Too Hot to Handle: Where the Grass is Greener

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

If there’s a single more common inter-generational issue in churches today, I can’t think of it right now:

“My kids want to go to that church down the road …”

Hoo boy.

Tom: I bet that church down the road has a worship team, Immanuel Can.

The Church Down the Road

Immanuel Can: It could be. They could also have a big youth group, a modern music program, and maybe a nice gym too. Or maybe not. I’m not sure those things are always the determining factor, but sometimes maybe they are. Should we care either way?

Two or Three Mistakes

“Where two or three are gathered …”

I’ve heard this little phrase quoted for years in churches all over the place. I’ve almost never heard it quoted correctly, meaning in its context and referring to the situations to which it actually applies.

When I’ve heard it quoted, almost invariably it is used to suggest that any local gathering of the church, no matter how small, is important enough to the Lord that he will, in some spiritual way, be present and involved with that situation. And really, I can’t say that isn’t true. But I can say for sure that that isn’t what this particular verse was given us to teach us.

Okay, Seriously Now…

Sunday’s ad hoc Easter post (lifted last minute from a reader-supplied YouTube link) implicitly asked a humorous question that I’d like to discuss a little more seriously this morning. That’s really why I posted it in the first place, not to poke fun at evangelical Easter celebrations. In a way, Monday’s Anonymous Asks raised much the same question in so many words: Why is modern Christendom so widely divided on so many points of theology? Should we be worried about it?

More importantly, is there something the Lord would want us to be doing about it?

As Basic as it Gets

Paul’s letter to Titus is full of commands to a young man acting as the apostle’s agent among the congregations in the towns of Crete; commands he intended Titus to pass on to new believers he hoped and prayed would grow in the faith and in godliness as the Lord intended. What should maturing faith look like at various ages and in different contexts? Titus received instructions for young and old, men and women, elders and children alike.

So we read words like “remind”, “teach”, “declare”, “urge” and even “rebuke”. Yes, there had to be a little bit of that too.

Anonymous Asks (351)

“If cessationism is true, then why does God seem to continue to work through Pentecostal churches?”

For anyone unfamiliar with the term, “cessationism” is the teaching that the Holy Spirit of God no longer gives some of the spiritual gifts he gave in the early days of the church, the most comprehensive lists of which may be found in Romans 12 and 1 Corinthians 12. Cessationists believe the Lord intended certain gifts only to operate in the churches for a short time until the fall of Jerusalem in AD70, and until the completion of the canon of scripture.

Anyway, you’re asking the right person. I happen to be a cessationist, though I don’t usually use the term. My reasons for believing certain gifts are no longer being given may be found here, here and here.

Amusing, in a Slightly Discouraging Way

This YouTube short posted by ConversationswithaCalvinist and uploaded just in time for Easter weekend captures … well, it captures something about the state of evangelicalism in 2025:

BAPTIST: All right, guys, I wanted to check in and see what everybody has planned for Easter weekend.

TORAH BROS: Well, last night, we celebrated our seder. All praise to Yahashua.

BAPTIST: Yaha- what now?

PENTECOSTAL: You guys heard that, he just spoke in tongues.

No King in Israel (4)

Verse 7 of Judges 3 will bring us to the next section of Judges, telling twelve stories of the judges God raised up to deliver Israel over the next fourteen chapters. But before we get to these tales, each with their own lessons, the writer or writers of Judges present us with a historical overview of the entire period, along with a preview of some of the enemies Israel will encounter in subsequent chapters as a result of its sins.

Running like a red thread through this era of spiritual decline is the mercy of God …

Too Hot to Handle: The Weight of Tradition

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

Years ago I would regularly come across stories of how this theologian or that one came out of Catholicism and now calls himself an evangelical Christian. More recently I notice some going the other way. Among the reasons usually given for embracing Rome is an emphasis on church history and tradition that doesn’t exist in the same way in Protestant gatherings. Roman Catholicism is thought to have “roots” that go back to the early church.

To seekers of this sort, the value of a church experience is measured by whether their faith community is convincingly in touch with its own past.

Just Church (23)

We’re in the final half of our final chapter in our thinking about Social Justice and the church. Last week, we were working through what the promoter of that ideology is likely to have caused, and what alternatives we have for dealing with her going forward.

It’s natural to think the thing to do is to “forgive and forget”, as the old axiom goes: we simply note the fault, say, “We forgive you”, and reinvite the contentious “nice lady” into the congregation without further delay. But this would be exceedingly dangerous, even disastrous; for unless her repentance is full, honest and genuine, then the deep motivations that led her to campaign for Social Justice ideology and to trade on the church to do it will remain. So we need to take full and fair inventory of what her faults and motives have really been, assess how complete her awareness of her sin is, and make sure she’s really been freed from what led her into it in the first place.

What If Jonathan Had Lived?

“… and the Philistines struck down Jonathan and Abinadab and Malchi-shua, the sons of Saul.”

Jonathan’s death was not as ignominious as the death of his father Saul, whose enemies summarily beheaded him, but his is not the storybook ending the reader expects for David’s most loyal friend and fiercest defender.

Parable Perplexity

Do you ever find yourself looking at a passage of scripture you’ve read a hundred times and realizing you never really processed it? I had one of those moments this morning in Mark 4 as I read and re-read what commentators refer to as “The Parable of the Seed Growing”. This short parable is unique to Mark’s gospel. Perhaps it is so easy to gloss over because it contains similar imagery to the parable of the sower in Matthew 13 (and earlier in this same chapter).

Or perhaps other people pay closer attention to detail that I do.

Anonymous Asks (350)

“Does an unmarried couple who have sex become married in God’s eyes?”

Some years ago, I had a late night phone call from an old friend to whom I hadn’t spoken in years. He was reviewing his relationship history. Many of these, frankly, had been sinful and ended in disappointment. The most recent was no exception. Despite professing to follow Christ, he has been initiating and falling into uncommitted sexual entanglements most of his life.

“I’ve been ‘one flesh’ with over thirty women,” he confessed. “Which relationship does God regard as ‘the one’?”

Four Whys

Mark structured what later became the second chapter of his gospel around four questions, all of which begin with the word “Why?” (The other synoptics contain much of the same material, but not within a single chapter.) Two of these queries came from scribes, a third from the Pharisees, and another from the people. As we might expect, three of the four were challenges to the Lord’s authority; the other may have been simple curiosity.

In one memorable instance, they never even got to ask the question. Jesus correctly discerned what they were thinking and answered it before they could express it.

No King in Israel (3)

A public appearance by the angel of the Lord in front of large numbers of people is quite exceptional. Indeed, for God to mete out justice personally to sinners during their lifetimes is also a comparatively rare event. A formal, exhaustive accounting for all the evil men have done awaits them at the end of their lives, as the book of Hebrews tells us. Under normal circumstances, that is where God judges sin.

All the same, throughout human history, God has necessarily overlooked much evil, or else all our lives would be very short ones. The divine standard is not to be applied to men until after death.

Too Hot to Handle: Golden Calf 2.0

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

It’s been years since I paid a great deal of attention to the charismatic movement, but David de Bruyn’s post on The Pentecostalization of Christian Worship at ReligiousAffections.org is a real eye-opener.

Tom: Mr. de Bruyn’s thesis is fairly simple: the current patterns of worship in the charismatic movement are not leading Christians within it anywhere good. Worse, these practices are catching on throughout the evangelical world. I’ve experienced them myself in my early twenties, but never really stopped to analyze the significant differences between the way charismatics engage in “worship”, and the historic patterns of worship across many other Christian traditions. Far more importantly, the charismatic approach differs radically from the patterns of worship we observe in the scriptures.

What did you think of the post, IC?

Immanuel Can: So many things … where shall we start?

Just Church (22)

Chapter 7: What to Do With ‘The Nice Lady’

“See to it that no one comes short of the grace of God; that no root of bitterness springing up causes trouble, and by it many become defiled.”

Bitterness.

The word literally means “acidity”, and refers in scripture to wicked covetousness or wicked resentment. It is associated with cursing and anger. A related adjective is used in James 3:14 of wicked jealousy. What’s clear is it speaks of bitter hatred against others felt to be justified by their advantages.

The result? The defilement of many. That means their being stained so as to be rendered unfit for sacred service. This angry, resentful spirit between Christians can defile them in their relationship with God. The writer to the Hebrews says we are vigilantly to watch over the congregation, and make sure this doesn’t happen.

Because it can. So easily. Especially today.

When Everything Goes Wrong

You’ve just made a major move, one you believe served the Lord’s interests while also having potential spiritual benefits for your family and other relationships. It wasn’t even a hard choice. Work opportunities had dried up locally and you’re too young to retire. All the churches where you lived are dead, dying, or riddled with theological peculiarities. Godly friends suggested a change of location might be the answer. Less-godly friends said you were crazy to leave. More local job opportunities fell through.

Then your landlady mentioned she wants to do a major reno on your apartment, an invasive process that might take weeks or months to complete. It was time. So you took a risk with a job opportunity several hundred miles away, packed up the car and found yourself a new place to unload your furniture, such as it is.

Semi-Random Musings (41)

At its leanest and meanest, the Reformed package requires some variant of Calvinism, plus Covenant Theology. Supersessionism and/or postmillennialism are often associated with these but are not, so far as I know, mandatory in order to call yourself Reformed. Some of these concepts fit together better than others; for example, supersessionism harmonizes quite naturally with CT. If there is only one covenant people through all the ages, it follows that someone has to be in and someone else has to be out.

Not all these theological components fit together quite so well as that pair.

Anonymous Asks (349)

“What’s wrong with ‘always learning’?”

Today’s question is about a description of life in the “last days” from Paul’s second letter to Timothy. It reads as follows:

“But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty. For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power. Avoid such people. For among them are those who creep into households and capture weak women, burdened with sins and led astray by various passions, always learning and never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth.”

That’s a long list of unpleasant character qualities and behaviors that were already appearing in the churches of God in Timothy’s time (the instruction to Timothy to “avoid such people” implies some of them were already around), and are increasingly present today.

Wagging the Dog

“It is not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.”

Trudy Smith of the Huffington Post asks, “Was Jesus racist?” Her answer, of course, is yes.

That’s hardly surprising. The HuffPost is the online poster-rag for the New American Left. In their exceedingly well-defined and ideologically-pristine PC world, even the Son of God takes the knee before the official progressive racial narrative.

No King in Israel (2)

The word šāpāṭ, frequently translated “judge”, appears 21 times in the Hebrew version of the book of Judges, beginning with the second chapter. It’s far from the first time the word occurs in scripture, also being present at least 30 times in the first six books of the Bible. The vast majority of this content almost surely dates earlier than Judges, establishing the meaning of the word for us as its initial readers understood it.

Too Hot to Handle: What Gives?

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

Once again, Christianity Today has the sort of article everybody who serves the Lord Jesus and loves the Body of Christ should be reading and thinking about. I don’t agree with everything they have to say by a long shot, but they regularly provide a starting point for serious discussion of major evangelical issues. Kudos to them for that.

Tom: In this particular piece they’re talking about missions and what makes that whole thing tick. Immanuel Can, did you find anything CT had to say interesting?

Immanuel Can: Oh, plenty. This is something I know a fair bit about.

Just Church (21)

We pick up this week in the middle of a list of choices the church has to make today. On the one hand, there are the values scripture lays out for church life; on the other, the things Social Justice today instructs us to value instead. The goal is simply to see the alternatives before us.

We began with the choice between a heavenly and a worldly “kingdom”. Then there was the choice between advocating salvation or system-blaming. Whether we should live by contentment or resentment came next, and then the choice between having confident faith in God and taking self-willed, self-confident action against the world. Finally, we considered the tension between individual responsibility to God and the attraction of surrender to a thoughtless collective — a theme continued in our first item below.

We're going to complete that list of contrasts today, and then draw some conclusions.

Spirits in Prison

A while back I pointed out that the apostles use the word “gospel” in slightly different ways at different times, emphasizing certain aspects of what we might consider an acceptable presentation of the good news and omitting others entirely.

Never is this more evident that in the third of Peter’s four references to the gospel found in his first epistle. His use of the word, and the context around it, open up what may be described as a theological can of worms.

Or perhaps later commentators on 1 Peter opened that can all by themselves.

Facts and Conjectures

The facts are these: about 57 A.D., give or take, the apostle Paul traveled to Jerusalem, where he was arrested something less than seven days after his arrival. Initially at least, he was (falsely or mistakenly) accused by the Jewish religious authorities of profaning the temple. Later he was also accused of disturbing the peace, a charge more likely to be taken seriously by the Romans than any merely religious disagreement between members of a subject people group. His Roman custodians took him first to Caesarea and finally to Rome when he made an appeal to have his case heard by Caesar himself. He was imprisoned there for approximately two years.

Contrary to what I thought as a teen and young adult, Paul did not die in Rome. Not that time at least. I had my chronology muddled for years. In any case, even if martyrdom was not the result, we can reasonably conclude these four-plus years in Roman custody were not exactly fun and games.

And they were entirely voluntary.

Anonymous Asks (348)

“Was Jesus rich?”

There’s a well-known theological answer to this question, but I’m guessing our anonymous questioner can Google “rich” and “Jesus”, and come up with 2 Corinthians 8 as fast than I can, so that’s probably not what he has in mind. He’s curious whether Jesus the man actually had shekels a-plenty during the time of his ministry.

Two years ago, I would have called this a silly question. Today, not so much.

They Ate and Drank with Him

“God raised him on the third day and made him to appear, not to all the people but to us who had been chosen by God as witnesses, who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead.”

Based on his personal experience, Peter could have finished this sentence any number of impressive ways. He could have said, “God made him appear to us ... who saw with our own eyes the rolled-back stone and the empty tomb,” or “... who witnessed him perform miracles,” or “... who were shown the marks of his crucifixion in his hands and his side,” or even “... who saw him taken bodily into heaven and heard the testimony of angels about it.”

Instead, he talks about sharing food with the risen Christ: “God made him appear to us who ate and drank with him.”

No King in Israel (1)

All over the world and all through history, wherever you have kings, dynasties invariably follow — at least until some nasty person ends them prematurely. I suppose over the course of the last several millennia, there may have been one or two gentle fellows who ruled a nation for thirty years and then thought, “Say, I’m not going to live forever, am I? Maybe the throne should go to the man who will do the best for my kingdom.”

Well, there may have been. I have no evidence of it. What happened instead was that — good, bad or indifferent — son replaced father if someone didn’t kill dad first.

Too Hot to Handle: Witnessing as Hate Speech

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

What constitutes “hate speech”? A fairly standard definition goes something like this: “Speech that attacks a person or group on the basis of attributes such as gender, ethnic origin, religion, race, disability, or sexual orientation.”

Tom: Now, personally I’d consider even that arguable, not least because the word “attacks” is nebulous, which leaves hate speech to be defined by the party claiming injury (a bad idea), not to mention it takes for granted that “sexual orientation” is a valid concept even though science has not yet demonstrated it is anything more than a personal preference.

Just Church (20)

Last week, we left off with these questions: if the morals of a social justice advocate seem to us, at first inspection, to be good, well-intended and earnest, can there still be a serious problem with her methods? And to follow this up, is it possible that by allying ourselves with her, could we be opening the door to something that should make us, as Christians, rightly hesitant?

Chapter 6: Two Directions (continued)

Those are good questions. They deserve an answer. So what I propose to do here is to speak to how the fundamental values of Social Justice ideology are different from the values the Bible lays out for the church. To make the contrast perfectly clear, I have chosen to put the values in pairs. In each case, there’s a choice to be made about what kind of church we may think we should have.

Hierarchies and Administration

(An aside: teaching an AI anything about authority is next to impossible, let alone biblical authority. All it will give you by way of illustration is a group of random people holding hands in a circle, presumably singing Kumbaya.)

Regardless of their home denomination or personal theological quirks, most remotely orthodox Christian readers will not take issue with the contention that the Son is the intrinsic equal of the Father. It’s the plain statement of the New Testament.

Philippians says prior to the incarnation the Son was “in the form of God”. Hebrews says the Son is “the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature”. John calls him the one who makes God known in the world, and this statement has the approval of the Lord Jesus himself.

Crimes of Intention

We are living in an age that presumes to know the contents of our heads and hearts. Woke culture is full of thought crimes and guilt-presuppositions, projection being one of the political left’s favorite tools.

You braided your hair this morning to appropriate black culture. You didn’t talk to an Indian co-worker as much as others, obviously deliberately “othering” him. All the elders at your church are old, white males; you clearly don’t value women. That fellow is very curt; he surely disapproves of my lifestyle.

Quod erat demonstrandum, I suppose. Maybe.

Anonymous Asks (347)

“How would you counsel young Christian men whose parents cannot seem to let go?”

Moses left the care of his parents as an infant in a basket. Jacob left home, by many calculations, at the age of 71, finally and unexpectedly forced out of the homestead by circumstances he had himself set in play.

Somewhere in between those extremes lie the rest of us. The ideal scenario is becoming financially, domestically and emotionally independent at some point prior to both our parents wishing we would — please!

Snow Job

I don’t know if you’ve been following the saga of the Disney remake of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs [Er, yes … Ed.], but it’s instructive in several ways.

In brief, the old legend that launched the Disney empire has, at long last, been remade by Hollywood as a semi-live-action film, starring a vociferous and petulant adolescent named Rachel Zegler in the titular role. Having finished the film cinematically, Zegler has opted to “finish” it at the box office as well, primarily by dissing the original myth as “weird” and “creepy”. In the process, she seems to have managed to sink her own career prospects.

My Church is on Life Support

Two verses about possible futures:

“What you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful men, who will be able to teach others also.”

“Then Hezekiah said to Isaiah, ‘The word of the Lord that you have spoken is good.’ For he thought, ‘There will be peace and security in my days.’ ”

Right. Now let me describe for you an increasingly familiar scenario.

An Increasingly Familiar Scenario

It’s Sunday morning, 11 a.m. The coffee is piping hot in its urn, a few handfuls of plain Dare cookies are laid out in a basket with napkins, and the would-be worshipers are chatting in twos and threes in the chapel basement. I count ten. Number eleven is the speaker.

Too Hot to Handle: Nominally Protestant, Leaning Catholic

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

Faith alone. Scripture alone. 2017 marked the 500th anniversary of Martin Luther’s historic declaration of these biblical truths — truths fundamental to Protestantism and, more importantly, to a clear and consistent understanding of what God has spoken to mankind in his word.

Tom: This piece ran in Christianity Today earlier this year, Immanuel Can, in which Sarah Zylstra argues (based on the findings of a Pew Research poll) that many of the estimated 560 million Protestants around the world today no longer believe justification with God depends on faith alone or that scripture is the only final authority for Christian faith and practice. They are nominally Protestant, but leaning Catholic.

If true, that would seem a little discouraging.

Just Church (19)

Chapter 6: Two Directions

“Have I become your enemy by telling you the truth? They eagerly seek you, not in a commendable way, but they want to shut you out so that you will seek them.”

So you’ve had this nice person start to speak up in your church.

This hasn’t happened before. You are, perhaps, an elder, or a leader, or a pastor, or a committee chair, or just a sincere and involved member of the congregation.

Changing Demographics

You are aware that your church is a bit traditional. Maybe it’s one of the more Scots-English or North American patterns set in the 1800s such as a gospel hall or chapel; or maybe it’s one of those post-hippie era evangelical churches, or a “community church”, or even a modern megachurch of some kind. The important thing is that whichever it is, it’s probably based on a pattern set by some sort of Anglo-American heritage.

Inadequate Remedies

Some people live in active denial of the trends around them, oblivious to the spirit of the age and to all intimations of God’s coming wrath. They are dull by choice.

For example, the Lord Jesus criticized the Pharisees and Sadducees for failing to correctly interpret the “signs of the times”. They were skilled at predicting the weather and ordering their workdays accordingly, but blind to the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy all around them. More evidence would not be given to them because they willfully ignored the signs they had already seen.

This is not that.

Achan and Eve

Broadly speaking, there are two approaches to sinning: Eve’s and Achan’s.

At Jericho, Achan saw treasure forbidden by the word of God, lusted after it, took it and hid it away, buried in the earth inside his tent. But I can assure you it would not have stayed there. Achan had never stopped to work out any sort of strategy by which he might benefit from his sin. That was just plain stupid.

At least the Eve Method — wicked, shortsighted and ultimately destructive as it was — had the advantage of being intellectually coherent.

Anonymous Asks (346)

“Does God really care about the little things that trouble us?”

Last night was prayer meeting, and I sat listening to others pray, thinking about corporate prayer and what it means to the Lord. One after another, men stood up and took their concerns to their Father in heaven: a full-time worker struggling with health issues; the preparations for this summer’s camp work; the regular meetings of the congregation; a father, brother and grandmother who do not know Christ; a family with its head under church discipline. All the ordinary concerns of a local church had their moments, and we said our amens as others expressed them.

But I couldn’t help thinking about all the things we were not requesting.

The Leaders and the Led

What does biblical leadership look like?

The answer in many quarters these days is “servanthood”. The term “servant leadership” is said to have been coined by Robert Greenleaf in a 1970 essay, allegedly after reading a story by Hermann Hesse. Greenleaf’s concept has since been promoted by numerous evangelicals, including John Piper and the Acts 29 network of churches, of which ubiquitous YouTube presence Matt Chandler is president.

At one level, who can argue? “The Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve.” “If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet.”

Pretty unambiguous, really.

119: Taw

Taw, pronounced tav [ת], is the last letter of the Hebrew alphabet and the last letter in the Hebrew phrase translated “In the beginning”, with which the book of Genesis — and every Bible — commences. Scholars take this formulation to signify that with respect to the plans and purposes of God, the end of this world and its story was always determined from the very outset. We could argue that case persuasively from many scriptures, some including the phrase “from the foundation of the world”.

Taw’s meaning is “mark” or “seal”, and it signifies completion. With this last letter, our unknown psalmist concludes his effusive and unsurpassed paean to God’s law.

Too Hot to Handle: Witchcraft Using Christian Language

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

Christianity Today has an interesting piece on Benny Hinn’s nephew Costi, who no longer preaches the prosperity gospel like the rest of his family.

Tom: Costi’s description of the financial benefits of preaching the gospel and performing “healings” is a bit jarring, especially for those who’ve grown up in the family of a full-time Bible teacher. I don’t recall the 10,000 square foot mansions, the Benzes, the exotic vacations or the summer homes.

What do you think, IC? Was my dad doing something wrong?

Just Church (18)

For the last two weeks, we've been working on a direct contrast between the church as Christ intended it to be and the church as Social Justice ideology aims to make it. And we've seen that they're not even close to the same thing. This week, let's complete that line of thought.

Chapter 5: A Higher Vision (continued)

What is the Church?

The church is a community of peace.

It’s where every person understands that his or her unique circumstances in life are given by God. It’s a grateful community.

The Church and Activism

But it’s also an active community. The disparities and injustices that persist in this world are not to be left alone. As much as we can, we are to lift up one another, and the lofty are to lower themselves, so that every person achieves the maximum that he or she can, in terms of conquering the challenges and fulfilling the opportunities God has given to him or her. We are to help one another, not live as monads, individuals uninterested in each other’s welfare. It’s a sharing community, a compassionate community, a merciful community.

All the Villains

I’m sure Christians other than Doug Wilson are writing about the delayed release of the nastier bits of the Epstein files, but since I’m not familiar with any of them, let’s go with the online post-millennialist whose website I’m most likely to cruise by on any given day of the week. Douglas, you are on!

Until recently, delays in getting the files into the public domain had been persuasively attributed to a lack of cooperation from the FBI, as usual pursuing its own agenda notwithstanding instructions from Attorney General Pam Bondi to come across with everything they’ve got in their records, as her position entitles her.

A Study in Contrasts

“There is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God.”

If the COVID era had a defining passage, surely it was Romans 13. To say that large numbers of Christians employed verses 1-7 to justify passivity under pressure of government mandates and/or fear of negative opinions from our neighbors, families and friends is no exaggeration. While no small number of believers balked at the extended closure of church buildings and seemingly arbitrary health-related rules of conduct enforced on us, others simply submitted to any and all restrictions, no matter how bizarre or ineffective, as “God’s will”.

Romans 13 was their evidence. “Rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad.” Of course, they were also letting our rulers define “good” and “bad” for us.

Anonymous Asks (345)

“What does an eagle signify in the Bible?”

Birds of prey are majestic, beautiful, horrible creatures. If you’ve ever watched a winged predator drop out of the sky to pluck a smaller bird out of the air then calmly shred its screaming victim to pieces, all the while brazenly meeting the gaze of horrified onlookers through the glass pane of a full length 21st storey office window, you will know exactly what I mean. You may taste your own lunch a second time.

Eagles soar with mesmerizing elegance, then eviscerate mercilessly in a matter of seconds. You do not mess with such creatures.

Making Connections

For all the good they do, the English Bible’s chapter divisions often break up the text in ways that don’t much help the interpreter in his task. One of the things I have learned to do over time is to back up from the first verse of the chapter I am trying to understand to the beginning of the “scene” in which it takes place, which may be a chapter or more earlier. Then I continue from the end of the passage to the end of the “scene”.

Sometimes these fall on chapter divisions, and that’s great. Often they don’t.

119: Sin and Shin

The penultimate letter of the Hebrew alphabet has two different names, though it’s technically the same letter. Jews pronounce it Shin [שׁ] when it has a dot over the right side, symbolizing kindness, and Sin [שׂ] when it has a dot over the left, symbolizing judgment or severity. Its three vertical lines (or fiery branches, depending on the font you read it in) denote will, intellect and emotions, although a host of more obscure ideas are also associated with the letter. (The tefillin sports a rare four-branched version of shin.) Shin’s numeric value is 300. Written in full, the five letters of Elohim (aleph-lamedh-he-yodh-mem) also total 300.

Make of that what you will. I’m not sure I can do a lot with it. As with much Hebrew symbolism and numerology, I just file it under “interesting” and move on.

Too Hot to Handle: See You in Court, Brother

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

Wow. Christians going to court with one another.

You’d think this issue would be put to bed speedily by even the most cursory glance at Matthew 5:25-26 or 1 Corinthians 6:1-8. But no, believers are keeping their lawyers on speed-dial in significant numbers. It used to be the primary reason was child abuse, but last year it was something new: property rights.

Tom: Here I thought we’d all be meeting in cell groups in homes sooner than later as a result of lawfare trial balloons from the transgender, feminist or gay lobbies. But no, this is even stranger: we’re doing it to ourselves, Immanuel Can; not just as individuals, but whole congregations. And most of it involves issues related to church buildings.