The most current version of this post is available here.
Wednesday, July 29, 2015
Tuesday, July 28, 2015
Christian Escapism and a Time of Trouble Such As Never Has Been
The most recent version of this post is available here.
Monday, July 27, 2015
Sunday, July 26, 2015
Help! They Changed My Bible!
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.
Saturday, July 25, 2015
Crazy Uncle
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”.
Friday, July 24, 2015
Too Hot to Handle: Let’s Make Sure They Hate Us Enough
A more current version of this post is available here.
Thursday, July 23, 2015
Wednesday, July 22, 2015
Tuesday, July 21, 2015
“My Church Believes …”
“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.
Monday, July 20, 2015
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.
Sunday, July 19, 2015
Saturday, July 18, 2015
Fulfilling or Destroying
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.
Friday, July 17, 2015
Thursday, July 16, 2015
Wednesday, July 15, 2015
Tuesday, July 14, 2015
Monday, July 13, 2015
Dispensing With Dispensations
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.
Sunday, July 12, 2015
Recommend-a-blog (10)
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.)
Saturday, July 11, 2015
Friday, July 10, 2015
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