Time and Chance (4)

Up to this point in our study of Ecclesiastes, the Preacher has been primarily concerned with making general comments about the natural world from observation — the sun, the wind, the water cycle, biology and humanity as a species.

He has established several things: (1) that all aspects of both the natural world and of human existence are cyclical and endlessly repetitive; (2) that each phase of any given cycle is relatively brief and inconsequential; and (3) that understanding the meaning of it all is not an easy thing.

Now he narrows his focus and begins to consider human society and the various ways one’s life may play out within it.

Too Hot to Handle: Parroting the Narrative

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

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is apologizing again, this time for being caught dressing as a blackface Aladdin at a 2001 party, thereby managing to potentially offend two different segments of his voting base simultaneously. Or so say his detractors.

Tom: IC, would our Canadian readers be expected to give him a pass if he’d cross-dressed as Jasmine rather than Aladdin?

Immanuel Can: Plausibly. Dressing so as to “appropriate” a culture or to mock another “race” (to use their words) is greeted with howls of dismay; but there’s an automatic approval of men who dress as women, so that might work for him.

Lies, Myths and Misinformation: Missionaries Are Destructive

The most recent version of this post is available here. 

The Search for Faith

“[W]hen the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”

The answer to this question matters. God loves faith, not least because it is faith that produces every work which pleases him.

Hebrews 11 catalogs a variety of wonderful things faith does in the lives of believers, all of which delight the heart of God.

Semi-Random Musings (16)

If you don’t believe anything you see on CNN or MSNBC anymore, if The New York Times prints more fiction than fact, and if The Drudge Report has too many tabloid-style shock items for your taste, you may like Disrn, a new website created by Adam Ford of The Christian Daily Reporter and the Adam Ford Newsletter in partnership with Seth Dillon of The Babylon Bee.

Anonymous Asks (60)

“How can I tell if it’s my own feelings or the Holy Spirit?”

Depending on the sort of feelings you are talking about, distinguishing between one’s own natural internal impulses and the promptings of the Spirit of God is not always perfectly straightforward. There are many emotional reactions that are completely in harmony with the Spirit.

This is true of the obvious ones like love, peace, joy and so on, but it is also true of emotions some Christians consider more questionable. It is not wrong, for instance, to be angry, vexed, disappointed, perplexed or even jealous when your feelings are aligned with God’s.

On the other hand, it is not the Spirit of God that makes us content to ignore sin in our lives and hearts, even if that feeling seems a comparatively peaceful one.

Gaming It Out

Nothing makes one explore the implications of one’s own mortality like choosing a beneficiary.*

Don’t get me wrong: the open casket of a close friend or family member always provides a moment or two of bracing clarity, but far too many of us are accustomed to granting the dead their expected tearful due, then moving on as expeditiously as is decently possible.

Sure, we hear the occasional grateful acknowledgement that there but for the grace of God go the rest of us, but most of us are disinclined to let the full implications of that reality really permeate.

Time and Chance (3)

The book of Ecclesiastes is often referred to as poetry. In a general sense I suppose this is true: there are numerous poetic passages within Ecclesiastes.

But if the inclusion of Ecclesiastes in the “poetic books” of scripture leads us to expect another Psalms, we will probably be disappointed. The majority of the book is made up of prose (usually arguments and observations of one sort or another) and proverbial sayings of various lengths that do not conform to any standard poetic structure even in the original Hebrew.

Modern English versions distinguish the obviously poetic passages for us by indenting them. We are going to look at one today.

Too Hot to Handle: The Emperor’s New Clothes

The most recent version of this post is available here.

Tracking True

The most recent version of this post is available here.

Which Sense Makes the Most Sense?

In my internet wanderings, I frequently come across believers who are utterly convinced that the spiritual not only trumps the natural but invalidates it entirely.

There is indeed something to the first part of that: the spiritual is bound to be more important to the Christian than that which is merely natural. If we must choose, for instance, between responding to the promptings of flesh or Spirit, of course Spirit wins every time ... or ought to.

Laying a Conspiracy to Rest

Aaron Brake at Stand to Reason doesn’t like conspiracy theories. He thinks most of them are false and that acknowledging we believe them may damage our Christian testimony.

In the process of trying to make his case, Brake quotes at length from homicide detective J. Warner Wallace’s book Cold-Case Christianity. Wallace argues that successful conspiracy theories are very difficult to execute and maintain.

Anonymous Asks (59)

“Is suicide a mortal sin?”

Some people — Christians included — are going through incredibly tough times; emotionally, physically or both. For a person in unrelenting pain, the temptation to take a pass on more of the same when there seems to be no light at the end of the tunnel is very real indeed.

So since “mortal sin” is technically a Roman Catholic term, let’s ask them, at least for starters. I’ve always vaguely wondered what the official RC position was, but suicide is one of those issues I haven’t personally contemplated for almost forty years, and even when I did, I can’t say I was terribly serious about it.

A good long look at the tarmac from the top of a highway overpass will tend to dissuade all but the most committed. Turned out I was a dilettante.

Conspirators and Theorists

In a post entitled “Why You Should Resist Conspiracy Theories”, Stand to Reason’s Aaron Brake warns his fellow Christians about the dangers of falling for the counternarrative. Conspiracy theories, Brake says, are rarely true. If you believe them, you undermine your own witness, not to mention the case for the resurrection of Christ.

That’s a powerful statement to make, and it probably shouldn’t stand without a little closer examination.

I found Brake’s article extraordinary on a number of levels, so much so that I wandered around stewing about it for a couple of days before deciding to hazard a response. Oddly, I find that I mostly agree with his conclusions while disagreeing with almost everything he says on the way to getting there. More on that later.

Time and Chance (2)

More often than not, the Bible teacher who tells you the thing you are reading does not mean what it says in plain English is telling you sanctified fibs. Odds are he is explaining away the text rather than explaining it.

With a few notable exceptions (by which I mean the hacks who lend their expertise to Bible versions created specifically to push ideological agendas), translators are apolitical, honest and usually quite competent.

Too Hot to Handle: Nothing to Complain About

The most recent version of this post is available here.

Are We Teaching or Just Speeching?

The most recent version of this post is available here.

State o’ the Blog 2019

I was surprised to find that it’s only been about nine months since our last “State of the Blog” post. Seems like longer somehow. 2019 has been a busy year to date, with lots of changes in my own routine, and a few in IC’s as well.

It’s been a while since IC, Bernie and I could all be in the same room to chat about where we think we should be going with ComingUntrue. The most obvious issue that presents itself when we manage some phone time is that coming up on six years of daily blogging, we cannot help but notice our viewing stats are pretty flat over the last 12 months. Not tailing off, happily, but definitely not spiraling into the stratosphere either. Part of this may be down to my reluctance to pitch the blog on social media, part of it may be the esoteric nature of more than a few of our posts, and part of it may be — if we want to be honest with ourselves — stagnation.

Better to burn out than to fade away, said one of the prophets. Or maybe it was just Neil Young.

Anyway, none of us voted for working harder at stagnating, so that’s off the table.

Christ Where He Doesn’t Belong

Back in the days when my brothers and I were happily misbehaving in the back row of open Sunday School, we quickly learned how to answer questions for treats. Like performing seals, we tried to outdo one another for a pencil, badge or snack.

Horrible, really, when you think about it.

The idea was that when the superintendent asked a question, the kid who got his or her hand up first won the prize, which naturally encouraged all kinds of cheating. The most effective way to cheat was to stab your arm up into the stratosphere long before the question was finished, and sometimes before it started. The downside was that you really didn’t have a clue what you were supposed to be responding to.

Anonymous Asks (58)

“How can I witness to peers who have intelligent answers to all my arguments for Christianity?”

At some point we all hit the upper end of our capacity to effectively persuade others with dialectical arguments. Education, IQ, maturity, grasp of relevant facts, logical mindset, time spent in the word of God and life experience are all “ceilings” of a sort. Limitations in these areas, understandable or otherwise, create a barrier beyond which we become significantly less persuasive when we try to make the case for the gospel to people on the higher end of each spectrum.

Some of these barriers may be hurdled with sufficient time, prayer and hard work; others, like IQ, are pretty much hardwired whether we like it or not.