An old acquaintance obsessed with classical literature used to observe that her generation was “killing the adverb”. The vocabulary of her schoolmates had degenerated to the point that they no longer modified or qualified their verbs with the eloquence and succinctness possessed by the writers of previous generations.
She would not have found that in the New Testament, even in the most modern English translations. Far from being dead, the adverb is everywhere in the Christian life.
“It is required of stewards that they be found faithful.”
If you ever rise to the spiritual heights of the apostle Paul — and I have lately come to the conclusion that I am unlikely to manage that — you will be nothing more than a servant and a steward. That is the very best you and I may aspire to in the Christian life, and our efforts to remain conscious of the reality that everything we have been given has been temporarily entrusted to us by God are a mark of growing maturity in Christ.
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“How can we know the Holy Spirit is present with us when nobody is expressing strong feelings?”
Some Christians — often women, let’s be honest — evaluate the spiritual temperature of a religious gathering by its perceived emotional intensity; by whether participants spring a leak while praying, singing or sharing their thoughts. If they had their way, there would be a box of Kleenex in every pew and we would take our spiritual temperature by how often they need replacement.
Is this actually a biblical idea?
“There are some things in them that are hard to understand …”
Paul could be a difficult writer. Peter says as much, while affirming that the Holy Spirit carried along his fellow apostle throughout the authorial process.
It’s all too easy to point to examples in Paul’s epistles. The run-on sentences. The apparent digressions and rabbit trails. The practical instruction that turns out to be theology as well, and operates on two levels. It’s not exactly Christianity 101, but this is how God chose to reveal the mystery of Christ and the mystery of his church to the world. Who are we to say he should have done it differently?
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The prophet Zedekiah once forged a pair of animal horns out of iron as an object lesson for the kings of Israel and Judah, who were contemplating going up to Ramoth-gilead to fight the king of Syria. It must have been quite a dramatic moment when he trotted out his artistic creation in front of the two Hebrew kings on their thrones before a gathering of 400 prophets, crying out, “With these you shall push the Syrians until they are destroyed.” Too bad Zedekiah was actually a false prophet regurgitating what he thought King Ahab wanted to hear.
All the same, his literal “forgery” gives us a little bit of insight into the meaning of the imagery in Zechariah’s second vision.
In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.
Some people market Christianity like fire insurance, and others buy into it in fear of judgment. Then there are the folks like Joel Osteen who tell us being a believer will make us powerful and successful. Others who claim to represent Christ tell us that knowing Jesus will make us better human beings, improve our relationships or help us cope in bad times. Intellectual believers may say that in their search for truth, the Christian worldview best explains things about which they have always wondered.
Tom: Immanuel Can, there is a certain amount of rationality in most of these motives, but do they really get to the core of the Christian message?
“Clowns to the left of me,
Jokers to the right,
Here I am
Stuck in the middle with you.”
— Stealers Wheel, 1972
Doesn’t it seem these days like the world has divided right down the middle? We’ve got Conservatives and Liberals, Democrats and Republicans, Brexiters and Europhiles, open borders advocates and controlled immigration people, social justice warriors and free speech advocates, the politically correct and the deliberately controversial, individualists and collectivists … and on, and on, and on.
Iron and clay, maybe.
He’s Just Not That Into You was a 2009 romantic comedy that explored why relationships fail or succeed, and why a romantic pairing that appears to have “worked” for years suddenly stops working for one of the partners, whether it’s the man “falling out of love” with the woman or vice versa.
In the various couple-scenarios trotted out by the movie’s producers, it apparently never once occurred to them to introduce one in which the woman was on hormone-based birth control when she first became attracted to her future life partner, then stopped using the pill once they had committed to each other.
Maybe research into all “the pill’s” many side effects wasn’t quite there in 2009.
Actions have consequences. That’s easy to say, but the implications are not always so easy to unpack.
I was thinking about this a few days ago when a friend asked what the church can do (pre-emptively, rather than after the fact) about the frightening increase in children from Christian families who are identifying as gay, lesbian and trans.
My answer was immediate: Encourage committed Christian parents to work less and get by on lower incomes in order to free up time to home school their children from kindergarten on.
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“When does grief become excessive?”
Grief is appropriate in a fallen world. The Lord Jesus taught that those who mourn are blessed, and will be comforted, and that the poor in spirit will inherit the kingdom of heaven. Scripture teaches that God himself may be grieved by the sins of his children.
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Mark’s list of the twelve apostles includes the names of two fathers: Zebedee and Alphaeus. Matthew includes the same two fathers, and Luke includes Alphaeus.
If you wonder why, look no further than their sons, both of whom are called James. To distinguish between them, the gospel writers use the names of their fathers as what are called disambiguators, phrases that clarify the author’s intended meaning.
Good thing too, or the New Testament could get pretty confusing.
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The phrase “the angel of the Lord” occurs 58 times in 19 Old Testament passages. Three of these passages are in Zechariah. The name appears to designate a unique being distinct from and possessing greater authority than other angels, one who identifies himself with deity and acts as if he were God.
We know the Lord Jesus was active on God’s behalf during the OT period. When we add to that John’s claim that no one has ever seen God, and that God has been (and continues to be) made known only through his Son, the Word, the logical conclusion is that the angel of the Lord was a visual manifestation of the preincarnate Christ.
More on that shortly.
In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.
The German mathematician Johannes Kepler once responded to a question about his work in astronomy by saying “I was merely thinking God’s thoughts after him.” If that’s true in math or science or any search for “small-t truth”, it’s most applicable when we come to the study of God’s word. Explaining “Big-T Truth” for our fellow believers so they may grow up in Christ is one of the most important tasks ever given to men, and the challenge to do it right is described by Peter in the words “whoever speaks, as one who speaks oracles of God”.
Tom: IC, we were just emailing each other about a sequential exposition series you’ve been sharing with other men in your own local church. Describe for our readers the small problem you’ve encountered and have needed to work at overcoming in the process.
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“I know the Bible says we’re not supposed to depend on our feelings, but sometimes, honestly, it gets hard to feel my faith. Any thoughts?”
Feelings? Yes, they’re tricky things. You’re right to wonder about whether it’s not just a little too optimistic to simply suppose Christians never ought to feel down. We all have moments in life when things are not just a little dark, but really, really dark. What’s interesting, though, is that the writers of the Bible are far from unaware of this.
“You need to dial down the language,
Mr. Patout,” I said.
“Don’t you lecture me, boy,” he said.
— From
The New Iberia Blues
by James Lee Burke
Some subjects are difficult to talk or write about without giving offense. The use of appropriate language is one of them.
In internet parlance, an “echo chamber” is a sociological phenomenon produced by the algorithms on major websites that respond to our choices of viewing material with suggestions for other options.
Because web designers want users to ingest their content, read their advertising and buy the stuff they are flogging, anything we look at regularly online generates multiple opportunities to do more of the same and fewer and fewer invitations to do anything different. Amazon does it. Google does it. YouTube does it. Your favorite news website probably does it. Everybody does it.
Sometimes it’s merely irritating. Sometimes it’s downright funny. But you must have noticed it.
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“Should Christians in democracies feel obligated to vote?”
Voting is not mandatory. Depending on how you think about it, voting can be anything from a privilege to a perceived civic duty, or even an exercise in futility.
Let me give you an example of the latter. In Canada, a “riding” is an electoral district with fixed boundaries
rarely adjusted by the reigning Powers That Be unless it favors their party’s
“We brought nothing into the world, and we cannot take anything out of the world.”
No matter how public our profile in life may be, and no matter how good our intentions, one of the things we cannot take out of the world with us is any rock-solid evidence that we have reformed its institutions or brought light to the darkness of the culture around us in any lasting, positive way. Unlike the changes that Christ brings to the individual human heart, the effect of any changes we introduce into the system will always be fleeting at best.
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Two months before Zechariah began to receive messages from the Lord for the people of Judah, the prophet Haggai received his first recorded revelation, a message to the two men who represented civic and religious authority among the returned exiles, the governor Zerubbabel and the high priest Joshua. The Lord instructed these two to lead the people in rebuilding the temple, a project they had abandoned almost two decades prior.
Twenty-four days later, work began at the new temple site. Slightly less than a month after that, the Lord sent a word of encouragement to them through Haggai. Ten days later, Zechariah received his first message.
The people of Judah had shown their willingness to obey God when they realized obedience was the only alternative to unrelenting economic misery and personal frustration, but their hearts still needed serious spiritual work.
In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.
David de Bruyn’s series of Letters to Stagnant Christians at Churches Without Chests hit what both Immanuel Can and I considered its peak this week. It’s an insightful post entitled “Confirmation Bias” in which David makes the case that it is possible for Christians to fail to grow in Christ as they should, not because they agree too little with what they hear, but because they agree too much.
Tom: Now, that sounds a bit counterintuitive, doesn’t it, IC?
Immanuel Can: Well, yes. We might wonder how it’s possible to agree too much with anything God says. That seems highly implausible at first. You’re going to have to unpack that a bit, I’m thinking.