11 of its first 39 chapters don’t have it. It’s the bottom line to every declaration God makes to his people through the prophet. It’s a message we need to internalize at the very core of our beings. Until that happens, we do not really understand our place in the universe.

Without it, our assessment of reality is warped and disproportionate. We think it’s all about us.

The Sound of Salesmen

The above line comes from a couplet in a Rush song called “Spirit of Radio”, one of the few classic rock tunes I could stomach during my post-punk phase. Neil Peart’s lyric goes like this:

“For the words of the profits were written on the studio wall;

Concert hall echoes with the sound of salesmen.”

It’s actually a rather ironic subversion of Paul Simon’s words in “Sound of Silence”, but that is neither here nor there. Peart once said, “The Spirit of Radio was actually written as a tribute to all that was good about radio, celebrating my appreciation of magical moments I’d had since childhood, of hearing ‘the right song at the right time.’ ” What Peart didn’t say is that it’s a wistful tribute: it ends in his disappointment with the ubiquity of commercialism.

I had a “Spirit of Radio” moment in church the other night.

Blink and You’ll Miss It

The “Rapture”, I mean.

Or maybe the Judgment of the Sheep and Goats. Or both.

Has the Church failed to notice the return of Christ to earth to judge the nations?

Or more specifically, did his prophesied return actually take place in AD 70 when, under Titus, the Romans laid siege to Jerusalem, eventually conquering the city and sacking the temple, thereby fulfilling the word of the Lord about it that “not one stone will be left upon another”?

Some Christians certainly think so.

Elders Are Older

... though not necessarily THIS old.

I recently participated in an online discussion on the subject of elders that generated a significant number of responses. Some of these were more on point than others, but there was enough muddling of the issues, inadvertent straw-manning and anecdotal meandering to make me feel that it’s worthwhile addressing at least one aspect of the qualifications for elders that we find in scripture.

That aspect is age: Elders are older.

Sorry, that’s my understanding of New Testament teaching. It is, evidently, not the understanding of many of my fellow believers.

Defining Terms

One problem with online debates is the tendency to talk past each other because we have not agreed on what we mean, so I’d like to be as clear as is possible.

Let’s Play ‘Spot the Agenda’

Daniel B. Wallace is a Bible scholar with a Ph.D. from Dallas Theological Seminary who has been teaching Greek at graduate school level since 1979. That’s just in case credentials matter to you.

In this article he attempts to referee a (very polite) disagreement between two other equally educated men about a verse in Ezekiel that I happened to read again this morning.

Everybody involved has an agenda.

Too Hot to Handle: Beatles Buddhism

The latest version of this post is available here.

This Ain’t Wrestling

With all due respect, I’m not convinced this’ll be terribly effective:

“If you are in need of more prayer than your schedule seems to allow, shoot me an email and our leadership team will pray for you by name. You don’t even have to write anything; just ask us to pray and we will.”

Paul Santhouse is VP of Publishing for Moody.

Ushering In Armageddon

It was probably Michael Ortiz Hill, author of 1994’s Dreaming the End of the World: Apocalypse As a Rite of Passage who started it with a comment in a January 2003 essay for the political newsletter CounterPunch.

Hill said of George W. Bush, “The man is delusional and the shape of his delusion is specifically apocalyptic in belief and intent”.

Twelve years down the road, conventional wisdom may have settled down a bit. The Bush legacy, so far as the mainstream media is concerned, may be that of a bit of a goofball, an accused liar, an incompetent or even the architect of multiple foreign policy disasters.

But what the Bush presidency demonstrably failed to do was to usher in Armageddon, if indeed that was ever his intention.

Power and Perfection

“My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”

This is not an incidental, one-off observation from God to the apostle Paul about his personal situation; it is a principle evident in God’s dealings with man from the very beginning.

A sociable, charismatic, intelligent and attractive person who is active in the service of God can be loads of fun to be around, but one can never tell whether he or she is winning over hearts with personal charm or by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Sinning Against Whom?

Most people know the story already.

King David, consumed by lust for Bathsheba, commits adultery with her while her husband Uriah is out fighting the Ammonites on David’s behalf. When Bathsheba informs David she is pregnant, the king contrives to hide the evidence of his sin by recalling Uriah from the battlefield in hope that he will sleep with his wife and believe the child his. But Uriah is a loyal servant of the crown and a patriot. He declines to go home to his wife and enjoy the benefits of peace and family while his nation is at war and his fellow soldiers still in danger.

Knowing discovery is certain, David then compounds his wickedness by ordering Joab, the commander of his armies, to put Uriah in the most dangerous possible position and allow him to be killed in battle. The plot succeeds, and after allowing her an appropriate period of mourning, David marries Bathsheba.

Done and dusted, as they say.

A Matter of Moral Indifference

The setup is this: in Capernaum, the collectors of the temple tax approach Simon Peter to ask if Jesus is in the habit of paying it.

Presumably, like the scribes, Pharisees and Sadducees, they are looking to catch the Lord out in some way. Or, like many officials, they are simply being officious. Or more charitably, perhaps they are merely doing their job.

In any case, Peter says “Yes”, the Lord pays the temple tax.

Why Are We So Easily Shaken?

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Too Hot to Handle: Reforming Islam

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You know how it goes: you find a blog or website you enjoy, with writers who grab your attention and content you can really sink your teeth into. You devour everything you can find in their archive, bookmark it and wait expectantly for more of the same.

Then ... nothing.

Okay, this may not be everybody’s experience; not everyone reads as voraciously as I do. But if you do, you recognize the creeping feeling of disappointment when something you like doesn’t appear predictably, when the quality becomes spotty or the posts are so short they don’t even merit a “[Read More]” link.

Circumstantial Evidence

You found and got approved for just the right apartment even though you weren’t exactly qualified. You were admitted to the internship program you really wanted. That girl you have your heart set on seems to be showing the character qualities you were hoping to find.

You prayed about all these things. Must be the Lord, right?

Maybe.

Quote of the Day (4)

One wonders exactly how long the present social order can sustain itself in North America.

If you believe the pollsters, public trust in government is at an all-time low, the influence of religion is waning, the wealth gap in America between middle-income and upper-income families is currently the widest on record, race relations are getting worse, families are falling behind on the cost of living and almost nobody believes what they read or see in the media anymore.

Accusations from Islamic leaders that America is corrupt are difficult to rebut when U.S. business analysts seriously contemplate whether America is as corrupt as the third world.

An Exercise in Moderation

Last Supper, Cologne Cathedral

A diversion: I happened the other day across a Tumblr discussion that batted around the issue of the age of the disciples.

This is a question I had never considered. I have a “default” picture in my mind, of course, as most semi-creative people tend to, probably comprised largely of impressions from classical art. Only three of Duccio’s apostles in The Farewell Discourse are clean shaven; the rest range from middle-aged to positively ancient. The disciples in Da Vinci’s ubiquitous Last Supper fare even worse: only two are without significant quantities of facial hair (and some argue that one of these, for reasons unclear, may have been intended to represent Mary Magdalene).

Short version: these guys look pretty weathered.

The Symbol Is Not the Point

The most recent version of this post is available here.

Flirting with Fatalism

I read a column this morning by popular Christian blogger Ben Corey in which he makes a spirited defense of his support for government programs to help the poor on the basis that Christians simply don’t given enough voluntarily to make a meaningful dent in poverty.

It’s an interesting argument, but it begs one obvious question.

What do we do when the poor can’t be helped?

Too Hot to Handle: The Unfair Advantage of a Loving Family

The most recent version of this post is available here.

Feeding the Dogs

Sometimes God is silent.

We've all experienced it. Looking for answers and receiving no immediate response. The absence of any sense of direction, often when a decision is urgently needed. A total lack of clarity. And all the comforting scriptures we quote to ourselves suddenly sound like clichés.

Those of us who have been believers for a few years may find ourselves taking our own spiritual inventory in an effort to diagnose the problem. Have I failed to confess sin? Am I perhaps asking selfishly rather than with the glory of God in mind? Am I lacking faith? Have I been persistently inconsiderate at home?

Could be, but not necessarily.

Human Nature Is What It Is

The false prophets condemned by God through Ezekiel are an interesting bunch — and not just because they were ancient, mysterious wise men believed by many to be heralds of truth when in fact they were spinning webs of lies that affected thousands.

No, they interest me because they remind me of people I know. Circumstances change. History moves on. But fallen human nature does not improve itself, even thousands of years later. Many of these false prophets could make a decent living today: as religious gurus, philosophers, authors and respected media figures.

And not all of them seemed aware that their pronouncements were untrue.

Getting Sucked In

As a Christian, how do you know when an argument is not worth getting sucked into?

The titular head of Roman Catholicism clearly doesn’t. Feminists, the media and the political Left (admittedly there is some redundancy in those categories) walked him right into five miles of social justice quicksand when he felt compelled recently to weigh in on the subject of equality.

Running is No Solution

You remember the line, I’m sure.

You’re a teenager and you’ve just gotten deeply invested in a relationship that you are convinced is the real deal. Everything is going swimmingly, and then he or she says those dreaded words:

“I think we need to take some time …”

The desire for time and space apart may be framed in all manner of imaginative ways: “I was on the rebound”, “It’s too soon”, “My parents don’t approve” or “I have to concentrate on school right now”. The inexperienced take it at face value, or at least try to. But those of us who have heard it before know exactly what it means.

It means you’re done.

Recommend-a-blog (8)

The book of Revelation is mysterious and more than a little daunting to many believers. Two common errors easily present themselves, and Mel Lawrenz identifies them.

I am completely unfamiliar with Mr. Lawrenz. Other than this single blog post at BibleGateway.com, I have not read anything he has written, so take the following for whatever it is worth.