Peace and War

“Too long have I had my dwelling among those who hate peace. I am for peace, but when I speak, they are for war!”

The perennial burden of the believer in a faithless, self-interested, predatory and relentlessly aggressive world is that he simply does not fit in, no matter how hard he or she may try. If our hearts are truly in the process of being remade in the likeness of the Lord Jesus, we are bound to find ourselves emotionally at odds with our co-workers, neighbors and especially the power structures of the societies in which we live.

How can we not? We are of a completely different disposition, and it goes right down to our spiritual genetics.

Dreams and Meanings

I don’t think I’ve had a spiritually meaningful dream in my life.

Well, let me qualify that just a little. I’m sure I’ve had dreams psychiatrists would call meaningful in that they revealed truths about my subconscious preoccupations, some of which are surely spiritual. I wouldn’t argue with the experts about the contents of my cranium either; it seems logical to me that when you have the same dream dozens of times, surely something is consistently on your mind that you haven’t resolved to your own satisfaction.

But personal messages from God in my sleep? Not a one.

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“What is a bruised reed?”

Today’s question comes out of something I heard in a meeting recently. A well-meaning, sincere brother in Christ expressed the opinion that the “bruised reed” mentioned in Isaiah 42:3 was a musical instrument of some sort.

Yeah, it was a first for me too. But it’s always interesting to find that even very smart people make associations that would never occur to you in a month of Sundays.

A Prophecy Primer

Over the last couple weeks, we’ve looked at self-proclaimed practitioners of the spiritual gift of prophecy, how they say God “speaks” to them, the sorts of things they claim he speaks about, and what they do with their gift. The most common threads in all this mystical mumbo jumbo are (1) money, (2) women, and (3) eagerness to get children involved.

If these are not aircraft carrier-sized red flags, I’m not sure what else we should call them.

What If I Miss the Rapture?

Before I moved earlier this year, I was part of a weekly home church gathering. The rapture loomed large in a few of those studies and became the subject of a couple posts here, as often happens with Bible passages I am wrestling my way through with friends.

In one of those posts I made reference to an ex-evangelical named Joshua Rivera who now writes for Slate.

Too Hot to Handle: Snatched Up

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

Tom: So we did the millennium, IC. Care to walk me through the rapture?

Immanuel Can: I thought that was the same as the Second Coming. Next you’re going to tell me that Israel still exists and that I wasn’t predestined to election before the foundation of the world.

Tom: Do I need to put a </sarc> at the end there? Never mind. Sometimes you open a can and the worms just go everywhere ...

IC: Well, one way to manage the worms is to focus on making the distinction between the Second Coming and the rapture.

Tom: Okay, then.

A Second Chance

Will we have a second chance to go to heaven? There are at least three different reasons a question like this gets asked. One is very Catholic, a second very Protestant, and the third ... well ... universal.

The Catholic might best have his question paraphrased as something like “Is there a purgatory, and do we get to go to heaven at the end of it?” The Protestant is really asking “Is this ‘rapture’ thing I’ve heard about really in the Bible, and if I get left behind, do I get another shot?” The universalist is asking some version of “Surely hell cannot last forever, can it?”

The Rapture and the Imprecatory Psalms

All true Christians are believers, but not all believers are Christians.

That is in the Bible. Abraham wasn’t a Christian. Christianity belongs to the time following the ministry of the Lord Jesus, the descent of the Holy Spirit, and the inauguration of the church. That’s when the disciples became Christians. You don’t read the word “Christian” in the Old Testament, nor is a Christian described. What you have is godly or ungodly Israelites; those who believed God and those who didn’t; the wicked and the righteous in Israel — and of course some Gentiles saved as well.

The position from which a godly Jewish believer would look at things and the stance of an equally godly Christian looking at things are quite different.

The 1830 Principle

I’ve read this statement or something quite like it maybe ten times in the last year:

“Rapture doctrine did not exist before John Darby invented it in 1830 AD. Before it ‘popped into John Darby’s head’ no one had ever heard of a secret rapture doctrine.”

It’s even been picked up by Wikipedia, which I guess makes it a “thing”. They won’t go quite so far as to say Darby invented it, but they concede that he certainly popularized the teaching.

Escapism in a Time of Trouble

Christians are sometimes accused of escapism, primarily with respect to the doctrine of the “rapture” (or parousia) taught in the New Testament.

After all, why should a bunch of Gentile believers expect to get a free pass on the judgment of the world? Doesn’t that seem just a little unfair?

Not all those who dislike the idea of Jesus Christ making a special trip to this planet specifically to carry away his people to be forever with him object to the notion for exactly the same reasons. Some feel believing in a parousia is elitist. Others see it as baseless and wishful. Still others, like Kurt Willems, are troubled by the idea that Christians with a psychological safety net like the “rapture” will give up trying to make society a better place — or worse, will mislead others about what Willems believes are God’s plans for this world. He says, “Our world’s future is hopeful. Let’s tell that story and not the escapist narratives that many of us grew up with.”

Nice idea. Tough to see where he gets that “hopeful” bit from these days though.

The Faithful Have Vanished

“The faithful have vanished”, David wrote.

Not that the faithful have been exterminated and evil has finally won the day.

Not that the faithful have apostatized or lost their salt.

They’ve vanished. Elvis has left the building, folks.

This is not simply David’s personal experience here. No way, not without at least some exaggeration or hyperbole.

Vacation Time Again

Lord willing, I expect this coming week to be my first real vacation in a while. IC, his lovely wife and Yours Truly plan to spend it with a bunch of fellow believers on an island in northern Ontario, enjoying great food, exceptional Christian fellowship and likely a few pestilent insects so we don’t forget we live in a fallen world. I usually take my laptop along on such excursions, but knowing my own patterns when away, I don’t expect to do much writing on it.

Thankfully, we have well over a decade’s worth of daily posts to draw on, and I thought we might do another themed week in my absence. In 2016, we did Worship Week and in 2017, a Best of IC Week. This time around, I thought we might try …

No King in Israel (21)

Gideon’s son Abimelech wanted to be king of Israel. Following the example of the kings of the nations, and aided and abetted by his kindred in Shechem, he murdered seventy of his half-brothers to consolidate his throne. Unfortunately for Abimelech, his father’s youngest son escaped his hand and lived to curse him in God’s name. God heard and answered Jotham’s “attack prayer” because he offered it in accordance with the Lord’s mind and will, in hope of seeing divine justice done on behalf of his brothers and his father’s family.

Not all curses land on their target. This one did, and the writer of Judges makes sure we understand what was happening behind the scenes in the spiritual realm.

Too Hot to Handle: Tearing Down Strongholds

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

[Editor’s note: When we were young we used to play road hockey. Now we do this. I missed out on this particular email discussion, but I thought the rest of you might enjoy it as much as I did when I woke up to find it in my inbox. And yes, I got called out for not participating, but these days I will take sleep whenever I can get it.]

Bernie: Okay, bear with me ...

Is Your Faith Boring You?

The great mathematician Blaise Pascal claimed all of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.

Modern people don’t sit in rooms alone very well. They find it boring. And, in fact, being bored is one thing almost all of us instinctively hate. Particularly in our present day of social media, cell phones, portable games and constant mental stimulation, it seems to us that solitude and silence are indicators of something being terribly wrong. On those occasions when we find ourselves momentarily bored we immediately fumble for our phones or look around for some new distraction.

I suspect we are probably less adept than any previous generation at just sitting still and thinking.

The Temptation to Trivia

More and more people in my small circle of acquaintances are recognizing the value of disconnecting from technology on a regular basis. I’m not sure that reflects any larger social trend, but it’s encouraging to me. My cousin (ironically, retired and living a relatively un-frantic existence) recently complained about the frequency with which his phone disturbs the peace, and one of my sons has actually started to take action to limit the number of interruptions in his day from texts and notifications.

For him it’s an existential issue. He’s a creative and gets thousands of texts, emails and even the occasional phone call every week, to the point where he finds he is hardly able to get anything productive done.

Prophets and Profits

Darby Slaton is a Pennsylvania speaker, coach and teacher who bills himself as a prophet and teaches children to unlock their spiritual gifts of prophecy, as covered in last Sunday’s post. The mission statement on his website reads “Empowering people to discover their true identity, recognizing Gods [sic] voice and live out their calling.”

He also does not appear to be a fan of commas or apostrophes, but that’s a generational deficiency of education, not an accusation of heresy.

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“Am I my brother’s keeper?”

The question was glib and rhetorical when Cain asked it of God. He meant something like “Why would you ask me where my brother is? Ask him.” Of course, God knew where Abel was and why he couldn’t answer: Cain had just killed him in an envious rage.

So why are we asking ourselves a question that was first mouthed by a murderous liar trying to deflect?

Playing With Fire

Last week we ran IC’s response to a reader concerned about curriculum that his local church had asked him to present to children. I was unable to link to the content he provided online, so I promised to do a deeper dive into the subject later on.* The four-page lesson (pages 39-42 of a KAIO publication) was entitled “Prophetic Practice”, and purported to help children unlock their spiritual gift of prophecy with the help of a local “known prophet” named Darby Slaton.

If the idea of Christians who need blow-by-blow instructions from a manual to teach a simple Bible lesson equipping your kids to lecture you and others with direct “messages from God” doesn’t curl your toes now, wait until you read some of the quotes that follow. Our reader politely and firmly declined to participate in the program … for very good reason.

No King in Israel (20)

Abimelech means some combination of the words “father” and “king”. We first encounter it in scripture as the name of two Philistine kings in Genesis. Why Gideon named the son of his Ephraimite concubine after the manner of Israel’s oppressors is a bit of a mystery, but Abimelech grew up with aspirations far above his station in life, notions that came not from God but from the nations.

His father had been a judge. Abimelech would be king, or so he determined. He began to plot accordingly.

Too Hot to Handle: Good Reasons to be Non-Denominational

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

I was just poking through the archives and realized that last year we did a post together called “Bad Reasons to be Non-Denominational”. It was all about the recent trend toward non-denominational Christian gathering that doesn’t always have a whole lot in the way of specifics and convictions.

Tom: We agreed that wasn’t our preferred way to go, IC. But now I’m wondering if you can think of any good reasons to meet together with Christians without a lot of the historical baggage that goes with a well-established, well-known bloc of believers — like, say, the Southern Baptists.

Inbox: Children’s Ministry Curriculum

A reader writes:

“I had recently just started helping with our children’s program only to stop dead in my tracks when I read this lesson from the curriculum they follow.

I know that something’s really off with this and I’ve been asked to share why I can’t be a part of teaching this to the kids.

Could you look it over and give me your thoughts?”

“Dead in my tracks” is right.

Making Jesus Lord

“Not my president,” pouted large numbers of deeply disappointed Democrats last November. Many are still saying it. I didn’t know it, but the disclaimer did not originate in 2024 or even in 2016. It goes all the way back to George W. Bush’s hair-splitting victory over Al Gore in 2000, which turned on something like 327 votes. Back then, it meant something like “Gore actually won, so Bush is not the real president even if some people say he is.”

Now it means something more like “If I don’t acknowledge it, it isn’t real.”

An Anachronism in the Text

In the process of recounting the circumstances under which a local Hivite lad raped Jacob’s daughter Dinah, the writer of Genesis comments to the effect that her brothers were indignant and angry because this Shechem “had done an outrageous thing in Israel”. Such a thing, they said, must never be.

It should not need saying that rape is always outrageous, in Israel or anywhere else. Yet strangely, the key words in this passage for some critics are “in Israel”. Let me explain.

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“What does it mean that Saul is also among the prophets?”

The phrase in question comes up a couple of times in scripture, in 1 Samuel 10 and 19. The writer of 1 Samuel tells us that the (rhetorical) question “Is Saul also among the prophets?” became a proverb in Israel. It definitely meant something to the people of God, though not necessarily anything particularly complimentary to Saul.

Can you imagine becoming the subject of a proverb? It might not be as much fun as we think.

Quote of the Day (50)

David de Bruyn’s morning email is a short prayer checklist entitled “When God Says ‘No’ ”. I’ve made them myself from time to time, and I’m sure I’ve done a post on the subject at some point over the years. You know what that looks like: “My prayer is not being answered in the affirmative, Lord. So what does your word say about that?”

What possible reasons might there be?

No King in Israel (19)

As we hinted in the introduction last week, this series of incidents in chapter 8 effectively illustrates the moral degradation characteristic of Israel during the period of the Judges. The end of the chapter gives us four more strong indications that all was not well in Israel, even in the home of the one man who had personal dealings with God.

Despite God’s undeserved blessing and a marvelous victory, the end of Gideon’s tale leaves a sour taste in the mouth.

Too Hot to Handle: Offenders for a Word

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

Christianity Today’s Caleb Lindgren interviews author Brian J. Wright about his new book, Communal Reading in the Time of Jesus.

Tom: We bounced this article around by email last week, IC, and it was fodder for a few interesting observations. I thought we might revisit it here. One major weakness of Lindgren’s interview is that he never quite gets Brian Wright to define “communal reading” for us, and the term then ends up being used to describe a whole bunch of different things in the course of the interview.

Care to take a shot at defining it?

The Mental Scrapbook

“You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear”, as the famous adage goes. Your raw materials define what is possible with them.

The same is true of your mental life: you cannot make a good life out of bad imaginings.

Your mind is a scrapbook. Like any scrapbook, it collects fragmentary images of whatever you decide to put in there. Over time you fill it up. And eventually, what you have put into it defines the kind of life you’re going to have. That happens because the ‘resources’ you put into your mental scrapbook become the raw materials for your present attitudes, your frame of reference for present experiences, and the repository of images for your present imagination.

Garbage in, garbage out. Good stuff in, good stuff out. It’s that simple.

Small Dramas

Some spiritual experiences are useful to share. Others, I find, I am better off keeping to myself, not because they are trivial but because they are personal, just between me and the Lord. Also, more than a few of these experiences are easily misunderstood.

An example. This morning I wake at 2:15 a.m., as is often the case. I know I’m either up for the day or at least for the next few hours. Long experience has proven trying to go back to sleep when I’m wide awake is wasted time. Upstairs, I can hear my son struggling with what turns out to be an uncooperative file conversion (he works overnight from home), and I overhear an uncharacteristic expression of frustration pass his lips.

Naturally, I go up and intrude. Come on, you would too.

Getting Our Attention

Don’t laugh at me, long time Bible readers. I only just noticed for the first time that in the days when Solomon had his first vision of God, the ark of the covenant and the tabernacle of the Lord, also called the tent of meeting, were in different places. David had brought the ark into Jerusalem and had pitched another tent for it there, but the original tabernacle and the bronze altar made by Bezalel in the days of Moses remained at Gibeon.

I think we can safely say separating the ark of the covenant from the Holy of Holies, where it belonged, was a fairly egregious breach of the revealed will of God. Somehow, nobody seemed to notice.

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“Does God punish us when we sin?”

Bad stuff happens when people sin. That’s no surprise to any of us. It started in the Garden of Eden and it continues today. So today’s question is not about whether sin has consequences. Of course it does. What we’re really trying to answer is whether God is always personally responsible for meting out those consequences to sinners, and if so, what he is seeking to accomplish.

Semi-Random Musings (43)

I have written a couple of times before about the “labels” the writers of the Old Testament used for the cities, towns, nations and people groups in their histories. These men wrote centuries after the events they described, for audiences unfamiliar with any helpful historical context and detail. In many cases, the ethnicity of the people who lived in any particular geographic location about which they were writing had changed drastically in the intervening years, giving rise to potential confusion.

No King in Israel (18)

The one-sided battle between Israel and Midian and its allies was winding down, moving into what we might call the cleanup stage. The writer of this portion of Judges now presents us with a series of incidents that effectively illustrate the level of spiritual and moral degradation in the nation during the period. While not quite as awful as some of the later chapters of Judges, these vignettes still require some consideration and explanation.

The Holy Spirit also ties up the story of Gideon for us, and sets up the grisly and somewhat predictable events to come in chapter 9.

Too Hot to Handle: Where There is No Vision ...

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

Kevin Miller is an Executive VP at Christianity Today International. In this article he lays out a number of ways that one can go about developing a vision.

Tom: Immanuel Can, Miller is ignoring the elephant in the room: he starts with the unstudied assertion that good leaders must always be men of vision and charges right into how we can all acquire it without addressing why this quality is allegedly a critical component of leadership.

And he’s not alone.

Immanuel Can: You’re right, Tom, there are a lot of people talking about our lack of vision as Christians today. What do you think accounts for this widespread concern, and how legit do you think it is?

Present Perfect

Everybody likes gifts, they say. Still, some are better than others.

A funny story: My in-laws were on their way to a wedding. Along the roadside, a hack artist was selling a number of truly horrible original oil paintings. (Doubtless this poor soul labored under the delusion he was some sort of Michelangelo.) Anyway, my relatives pulled over for a look. These ‘masterpieces’ were supposed to be landscapes, but they all looked like they’d been painted with a really fat brush using earth tones, pale blues and dark blacks. (If you imagine an explosion in a factory that produces toothpaste, peanut butter and licorice, you’ve roughly got the aesthetic here.)

The Price of Faith

“By faith Moses, when he was born, was hidden for three months by his parents, because they saw that the child was beautiful, and they were not afraid of the king’s edict.”

There is no authority except from God, and the authorities that exist have been instituted by him. Whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. So says the apostle Paul, in one of the most quoted Bible passages of the last five years.

Well, the writer to the Hebrews says that the parents of Moses resisted the authority of their day as an act of faith.

Changing Focus

Those of us who read the word of God day by day over a period of years have all probably experienced more or less the same thing: each trip through a particular passage of the Bible years apart tends to produce different observations and associations.

I’m always amazed how much more there is in any given passage than I have previously been able to dredge out. That’s both a commentary on the limitations of even the most avid, committed human mind to take in and retain the teaching of scripture, as well as a reflection on the incredible depths of wisdom in the Word.

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“Did Jesus go to hell?”

If the relative likelihood of any interpretation of scripture being true has any correlation with its popularity within Christendom, the answer to this one might be yes. However, as you may have discovered for yourself over the years, many quite popular teachings are mistaken, or at very least questionable. Personally, I think the teaching that Jesus went to hell is one of them.

The writers of the Apostles’ Creed thought otherwise.

On Sinning in Heaven

Over at Stand to Reason, Jonathan Noyes handles the question “How did Satan sin in heaven if you can’t sin in heaven?” along with its worrisome corollary, “Will it be possible for me to sin in heaven?” His daughter texted him the queries from school one day, giving rise to a blog post on a subject I’ve never given a single moment’s thought. But it’s a perfectly reasonable question, so now I’m giving it a moment myself.

Okay, there are definitely a couple of red herrings to avoid along the way, but let’s try to get to the core of it.

No King in Israel (17)

When the Lord calls a man to lead his people, these leaders do not generally ask those they lead to do things they are unwilling to do themselves. They do not sit in their comfy tents far behind the battle lines like the kings of the nations, shouting out orders while taking no risks themselves. Rather, they are right in there with their people, doing the same things they are asking them to do and taking the same risks they are.

I don’t want to read too much into a small turn of phrase from Gideon, but it’s hard to miss the takeaway here.

Too Hot to Handle: Fellows in the Same Ship

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

Scott Mannion believes in the value of fellowship: the communal spirit; taking ownership of problem-solving at the local level, rather than looking to government for answers; “distributing the burden of cognition”, as he puts it. He’s promoting fellowship vigorously, because he believes top-down solutions to our problems are simply not working.

Tom: Mannion’s YouTube video is the first time in a very long while that I’ve heard the word “fellowship” used outside a purely religious context. He certainly gets the concept right. IC, this one was your baby: what was it about the video that grabbed you?

Freedom: The False and the True

“For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. Therefore what benefit were you then deriving from the things of which you are now ashamed? For the outcome of those things is death. But now having been freed from sin and enslaved to God, you derive your benefit, resulting in sanctification, and the outcome, eternal life.”

What is freedom? Does it mean what people today think it does? Does it mean doing whatever, whenever? Does it mean liberty to surrender to our own impulses? Does it mean opportunity to do whatever-the-heck we feel like at a given moment? Does it mean being exempt from moral censure or practical criticism regardless of what action we may choose to do?

Does it mean total independence? Does it mean not needing anyone, or not feeling the lack of anything?

Bottom of the Ninth

Better known by his stage name, Gordon Sumner played and sang for a decade in a hugely successful eighties band, and followed that with an eclectic, critically-praised solo career. His net worth has been estimated at over half a billion dollars. His father Ernest was a milkman and factory worker. Neither are dishonorable professions, but middle class at best.

On Ernest’s deathbed, he said to Gordon, “Son, you used your hands better than I did.” Gordon’s reaction: “That was the first compliment he’d ever paid me, and the timing was pretty devastating ... and unforgettable.”

Wow. Talk about leaving your best pitch for the bottom of the ninth ...

On Walking and Sinking

“To dwell only in the world of objective analysis is to chill your own soul.” So says David de Bruyn in a post entitled “On Adoring Or Analysing”, which concerns a conflict even mature Christians regularly experience. Put succinctly, you cannot do a thing and think about doing it at the same time.

Peter provides a fine illustration of what happens when your thoughts stray from “Let’s just get closer to the Lord” to “Hey, I’m walking on water in the middle of a storm!” All of a sudden, Peter wasn’t walking on water anymore. He was just wet.

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“I have committed _____. Will God ever forgive me?”

I think I can safely say yes. As individual acts go, there is absolutely nothing you have ever done that our Lord will not forgive, assuming your repentance and desire for his forgiveness is genuine. We could fill in that blank space above with any sin, crime or misdemeanor, however heinous or grossly offensive to the Almighty. That is my personal belief on the authority of the word of God.

Let me argue that point for any among our readers who may disagree.

Endless … and Pointless

I am back in 1 Chronicles these days, working my way through passages that once inspired a post entitled “Does God Need An Editor?” (Spoiler: my answer was a hard no.)

For those unfamiliar, the first nine chapters of 1 Chronicles are almost entirely composed of Hebrew genealogies: descendants of Adam, Abraham, David, twelve of the thirteen tribes of Israel (mysteriously, not including Dan, none of whose progeny appear in Chronicles prior to chapter 27), Israel’s first king Saul, and a number of the returned exiles from the Babylonian captivity.

That’s a whole lot of Hebrew names one after another with very little intervening detail or editorial commentary. The modern Christian reader quite reasonably asks, “Er … what’s in this for me, if anything at all?”

Good question.

No King in Israel (16)

The Hebrew word šāḥâ [literally, “bow down”; figuratively, “worship”] appears a grand total of four times in the book of Judges. That’s not a lot. But it gets worse. All but one of these four have to do with worshiping idols. The solitary exception, where the word refers to the worship of the God of Israel, is in today’s reading.

That’s a sad commentary on the state of Israel during the period of the judges. Accordingly, we may not expect to find out much about true, biblical worship in these pages.

Then again …

Too Hot to Handle: Culture and the Gospel

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

Immanuel Can: I’m going to temporarily suspend our self-imposed five-sentence limit, Tom, in order to tell you a story about something that happened last year when our provincial standardized test was performed.

You need to know that teachers are all given a specific script for what they are and are not allowed to tell students on the day of the test. They are expressly forbidden to go beyond this script, and doing so is grounds for firing. Teachers cannot add any directions, explanations, definitions or any other kind of information to this. They are not allowed to give any guidance once the test begins, no matter what a student wants or needs. It’s standardized, period.

One of the questions on the test asked kids to imagine a picnic, and then write based on their imagining.

Dismembering the Church

My church recently had a “membership” drive. The goal was to get people to sign up to the church roll, then stand up in front of the congregation and proclaim their membership through what they called a “church covenant”.

I’ve been in my local church for 12 years. I didn’t sign. I won’t.

It’s not because my fellow Christians do not know I’m one of them; they do. And I trust it’s not because I’m passive, uncommitted or uninvolved with church life. I’m in there serving, and I doubt there’s anyone in my congregation who couldn’t tell you that. (If there is, that will be corrected the next time they give me the pulpit, which they do fairly frequently.) And it’s not because they have found I am caught up in some particular sin or wickedness. No one has accused me of that — though I’d admit to being your garden variety hypocrite, in the sense that I continually fall short of the level of holiness God deserves from me. But no one so far has called me “hard hearted” or accused me of some crime.