Anonymous Asks (222)

“Is premarital sex okay if you know you are going to be married?”

I have written a fair bit here about the barnacles that encrust the institution of marriage today: how matrimony as God originally designed it required the approval of neither church nor state; how rings, dresses and ceremonies are extra-biblical window dressing; how even vows are a bit extraneous.

From a heavenly perspective, little of what we do today in preparation for binding two lives together is actually essential. Frankly, even romantic love is optional.

Persistent Prayer and Tribulation

“There was a widow in that city who kept coming to him …”

Don’t measure God’s care for you by what you’ve got and haven’t got; by your problems or your prosperity. Don’t measure those things. They have nothing to do with the character of God.

The character of God is to be measured at the cross — “God so loved the world”, “God shows his love for us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” — that’s where the measure of God’s love is. That never changes.

Mining the Minors: Micah (10)

Last week we invested a couple thousand words in discussing the three verses Micah and Isaiah have in common. The differences between the two passages in the original Hebrew are so miniscule as to not be worthy of lengthy discussion. It is obvious these two prophetic contemporaries were right on the same page in their messages to the nation of Judah at a time when, if not for the reforms of King Hezekiah, it might well have joined its sister kingdom in Assyrian exile.

However, from this point on the preachers part ways. This week I’d like to consider the differences between the two sermons that follow.

Too Hot to Handle: Outspoken Faith or Poor Judgment?

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

You may not have heard of him, but Kelvin Cochran was Fire Chief in Atlanta up until last week when he was terminated by the mayor. He was also a Christian. You can read about it here if you’re interested.

There is some disagreement as to precisely why he was fired, but the bottom line is that if he had not published a book entitled Who Told You That You Were Naked?, in which he expressed his understanding of the biblical view of homosexuality, he would still be employed.

Tom: Immanuel Can, former Fire Chief Cochran is not the first and won’t be the last Christian to lose his job as a consequence — whether it’s a remote or a direct consequence — of taking the Bible seriously and saying so publicly. We are both Christians with opinions who still work for a living. What’s your take on this developing trend?

Media and the Gospel

“The medium is the message”, said the great philosopher of mass media, Marshall McLuhan.

It’s his most oft-quoted line, since it’s so often true. When you have a message to send, you’ve got to be very careful about the form (i.e. the “method” or “medium”) in which you’re sending it, or the message itself can become horribly distorted.

What Makes a Church a Church?

Asked in an online forum last week: Is our social media community a church?

Interesting question, and one that almost nobody would have posed with any degree of seriousness prior to COVID. But if you think lurking in a Zoom meeting is “gathering” in anything remotely approximating the biblical sense (and apparently many Christians do), then it’s not unreasonable to ask how far you might take the concept of virtual church.

Naturally, a spate of comments followed.

The Jumping-Off Point

Many years ago, long before they were woke, crazy and depraved, I was a big superhero comic book fan. I owned shelves full of them. In my early twenties while still in college, I wrote and drew a few published comic books to see if I could make a career out of it. (I probably could have been passable if I had persisted with it, but I would never have been a top-drawer industry professional.)

Superhero comic books are like soap operas in that they tell multiple small stories within larger story arcs that overlap and never really end. The idea is to get the reader invested in the characters and coming back month after month to see what happens next.

Anonymous Asks (221)

“Why are so many Christian public figures caught in scandals?”

The apostle Paul wrote about stumbling blocks that threaten to trip us up, destroy our public testimony, and try our faith to the breaking point: “No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.”

If this is truly the case — and note that it’s God’s faithfulness upon which this promise stands — then why do so many Christian public figures succumb to temptation?

Restoring the Image of God

“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, from the words of my groaning?”

“In Hades, being in torment, he lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham far off and Lazarus at his side.”

Keep those two accounts in your mind: Psalm 22, the suffering of Christ, and this second passage in Luke, the suffering of another man in hell. We want to think about the relationship between those two.

Mining the Minors: Micah (9)

Chapter 4 begins with three verses of text that are strikingly similar to Isaiah 2:2-4. The differences between the two passages are trivial: in Micah, the words ʿam (“peoples”, which can mean either “nations” or “tribes”) and gôy (“nations”) are reversed at the end of verse 1, the beginning of verse 2 and the beginning of verse 3, but since they are clearly being used as synonyms, nothing of significance turns on that. Also, in verse 3 Isaiah has “He … shall decide disputes for many peoples”, while Micah has “strong nations far away”.

Other than these minute differences and a couple of irrelevant prepositions, the passages are word-for-word identical in the original Hebrew. Most of our English translations reflect this.

Too Hot to Handle: Enforcing Conformity

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

In an opinion piece entitled “Bigotry, the Bible and the Lessons of Indiana”, Frank Bruni of the New York Times says what much of our culture is thinking about Christians these days.

Riffing on the ‘Memories Pizza’ story from back in 2015, in which a pizzeria in Indiana was forced to closed its doors by a barrage of online threats after its Christian owner answered a hypothetical question about catering same-sex weddings, Mr. Bruni starts with the statement that “Homosexuality and Christianity don’t have to be in conflict in any church anywhere.”

Are We Teaching or Just Speeching?

If you tell me, I forget.
If you show me, I remember.
If you involve me, I understand.

— Old Teaching Axiom

In his recent post on the subject of platform preaching, Tom writes, “For the purposes of this post, I’m going to assume that one-man platform ministry is the way to go, not because I believe it to be the most scriptural model, but because it’s what we’re all doing and I see little hope for wholesale change.”

He just doesn’t see any reasonable prospect that we can be induced to reevaluate our conventional church behaviors to the extent of questioning the value of platform ministry.

Well, Tom and I usually agree. But not on everything. Not on this.

One Small Amendment

My father used to stress the importance of never looking at our fellow believers without seeing them as Christ has remade them, as new creatures in him. I watched him live this out in his dealings with Christians in churches all over the province over a period of decades, more than a few of whom I would happily have written off.

Dad never would.

Successful Accomplices and Failed Obstacles

Two prophecies came to pass the day Jehu was anointed king of Israel. Both predictions had been made by the prophet Elijah, and both were between sixteen and seventeen years old. Neither had been forgotten, though Elijah had by then taken his last chariot ride.

Before departing this earthly scene, Elijah anointed Elisha as his successor. Sometime later, Elisha called one of the sons of the prophets — a prophet-in-training — and commissioned him to anoint one of King Joram’s army commanders, a man named Jehu, to be king over Israel in Joram’s place.

Anonymous Asks (220)

“Are people who claim God talks to them insane?”

In the pages of scripture, God talks to men all the time. The closer we go back to the beginning of human history, the more it happened. He conversed with Adam and Eve in the garden. He even had multiple conversations with Cain, who became our world’s first murderer. He spoke to Abraham audibly at least seven times.

Of course, we have to remember that was over a thirty year period, and Abraham lived to be 175. God was speaking less and less as time went by, even to men he considered friends.

Trust and the Nitty Gritty

When I receive the Lord Jesus Christ as Savior, I begin a life of trust. And the faith that begins when I believe on him is a faith that God intends to continue.

But there is great enemy of our faith. The apostle Paul, speaking about this enemy of our faith, Satan, says, “We are not ignorant of his designs.”

How can he say that, when Satan is a powerful spirit whom none of us has ever seen? How can he say we are not ignorant of his designs?

Mining the Minors: Micah (8)

It has been pointed out more than once that, like Jonah’s prophesy of the destruction of Nineveh, Micah’s prophesy of the destruction of Jerusalem was not fulfilled in his lifetime. When the people of Nineveh repented, God gave them another century before razing the city to the ground. When the people of Judah repented, he gave them something like a century and a half.

That doesn’t make Micah’s messages to Judah between 740 and 700 BC or thereabouts, which we have recorded for us here, either irrelevant or inaccurate. It certainly doesn’t mean God’s word was nullified. It just means his pronouncements against Judah came true later rather than sooner.

God’s verdict wasn’t “case dismissed”, it was “judgment delayed”. Chapter 3 gives us a snapshot of the “court proceedings”.

Too Hot to Handle: When We ALL Get to Heaven

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

The Huffington Post headline reads “Pope Francis Says Atheists Who Do Good Are Redeemed, Not Just Catholics”.

The Post adds, “Pope Francis rocked some religious and atheist minds today when he declared that everyone was redeemed through Jesus, including atheists. During his homily at Wednesday Mass in Rome, Francis emphasized the importance of ‘doing good’ as a principle that unites all humanity.”

Inbox: Richard Carrier’s Moral Philosophy

With respect to one of our older posts, a reader writes:

“Richard Carrier has a lot of very detailed writings which establish his moral philosophy as both true and superseding all others. A quick google search will bring up quite a lot of it.”

— metautopiandreamer

First, my apologies to any readers who find the ensuing response too technical and wordy. The above comment more or less makes it unavoidable.

A One-Sentence Prayer

“The Lord be with your spirit.”

“The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit.”

This first quote is the last line of 2 Timothy. The second is the last line of both Galatians and Philemon. Paul liked to close with it when writing people he cared about passionately, meaning that it wasn’t a throwaway sentiment or a meaningless spiritual cliché. It’s more than a fond wish; it’s a one-sentence prayer, or a blessing.

So what is he saying exactly?