The Implacability of Hatred

Some bright spark (okay, got it now, it was a former Dutch cabinet minister, not just your garden-variety bright spark) last week suggested a unique solution to bring about peace in the Middle East.

Ready? Okay, here it is: Force Israel’s entire population to move to the United States.

Leave aside all the other current mid-east hotspots, the “Arab Spring” that turned out to be an Islamic Spring, ISIS, U.S. failure to change hearts and minds on the ground in Iraq and so on, and let’s suppose Herman Heinsbroek’s idea has a hope in Hades of actually bringing about lasting peace in Palestine.

Whistling Past the Graveyard

The most recent version of this post is available here.

Christianity Lite

 The most recent version of this post is available here.

Saturn and Uniformitarianism

Maggie McKee at Nature.com has an interesting piece on the difficulties that a number of recent scientific discoveries pose for uniformitarians, several of them related to study of the planet Saturn.

For instance, Saturn’s rings, which are 90% water ice, should be darker than they are if they were actually formed 4 billion years ago as originally assumed. Comets and asteroids shed dust that in theory ought to darken the rings over time. So the rings are either younger than previously thought, or … something.

Vessels of Another Sort

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.

Does it Build?

These could probably
go anytime too ...

Earlier this year I sat in a small local church full of nice, friendly people who had come to hear what turned out to be a pretty decent, relevant and biblical message from a visiting preacher. It was an inner-city congregation on a typical Sunday morning.

Prior to introducing the speaker, the man designated to open the meeting led the congregation in a hymn. We opened beat-up, dog-eared hardcover hymnals to the hymn number he gave us.

Together we sang the hymn that follows.

Too Hot to Handle: Your Bible Is An Anachronism

The most recent version of this post is available here.

Pastor, Get A Job

Adam Russell posts a short piece on “The Bi-Vocational Life” at churchleaders.com promoting the tentmaking lifestyle. His thesis, that work and ministry are not mortal enemies, is actively contested in the comments section, where a number of pastors who have lived the bi-vocational lifestyle make the point that, well, it isn’t a lot of fun and you don’t ever get a day off.

If I respond with “Poor babies”, am I going to draw heat?

Okay, I’ll dial the rhetoric back a notch or two.

Reading the Tea Leaves

The Gangster and the Amish.

Ok, that’s a fairly weird combination, I grant you, and sounds like a really bad Lifetime Network movie. Hang with me for a minute or two because there really is a sort of odd connection with what I have in mind.

The Amish

The Amish are an intriguing group remarkable for their passivity and lack of involvement. At some point a long time ago they drew a hard line between modern society’s choices and their own. They effectively said “this far and no further”, and in large measure they have maintained that line. I don’t particularly want to join them nor do I think their example is a great one for Christians to emulate; we ought to be in the world to be effective for God but we shouldn’t be of the world. That line between “in” and “of” may be a hard distinction to retain some days, but retreating entirely from the world as the Amish have done strikes me as unfortunate and unfulfilling.

Something Better

Benjamin West, The Expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise

Genesis 3:24 is one of the sadder verses in Scripture. It says this: “So he drove out the man”.

Adam and Eve have sinned. Fellowship with God is now broken — perhaps from Adam’s understanding it is broken irreparably. Did Adam then slink in shame out of the garden? No. Did he run in abject fear? No. 

Adam delighted in the garden; he loved where he was. It’s clear he and Eve did not want to leave even after they had sinned. How is it then that they did leave? God drove them out.

Amillennialism and Isaiah 60: Five Problems

 The most recent version of this post is available here.

Recommend-a-blog (4)

Bible teacher Jack Spender tackles a tough but relevant subject in a post called “When Should an Aged Elder Step Back?”

It’s a good question, and one to which the answer is not necessarily about the number of years you’ve lived, but more about effectiveness and planning for the future of the local church.

The author is Brethren, but his reflections and suggestions are relevant to any Christians that still observe the New Testament principle of recognizing or ordaining elders, with or without a paid pastor. There is a time to serve and a time to get out, and far too many do not recognize when the latter has arrived.

Room for Vengeance

There seems to be no end to the number of people who feel themselves personally responsible for the execution of justice.

There’s former rugby player Steve Waterfield who, waking to find a burglar in his apartment, was disinclined to simply let him make a run for it. He declared to himself, “Right son, you’re getting a whacking”, blocked the doorway, beat the trespasser bloody and left him reeling.

Too Hot to Handle: Stomaching Veganism

The most recent version of this post is available here.

Eden and Relationships

We’ve been working through some basic ideas about God’s character that spring from His actions in an environment where sin does not impede our view of the relationship between God and man. Though there is a day coming when the relationship between heaven and earth will be free and unrestricted once more, it has not been that way for a long, long time and certainly not in your experience or mine. In fact, it hasn’t been clearly observable since Eden ...

Why Your View of Prophecy Matters

The most recent version of this post is available here.

Witnessing and Misdirection

The most recent version of this post is available here.

Room in My Heart

What do we mean when we talk about “living on” in one another’s hearts?

We certainly say it enough.

Thomas Campbell said, “To live in hearts we leave behind is not to die”. If the content of our eulogies and obituaries indicates anything at all, then it seems we believe him.

Taken literally, Campbell’s statement is categorically untrue. Even if we firmly believe in Christian resurrection or some kind of afterlife, we recognize that death creates a disconnect between us and those we love that cannot be bridged this side of eternity. In the physical sense, dead is dead. But that is neither what Campbell means nor what we mean when we mourn using similar language.

Will You Be Considered Worthy?

A worthy successor to Queen Elizabeth?

When we use the words “worth” or “worthy” in English, we are often thinking primarily of value or merit. For instance, when we ask, “What’s he worth these days?” we are really asking “What is the total value of his assets?” When we say, “I don’t think that’s worth my time”, we mean that the activity in question lacks merit.

So when the word “worthy” comes up in the New Testament, like when Paul talks about Christians being “considered worthy of the kingdom of God”, we may initially think he’s talking about eternal salvation.

Certainly some people do.

Three Kinds of Peace

The most current version of this post is available here.