Promiscuous Freedom and Enslavement

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The Egypt Option

Roughly a century before the fall of the great city of Samaria to its Assyrian invaders, King Jehu of Israel paid tribute to Assyria’s then-king, Shalmaneser III.

We know this not from the account of Jehu’s life in scripture, but from an inscription on the side of a six-and-a-half-foot obelisk currently making its home in the British Museum. It depicts a rather scruffy-looking Israelite monarch on his face at the feet of his Assyrian counterpart. The accompanying caption reads, “The tribute of Jehu, son of Omri: I received from him silver, gold, a golden bowl, a golden vase with pointed bottom, golden tumblers, golden buckets, tin, a staff for a king [and] spears.”

The black obelisk was carved approximately 2,800 years ago. As you may appreciate, there are not many such items around. Those that remain are highly valued by historians.

Threshing Sledge and Cart Wheel

To the best of my recollection, I have never planted anything in my life. In an urbanized society where everything green you will ever need is already on the shelves of the local supermarket, I never had to. The plants I have cared for around the house from time to time were bought already potted and needed little more than the occasional watering.

I killed a few of those too, but that’s a different issue.

Inadequate Remedies

Some people live in active denial of the trends around them, oblivious to the spirit of the age and to all intimations of God’s coming wrath. They are dull by choice.

For example, the Lord Jesus criticized the Pharisees and Sadducees for failing to correctly interpret the “signs of the times”. They were skilled at predicting the weather and ordering their workdays accordingly, but blind to the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy all around them. More evidence would not be given to them because they willfully ignored the signs they had already seen.

This is not that.

How Not to Crash and Burn (13)

The vast majority of the Bible aphorisms we call proverbs are comparatively short; a phrase or two at best.

Sayings like “A soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger” are so very memorable precisely because they are concise. Those of us who grew up in Christian homes often know dozens even if we have never intentionally committed them to memory. They tend to pop into our heads at the most opportune moments.

Sure, more could have been said, but there’s no need. We get the point.

Sentiment Without Content

I am reliably informed that in the days of my youth, when I was apparently even more attractive, a sweet young thing from church had a serious crush on me.

The day I got married, or so I hear, she mourned in tears — at the loss of ‘what might have been’, I suppose.

I am supposing because I don’t know. To the best of my recollection, over a period of almost two years, the girl had never said more than ten words to me, nor I to her.

Do you find that odd? I sure do.

Too Hot to Handle: Good Reasons to be Non-Denominational

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Worldviews: Question 3 — Life

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Worldviews: Question 2 — Endings

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Worldviews: Question 1 — Origins

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Worldviews: An Introduction

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Aha!

In case you haven’t noticed, we’ve been offline since Saturday morning. Something related to our domain name inexplicably changed, resulting in the longest downtime we’ve experienced in almost five years.

Thankfully, it appears our erstwhile tech team has resolved a problem I never entirely understood and couldn’t have fixed in a million years.

Blessings on you all. Back to it!

Was Christ Made Sin?

Patience ... all will become apparent ...

Sometimes a verse that isn’t terribly controversial can help us understand others that are. For example, Paul was writing of Christ when he wrote this in 2 Corinthians 8:9, “Though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor.”

I’ve never had even a remotely heated discussion about this verse with anyone else. It may provoke arguments in some quarters, but not many. Still, it’s worth considering for a moment what Paul is actually saying here as it may help us elsewhere.

How Not to Crash and Burn (12)

No backlink on the following, for obvious reasons; you can do your own research on this one.

The Ashley Madison Agency claims, among other things:

• Over 50 million married men in the United States are currently cheating on their wives.
• About 50 percent of cheating husbands have multiple affairs.
• More than 50% of unfaithful husbands witnessed their fathers cheat on their mothers.

Too Hot to Handle: The Gospel Meeting

In which our regular writers toss around subjects a little more volatile than usual.

On the subject of the gospel meeting, Mike Willis has dug in. Gospel meetings, Willis says, used to accomplish a lot of good when America was a rural nation and non-Christians would visit the meetings.

Now, he concedes, not so much.

Yet despite a significant decline in their effectiveness (according to Willis, “Fewer non-Christian visitors are attending gospel meetings than at times in the past” and “We are not baptizing people any more”), he’s determined to revitalize the form. Willis says, “Reminding ourselves of the legitimate goals of gospel meetings and refocusing our aims on those goals should help us to have more effective gospel meetings.”

The Limits of Toleration

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A Compelling Argument

Compelled speech is the new line in the sand some believers (and a few unbelievers) are not prepared to cross.

Jordan Peterson’s refusal-in-principle to use invented pronouns made him a household name. Taking a page from that manual, a Christian music teacher from Brownsburg, Indiana declined to address transgender students by their preferred names. Doing so “would go against my Christian beliefs,” John Kluge told an NBC affiliate. Another, Madeline Kirksey of Katy, Texas, could not bring herself to call a six-year-old girl in her care by her preferred (male) name.

No points for correctly guessing that Kluge and Kirksey are currently unemployed. Even Peterson has not taught a class in some time, though he does quite well with the combination of YouTube and Patreon. (The bestseller probably didn’t hurt either.)

Expect plenty more of this.

The Heart Behind the Sword

Christians struggle to explain Cain’s wife. Christians struggle to explain Lot’s wife.

Meh. Those two are a comparative walk in the park. You want tough? Try explaining Ezekiel’s wife. No bonus points for falling back on “Well, God is sovereign and there are things about life we can’t really understand.”

Yeah, and the sun is hot and water is wet.

The Commentariat Speaks (13)

Many moons ago I wrote a post about the evolving definition of the word “religion”. When I was a teen it was common to hear that “Christianity is not a religion, it’s a relationship.” By the strictest definition of the day this was probably true, and it was a distinction worth making.

Today, however, the popular usage of “religion” (and the dictionary definition with it) has broadened sufficiently that this is no longer the case, and anyone who insists upon repeating that old saw is not just pedantic but factually incorrect.

The point that among religions Christianity is uniquely relationship-based remains worth making, but the stark contrast between religion and not-religion no longer exists. You can have your religion more or less relationship-free if that’s your thing.

Not that it’s likely to do you much good.

Root and Shoot

There’s an odd and rather bleak passage in Job in which he compares human beings to trees. “A man dies and is laid low,” says the beleaguered believer, but “there is hope for a tree.”

Why? “Though its root grow old in the earth, and its stump die in the soil, yet at the scent of water it will bud and put out branches like a young plant.”

Pouring water on a headstone does not generally produce similar results.