The most recent version of this post is available here.
“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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Sunday, September 10, 2017
Saturday, September 09, 2017
Private Interpretation
I believe all scripture is breathed out by God. That’s not a new idea and it won’t shock anyone here. Holding and maintaining that view of the Bible is one of the marks of orthodoxy going back to the first century.
I’ve been enjoying the
book of Job recently, every word of it God-breathed and profitable. But that does
NOT mean every word of it is correct.
No, really.
Labels:
Hebrews
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Interpretation
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Job
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Scripture
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Truth
Friday, September 08, 2017
Too Hot to Handle: Not Going to Nashville [Part 1]
In which our regular writers toss around
subjects a little more volatile than usual.
The Nashville Statement is a significant evangelical document. It’s an attempt by big names such as
John Piper, R.C. Sproul, John MacArthur, Russell Moore, James Dobson and others to formulate a written response to Western culture’s post-Christian “massive
revision of what it means to be a human being”, especially as that revision relates to sexuality and marriage.
Significant
though it may be, in our next few installments we’ll be discussing why, here
at ComingUntrue, we’re Not Going to Nashville.
Tom: Anyone who reads here regularly will be well aware how much I
dislike creeds, statements of faith and formal declarations. I won’t be signing
this one, IC (big surprise there). All the same, I think a bunch of the usual
suspects have done a passable job of distilling the convictions of a large
swath of Western Christians into as few words as possible, whether or not we
agree with everything they’re saying or precisely the way they expressed it.
For that reason alone, it might be an interesting exercise to work our way
through it and discuss what we like about the way it’s been framed, and what
we don’t.
Sound like a plan?
Labels:
Creation
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Genesis
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Marriage
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Sexuality
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The Nashville Statement
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Too Hot to Handle
Thursday, September 07, 2017
Sometimes Burning is Better
My mother had all but
given up on being married when she met my father. At very least she had
determined to walk with the Lord and serve him with a whole heart whether or
not she ended up doing it alone. Or so I remember hearing the story told.
My father, to the best
of my knowledge, wasn’t really looking for a wife when he met my mother. He was
busy preaching and teaching and seizing whatever opportunities to serve that
the Lord put in his way. My take on it is that he was seeking first the
kingdom of God and found to his delight that some other things got “added unto”
him along the way, so to speak.
With such ambivalence about
actively pursuing marriage on both sides, it’s a wonder I’m here to type this
today. They might well have missed each other. And yet ... here we are.
Labels:
1 Corinthians
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Love
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Marriage
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Proverbs
Wednesday, September 06, 2017
‘Christian’ in 2017
What does it mean to be “Christian” in a day of access to a near-infinite plethora of diverse perspectives
and opinions?
We might choose to ask Mihee Kim-Kort, who calls herself a “Presbyterian minister, agitator, speaker, writer, and slinger of
hopeful stories about faith and church.” For Mihee, being Christian means being
Feminist, Democrat, pro-abortion, pro-immigration, a community activist and an
advocate for and supporter of all women of color — not necessarily in
that order.
This is all in the course of a single blog post, by the way, one that makes no reference whatsoever to the word of God.
Labels:
Homosexuality
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John
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Sin
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Social Justice
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Transgenderism
Tuesday, September 05, 2017
A Pocket Full of Glory
I mean, I’ve preached
on 2 Corinthians 4, and I have a feeling I may have botched the
passage rather horribly.
This was years ago, but I still recall a post-meeting
conversation with a sniffling middle-aged lady. She was at the time embroiled in an exceptionally tough family situation and wanted to thank
me. And to be fair, it had been a fairly encouraging message: “For this
light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison,” Paul says. Wonderful. Very uplifting.
I never thought to ask the question “Who’s
the US here?”
Labels:
2 Corinthians
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Glory
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Reward
Monday, September 04, 2017
Visions of Their Own Minds
Saturday’s post ended with my contention that while teachers need to study
scripture to be accurate, a prophet doesn’t (or rather, real, biblical prophets didn’t). A true prophet — good or bad, wise or
foolish, ignorant or prudent — simply repeated what God had told him.
Interestingly, the commentary I’m reading
on Daniel this morning addresses this very issue:
“We read of [Daniel] how each vision was
connected with the deepest soul exercise, with fasting and prayer as well as
the reading of those portions of the Word of God he possessed.”
— Arno C. Gaebelein
Now, Gaebelein’s not
wrong about Daniel’s study habits.
Sunday, September 03, 2017
Fake News
The most recent version of this post is available here.
Labels:
C.S. Lewis
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Media
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Prophecy
Saturday, September 02, 2017
Seven Reasons I Don’t Believe You’re a Prophet
I still recall vividly my childish
frustration with the bits of C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia books that take place in WWII-era England. I wanted the Pevensies to hurry up and get through the magic wardrobe, or
climb up on the picture frame in Eustace Scrubb’s bedroom, or for Eustace and Jill Pole to open the mysterious door in the stone wall behind the gym at their boarding school, or just go ahead and use whatever
method they were going to use to travel to the land of talking beasts, dwarves,
witches, giants and who-knows-what; the place where all the truly exciting
things were happening. England was drab, grey and uninteresting by comparison.
I think some people feel pretty much the same
way about the Christian life. They keep hoping for something a little zippier to come along.
Labels:
Prophecy
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Scripture
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Spiritual Gifts
Friday, September 01, 2017
Too Hot to Handle: ‘Apostles’ and ‘Prophets’
The most recent version of this post is available here.
Labels:
Apostles
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False Teachers
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INC
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Prophecy
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Too Hot to Handle
Thursday, August 31, 2017
Semi-Random Musings (2)
There’s often quite a difference between what
we assume went on in a Bible story
and what probably really happened.
My mental pictures of Bible characters and
their environment tend to auto-default to the flannelgraph cutouts of my Sunday
School years. These presumably came from the fertile minds of whoever was
drafted to produce the art for the curriculum. But such sacred two-dimensional
imaginings are not necessarily the first thing a ten-year old challenges or
even notices. They are what they are, and they stuck with me.
This was long before Veggie Tales, so thankfully I don’t carry around the mental image
of the prophet Daniel as played by Larry the Cucumber. Not much, anyway.
Labels:
Job
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Semi-Random Musings
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Teaching
Wednesday, August 30, 2017
Things NOT Done in the Body
The most recent version of this post is available here.
Labels:
Christian Testimony
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Judgment
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Sin
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Witness
Tuesday, August 29, 2017
Letters from the Best Man (7)
The following is
absolutely fictional and increasingly common. There is no Brad and definitely
no Jill, in case that is not obvious. There are, however, way too many people
in their position.
I haven’t had much of a chance to work through what you
shared with me in your email, nor an opportunity to pray about it the way I
intend to, but I figure it’s better to get back to you sooner than later.
You’re right, I must confess: I never in a million years
expected to hear from you. I’m almost positive the last time we saw each other
was at Brad and Jill’s wedding, which makes it over a decade now. And I agree:
discussing my best friend’s failing marriage with his mother-in-law puts me in
almost as awkward a position as it puts you to discuss your daughter’s current relationship
problems with me. I expect neither of us will be at our best as we are both
working with understandable biases and with only partial information. But I
think if we are careful and Christian about it we may be able to do some good
for two people we love without breaking any confidences or meddling in their lives.
Deal?
Labels:
1 Corinthians
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Divorce
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Gossip
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Letters from the Best Man
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Marriage
Monday, August 28, 2017
Poking the Bear
“A soft answer turns away wrath”, says the writer of Proverbs. I learned that as a child,
though I didn’t always use it to my advantage. Still, it’s a good bit of wisdom
to have up your sleeve in a confrontation, and too few people today know much
about how to de-escalate a conflict.
But what if it’s not
your objective to defuse anger? What if you’re looking to provoke a strong
emotional reaction?
Labels:
Esther
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Paul
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Provocation
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Stephen
Sunday, August 27, 2017
A Different Package
Yonatan Zunger is a former Distinguished
Engineer at Google, a product of Stanford and a very smart guy, so it’s a
little surprising to find him making spectacularly unrealistic generalizations
like this one: “Anyone can
learn how to write code.”
The context of the comment is unimportant
and would take way too long to explain, but having spent a significant portion
of the last 20 years troubleshooting other people’s rather sad attempts
at writing code — or even at manipulating existing code — I almost laughed out loud when I read it.
Still, we should probably cut Mr. Zunger some slack
and assume he didn’t mean to make such an absurd and utterly unsupportable
claim.
Labels:
Bible
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Bible Study
/
Reading
Saturday, August 26, 2017
Calls and Feelings
Two weeks ago I posted
some thoughts on the “gift of singleness” that didn’t conveniently fit into an earlier post (the one in which John Piper gives advice about marriage to a single mother).
There was another
interesting thought-thread associated with the woman’s question, and since
Piper hasn’t addressed it, I think it’s time to take a whack at it. It’s this
statement I’m referring to:
“Now,
as I attempt to wrap my head around the overwhelming task of raising this boy
into a man by myself, I do not feel called to marriage.”
“Feeling called” may
be a very common evangelical trope, but ask yourself this: Exactly how biblical
is it?
Labels:
Calling
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John Piper
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Marriage
/
Will of God
Friday, August 25, 2017
Too Hot to Handle: The Christian View of Premarital Sex [Part 1]
In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.
In an article appropriately entitled “Premarital Sex: Is It A Sin Or Not?” Charles Toy of TheChristianLeft.org contends it’s … not:
“There is no passage of the Bible that references premarital sex as a sin against God. The association between sin and premarital sex is a new Christian idea. The only possible reference to premarital sex being a sin in the Bible is in the New Testament. This premise although, is generally dismissed by theologians because the Greek word pornei, or sexual immorality is commonly incorrectly translated into the English word fornication.”
Tom: Immanuel Can, what say you?
Labels:
Interpretation
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Premarital Sex
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Recycling
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Sexuality
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Too Hot to Handle
Thursday, August 24, 2017
The Positives of Negatives
The most recent version of this post is available here.
Labels:
Stewardship
Wednesday, August 23, 2017
Fatal Friends: Dawkins and Calvin
The most recent version of this post is available here.
Labels:
Determinism
/
Neo-Calvinism
/
Richard Dawkins
Tuesday, August 22, 2017
Freedom: The False and the True
The most recent version of this post is available here.
Labels:
Character of God
/
Freedom
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