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“Every act of faithful leadership will be met with an equal and opposite act of sabotage.” — Joe Rigney
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Friday, October 27, 2017
Thursday, October 26, 2017
Wednesday, October 25, 2017
Dropping the Secular Pretense
“If secular America does not die, then America will die. If we do not drop the secular pretense with loathing then it is inevitable that God will drop us. With loathing.”
— Doug Wilson
Hey, Doug, somebody’s trying. The “secular
pretense” has officially been dropped. In fact, I can’t recall a world leader
who invoked the name of God more deliberately or with greater consistency than President Donald Trump in
the months since his inauguration.
You can like him, you can hate him, or you
can ignore him. You can claim he’s pandering to evangelicals, and you might
even be right. But he’s definitely doing something President Obama didn’t.
Labels:
America
/
Donald Trump
/
God
Tuesday, October 24, 2017
Bubbling Under the Surface
Sometimes God gets angry. Sometimes his righteous
and thoroughly justifiable anger is even directed at his servants:
“The Lord
was angry with me because of you.”
“The Lord was so angry with Aaron that
he was ready to destroy him.”
“The Lord
was angry with Solomon, because his heart had turned away from the Lord.”
“He
has cut down in fierce anger all the might of Israel; he has burned
like a flaming fire in Jacob, consuming all around.”
But the consequences of God’s anger (not to
mention its duration) are not always precisely the same.
Monday, October 23, 2017
Do We Need Revival?
I meet with a group of believers, more than one of whom prays regularly and passionately for revival.
Often these requests go beyond the local level and become a bit denominational in character. Occasionally they are even more sweeping, taking in all of evangelicalism, or perhaps the church throughout North America.
I’ve always found the term “revival” a little awkward, and I now realize why: notwithstanding our hymnology, “revive” is an Old Testament word and “revival” is really an Old Testament concept.
Labels:
Corinthians
/
Recycling
/
Restoration
/
Revival
Sunday, October 22, 2017
Kings and Functionaries
Israel said to the prophet Samuel, “Appoint for us a king to
judge us like all the nations.” They were looking for a judge and a defender, someone who would grant them justice against their domestic enemies and take up
arms against foreign enemies on their behalf. Instead, in Saul, after an
initial honeymoon period, they got a king who judged them arbitrarily,
oppressively, selfishly and moodily, and who fought on their behalf with only
limited success.
Exactly like all the nations.
Labels:
1 Samuel
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Barack Obama
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Donald Trump
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Government
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Psalms
Saturday, October 21, 2017
Basic Math
Most people can do basic math.
Maybe not everybody can do linear algebra,
probability or calculus, but even relatively low-IQ palace servants living
1000 years before the birth of Christ could hardly fail to notice that
David’s latest wife, Bathsheba, had just delivered a baby well short of the
average human gestation period of forty weeks.
Sure, David married Bathsheba the moment he
could reasonably get away with it. But nobody was fooled. Their affair had to
be the worst-kept secret in Jerusalem.
Labels:
David
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Fellowship
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Psalms
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Sin
Friday, October 20, 2017
Too Hot to Handle: Witchcraft Using Christian Language
The most recent version of this post is available here.
Labels:
Benny Hinn
/
Prosperity Gospel
/
Too Hot to Handle
Thursday, October 19, 2017
What About the Witches?
The most recent version of this post is available here.
Labels:
Atheism
/
Salem Witch Trials
Wednesday, October 18, 2017
R.E.S.P.E.C.T.
Galilee probably looked something like this in the time of Isaiah. |
Nelson Jones at New
Statesman has
taken up the issue at some length in response to
a recent statement from British Prime Minister David Cameron: “It is the case that
Christians are now the most persecuted religion around the world,” Cameron
said. “We should stand up against persecution of Christians and other faith
groups wherever and whenever we can.”
Jones starts his article by appearing to agree with Cameron
and others who have voiced similar sentiments but as he meanders on, it becomes
evident that what he really wants to say is: 1) religion causes fighting, 2) Muslims are persecuted too, 3) “persecution” is a relative term, and 4) anyway,
if Christians ARE being persecuted, it’s
certainly not because of their faith.
Which pretty much covers all the bases.
Tuesday, October 17, 2017
That Poorly-Attended Prayer Meeting
Another article on the church, and yet another concerned comment about poorly-attended prayer meetings.
It’s a “head-scratcher”, we’re told.
Scratch no more, my good friends. It’s
not that tough from where I sit.
I’m not sure that
there are all that many Christians who really believe their church can succeed
without prayer. Rather, I think the message many Christians are sending when
they beat feet in the other direction at prayer meeting time might just be that
they’re not convinced their church needs or wants THEIR prayers, or that their
attendance on any given week will make the slightest bit of difference either
to the Lord or to their fellow believers.
Much of the time I
suspect they’re right.
Labels:
Change
/
Prayer
/
Public Prayer
Monday, October 16, 2017
Love and Response
Several years ago I
gave some good advice to a struggling, depressed young adult. Basic things,
really: Go to bed at the same time every night, get up at the same time every morning, brush your teeth and get dressed rather than lying around moping until all hours. Eat properly. Exercise. Clean
up after yourself. Jordan Peterson stuff, but before everybody knew who Jordan
Peterson is.
Sunday, October 15, 2017
When to Stop
Scientists who subscribe to the the Big Bang Theory seem compelled to seek out some earlier cause for each event in their chain. Everything happens, they reason, because something else happened first. So, for instance, this astronomer argues that the “highly concentrated ball of matter” from which the
universe is supposed to have begun was the product of decaying photons.
We might try to frame this sort of argument in the
language of the book of Hebrews by saying this: something “visible” (in this
example, light) eventually gave rise to “what is seen” (in this case, matter).
But obviously the writer of Hebrews would disagree with that formulation.
Saturday, October 14, 2017
Semi-Random Musings (3)
Some meanings are just lost, I’m afraid. At least that’s how it seems to me when I dig into the original languages of
scripture in hope of finding the most accurate translation of specific words.
To the post-modernist, a text means
whatever he pleases at any particular moment. Authorial intent doesn’t matter
in the slightest because the post-modernist assures us intent cannot be known
and, further, if intent could be
known it would carry no more weight than the most trivial and uninformed
interpretation of the reader.
Word studies? Who cares?
Labels:
Job
/
Rick Warren
/
Semi-Random Musings
Friday, October 13, 2017
Too Hot to Handle: See You in Court, Brother
The most recent version of this post is available here.
Labels:
1 Corinthians
/
Law
/
Lawsuits
/
Matthew
/
Too Hot to Handle
Wednesday, October 11, 2017
I Liked You Better Before You Apologized
Here’s Carolina Panthers quarterback Cam Newton last Wednesday, responding to a question
from a female reporter about the “physicality” of one of his wide-receivers as he runs downfield:
“It’s
funny to hear a female talk about ‘routes.’ It’s funny.”
Oops.
Cut to the same Cam Newton last
Thursday, after social media erupted over his “sexism” and at least one of his
corporate sponsors went off in search of greener pastures:
“I
sincerely apologize … I’m a father to two beautiful daughters and at their age
I try to instill in them that they can do and be anything that they want
to be.”
You know, I kinda liked
Cam better before he apologized.
Labels:
Offences
/
Truth
/
Women's Role
Tuesday, October 10, 2017
Jesus@Home
At the beginning of
his public ministry, Jesus established a base of operations near the Sea of
Galilee at Capernaum, about 40 miles from Nazareth where he had grown up. Matthew
tells us he made this move right after the arrest of John the Baptist, in fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy.
It was near Capernaum
that he called his first disciples, preached the Sermon on the Mount and calmed
the storm. It was from the same region that he sent out the Twelve into the
rest of Israel to proclaim the kingdom of heaven.
Monday, October 09, 2017
Implementing the Peace Principle
Legally speaking, a conflict of interest is a situation in
which a person owes a duty to more than one party, the execution of which
duties are either incompatible or mutually exclusive. In other words, discharging
one’s responsibility to the first party may result in negatively impacting or
failing to discharge one’s responsibility to the second.
This is not a situation with which Christians are unfamiliar. Conflicts of interest are part of the package.
Labels:
Apostle Paul
/
Corinthians
/
Peace
/
Recycling
/
Romans
Sunday, October 08, 2017
The Bridegroom is Here
The most recent version of this post is available here.
Labels:
Baptism
/
Fasting
/
Lord's Supper
/
Mark
/
Ritual
Saturday, October 07, 2017
The Study of Plate Tectonics (or What Do I Do Next?)
The answers to such
questions are not merely of academic interest to the Christian. From time to
time, one choice or another gives rise to significant consequences, either good
or bad. Other times nothing we choose to do or say matters in the slightest; what
happens would have happened anyway.
But of course we don’t
know that when we’re choosing, do we? So we find ourselves asking God for wisdom.
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