“Love often manifests itself in giving people what they can’t appreciate and don’t want, and
in demanding from them precisely what they most want to retain for themselves.” — Tom
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Saturday, July 25, 2015
Crazy Uncle
Normally, I’d leave
something like this alone. It is, after all, the Huffington
Post, and anything they have to say on the subject of Christianity is almost
guaranteed to be dismissive, frivolous and poorly informed.
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”.
Labels:
Apostle Paul
/
Inspiration
/
Interpretation
/
Scripture
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.
Labels:
Government
/
Islam
/
Leftism
/
Persecution
/
Too Hot to Handle
Thursday, July 23, 2015
Wednesday, July 22, 2015
Too Much for Sunday School
The most recent version of this post is available here.
Labels:
Daniel
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Heaven
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New Jerusalem
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Symbolism
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.
Labels:
Belief
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Church
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Creeds
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Practice
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Statements of Faith
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
Failure to Choose is a Choice Too
The most recent version of this post is available here.
Labels:
Interpretation
/
Luke
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Scripture
Saturday, July 18, 2015
Fulfilling or Destroying
A couple of days ago I posted some thoughts on the place of the Law of Moses in the life of the
Christian.
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.
Labels:
Grace
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Law
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Moses
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Sermon on the Mount
Friday, July 17, 2015
Too Hot to Handle: Diluting the Faith
The most recent version of this post is available here.
Labels:
Church
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Modern Christianity
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Too Hot to Handle
/
William Booth
Thursday, July 16, 2015
Progressive Revelation and Paradigm Shifts
The most recent version of this post is available here.
Labels:
Paradigm Shifts
/
Progressive Revelation
/
Progressivism
Wednesday, July 15, 2015
Authentic Me
The most recent version of this post is available here.
Labels:
Authenticity
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Christianity
Tuesday, July 14, 2015
Forgive or Die
The most recent version of this post is available here.
Labels:
Dispensationalism
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Forgiveness
/
Matthew
/
Sermon on the Mount
Monday, July 13, 2015
Dispensing With Dispensations
If you are the
average, practical Christian just looking to apply practical Christian
principles practically to your life, feel free to tune out here.
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.
Labels:
Church
/
Dispensationalism
/
Israel
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.)
Labels:
Authority
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Government
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Marriage
/
Recommend-a-blog
Saturday, July 11, 2015
Enemy Territory
The most recent version of this post is available here.
Labels:
Authority
/
Homosexuality
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Satan
Friday, July 10, 2015
Too Hot to Handle: American Laodicea
The most recent version of this post is available here.
Labels:
Laodicea
/
Too Hot to Handle
Thursday, July 09, 2015
Ezekiel and the Future of Palestine
The most recent version of this post is available here.
Labels:
Ezekiel
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Israel
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Palestinians
/
Prophecy
Wednesday, July 08, 2015
It Ain’t Personal
The most recent version of this post is available here.
Labels:
Leadership
/
Moses
/
Samuel
Tuesday, July 07, 2015
Culture War and Surrender
Someone recently
recommended this David Brooks column in the New
York Times as the “correct true Christian response” to the ongoing culture
war.
For those unfamiliar
with the name, Wikipedia refers to Brooks as a “non-observant” Jew and
“conservative political and cultural commentator” — in other words, not
exactly a leading spokesman for the Christian faith. Having read his op-eds on
occasion, I was pretty sure what I’d be in for.
Still, my morbid curiosity
won out, as it often does. Brooks starts with the obvious: the decline of
Christianity in the United States, the decreasing percentage of the electorate
made up of evangelical voters, millennial disinterest in institutional
religion, etc., etc.
Short version: “Christians,
you’re losing”.
Labels:
Culture
/
Progressivism
Monday, July 06, 2015
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