As I have mentioned
many times before, Doug, despite being postmillennialist Calvinist Reformed
(is any of that redundant?) is one of my favourite Christian bloggers. He’s
been on a tear lately about unity in the Body of Christ; a very reasonable
concern that is close, I suggest, to the heart of our Saviour.
“God is interested in our willing participation in his plan for our lives, not in micro-managing helpless automatons.” — Tom
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Thursday, November 03, 2016
Here, Let Me Fix That For You
Labels:
Douglas Wilson
/
Unity
Wednesday, November 02, 2016
Threatened by Intelligence
A series of studies done at University of Buffalo, California
Lutheran U. and the University of Texas, Austin, appear to show that while many
men say they would like a partner who
is smarter than they are when the question is purely hypothetical, when
confronted with the reality they really … don’t.
“Six
studies revealed that when evaluating psychologically distant targets, men
showed greater attraction toward women who displayed more (vs. less) intelligence
than themselves. In contrast, when targets were psychologically near, men
showed less attraction toward women who outsmarted them.”
This is surprising? Seriously?
Labels:
Intelligence
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James
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Proverbs
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Wisdom
Tuesday, November 01, 2016
Rare In These Days
Northern hairy-nosed wombats are rare. |
The writer of 1 Samuel
notes that in the days before Samuel was called, “the word of the Lord was rare ... there was no frequent vision”.
Now, the Holy Spirit is not for a moment
suggesting that the people of Israel lacked necessary direction from God for
their lives, or that it was impossible to please God because nobody had the
slightest idea what he wanted.
Not at all.
Labels:
1 Samuel
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Acts
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Joel
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Spiritual Gifts
Monday, October 31, 2016
Just Play the Hits
Bear with me. This is
trivial. And then maybe it isn’t.
Last night I dreamed I
drove down a long, winding highway in the dark to a great lodge, festively lit.
Upon parking, I was greeted deferentially and shown to a huge stage with sound,
lights and seating for thousands. People with tickets and drinks in hand were
gradually being seated, talking among themselves. A crew was wiring up mics and
amplifiers, a sound man was testing levels. A buzz was in the air.
I looked at my watch: it was 7:25. My host said, “You’re on at eight.”
Labels:
Hebrews
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Hell
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Judgment
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Revelation
Sunday, October 30, 2016
From the Ash Heap
“Then the woman went her way and ate,
and her face was no longer sad.”
Hannah, who would become Samuel’s mother, is
deeply grieved that she is unable to conceive. She has gone up with her husband
to the house of God in Shiloh, and she has prayed for a son, vowing that if her
prayer is answered, she will raise him as a Nazirite and give him wholly to the
service of God. Then she gets up, relieved of her distress, and goes her
way — not yet having received an answer to her prayer.
Seems a bit counterintuitive, doesn’t it?
Saturday, October 29, 2016
Command Performance
The most recent version of this post is available here.
Labels:
Christ
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Hebrews
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Ten Commandments
Friday, October 28, 2016
Too Hot to Handle: Heretics Aplenty
The most recent version of this post is available here.
Labels:
Heresy
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Too Hot to Handle
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Truth
Thursday, October 27, 2016
The Other Fly in the Ointment
The careful student of scripture, as I have pointed out in
two recent posts, gets his cues about appropriate Christian behaviour and
church order from instructions found in the New Testament. Historical narrative
in the Bible provides us with much useful information, but it should not be
considered authoritative in the same way as is a direct commandment.
That’s a useful principle to observe if you want to avoid
confusion. God is probably not calling you to exterminate idolatrous
Canaanites, slay giants with a slingshot or lead a slave uprising in Egypt.
Likewise, he probably does not expect you to perform miracles, speak in foreign
languages you don’t understand or predict a coming famine.
Still, every rule of interpretation seems to have its
occasional exception, which is lamentable in that it requires us to exercise
discernment rather than simply checking boxes. Oops.
Labels:
1 Peter
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Corinthians
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Interpretation
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Thessalonians
Wednesday, October 26, 2016
Weights and Mirrors
In two previous posts,
I’ve tried to distinguish between: (1) historical narrative in scripture,
and (2) the commands of God — basically, between description and
prescription.
Why? Well, because
people frequently crack open “holy books” in search of answers to questions that are very personal, and reading historical narrative as if it is God’s
direction for your life can lead to considerable confusion — like the atheist who thinks the Bible says ritual castration will get you into heaven. I
suspect the Lord would prefer that we not experience that sort of muddled thinking. My
advice is to read commands as commands, and history as history.
But let me play
devil’s advocate for a moment and point out a fly in my own ointment, if
you will.
Labels:
Interpretation
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James
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Law
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Matthew
Tuesday, October 25, 2016
A Chameleon Turning Plaid
Hey, I’m trying! I’m trying! |
Easy question: What do all these statements have in common?
“It’s locker room talk — it’s one of those things.”
“If everybody’s watching all of the backroom discussions and the deals, then people get a little nervous, to say the least. So, you need both a public and a private position.”
“If everybody’s watching all of the backroom discussions and the deals, then people get a little nervous, to say the least. So, you need both a public and a private position.”
Labels:
Corinthians
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Donald Trump
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Ecclesiastes
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Hillary Clinton
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Honesty
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Lies
Monday, October 24, 2016
Inbox: Description vs. Prescription
In response to the post Is and Ought, Tertius writes:
“Long
time Bible readers will make such distinctions, but perhaps not know the way to
explain to others why they must be made. You have put a well packaged set of
rules for interpretation and application in their hands and so are helping
teachers how to teach; a much needed service to the Church.
An
example or two of the common mistake of using the descriptive in the narrative
in Acts as though it was prescriptive would be a useful addition.”
I agree. I think we can probably find several.
Labels:
Acts
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Church
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Inbox
/
Interpretation
Sunday, October 23, 2016
What Sort of Heart?
This quote has stuck with me over the past
couple of weeks, maybe because it is not just those who would like the Bible to teach universal salvation that see this type of thinking as the ultimate expression of moral goodness.
“What sort of a heart could approve of eternal death for
some? The doctrine of Universal Salvation teaches that all will have eternal
life, including Satan and the demons. And that one day, all will have the same
nature as God. What sort of a heart could not approve of Universal Salvation,
eternal life for all?”
Explicitly or between the lines, it boils down to this: anyone who wouldn’t grant eternal
bliss, joy, happiness and God-likeness to Satan, Hitler, Stalin and every liar
and murderer in human history that hates and rejects the Son of God is, well ... insufficiently morally developed.
Labels:
Christ
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Judgment
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Recycling
/
Universalism
Saturday, October 22, 2016
Sailing the High Seas
The most recent version of this post is available here.
Labels:
Andrew Klavan
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Education
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Faith
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Testimony
Friday, October 21, 2016
Too Hot to Handle: God and the Child of Divorce
The most recent version of this post is available here.
Labels:
Agnosticism
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Divorce
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Too Hot to Handle
Thursday, October 20, 2016
The Distance
The space between God and man is quite a distance to
bridge, isn’t it.
I’m not talking about the distance between hell and heaven,
or the moral distance between, say, Hitler and Jesus Christ. That’s obvious
enough to not require a labored explanation. I’m not even thinking of the need
to get saved or the importance of becoming reconciled to God and escaping the
judgement we are all due.
No, I’m speaking here, not as a member of a fallen race, but
as one who already knows and loves God and is seeking, however incompetently,
to stagger along in the footsteps of the Lord Jesus Christ.
The distance between — the difference between — me and him … good grief!
Labels:
Holiness
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John the Apostle
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Recycling
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Service
Wednesday, October 19, 2016
Is and Ought
The Bible tells it
like it is, and most times it tells us what we should do about it. But not
always at the same time, and not always in the same place.
Much of the Old
Testament record is very dispassionate; very ‘just the facts, Jack’. Sure, from
time to time an inspired author offers his editorial comment, but this is a
rarity. Most of the time, we are simply getting a record of what happened.
Those who need to find an application to their own lives beyond the obvious must
in many instances look elsewhere in scripture to do so.
To fail to note the
difference between the parts of scripture that are prescriptive and those that are merely descriptive is to invite confusion.
Labels:
Genesis
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Interpretation
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Matthew
Tuesday, October 18, 2016
Recollection and Response
Old Testament writers
often describe God in human terms, though we know from other statements in
scripture that many of the human qualities they ascribe to God cannot possibly
be true of him in precisely the same way they are true of us.
Memory is a good example, as Ashrei points out:
“To remember, so we are inclined to think, is primarily to preserve in our
consciousness a fact or an experience. A ‘good memory’ is one which
retains precisely and vividly that which has been seen, heard or learned. In
short, we tend to regard memory as simply one comprehensive archive. Retention
of the past has great significance per se. However, it hardly exhausts the
full range of memory.”
When the Old Testament speaks of God “remembering”, it does not merely refer to his ability to retain information, as it might with us.
Monday, October 17, 2016
A Chaotic Mess
Yesterday I mentioned one
similarity between churches in 2016 and life in Israel in the time of the judges roughly three thousand years ago.
This was an era repeatedly characterized with the statements, “There was no king in Israel” and “Everyone did what was right in his own eyes”. There was, of course, God’s law, given to Moses, and the name of Jehovah, the
God who had brought Israel out of Egypt into Canaan. These somewhat influenced but
did not control the daily habits of Israelite worshipers. The revealed truth of God was thoroughly
co-mingled with the thinking and religious influences of Israel’s pagan
neighbours.
In short, Israel was a
chaotic mess.
Sunday, October 16, 2016
Unwanted Dedication
Staring at the train
wreck that is most of Western Christendom, it’s not hard to see one or
two points of comparison with Israel’s early days in the land of Canaan in
the time before God gave them a king. You know, that period the writer of Judges describes regularly with the phrase, “In those days there
was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes”.
Hmm. That’s pretty much the tale today. The
difference is that while Israel had no king, the Church has a living Head.
We are without Israel’s excuse.
Labels:
Dedication
/
Judges
Saturday, October 15, 2016
Wedded Blitz
The most recent version of this post is available here.
Labels:
Commitment
/
Marriage
/
Weddings
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