How Not to Crash and Burn (14)

Ah, ants and sluggards.

This next bit is one of my favorite sections of Proverbs, and probably my youngest brother’s least favorite. I recall quoting it to his prone form on at least one occasion as he lay blearily sprawled across his waterbed, the hour approaching noon. I have always been a very early riser (these days it’s usually somewhere between 3 and 4 a.m.) and found his inertia appalling in some indefinable, slightly jealous way. So I leaped on him fists-first and played the part of the proverbial bandit.

Not my finest hour or my most accurate application of scripture, but when your parents raise a bunch of boys together, these are the sorts of things that happen.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Noble Man, Noble Plan

“I do not believe that the solution to our problem is simply to elect the right people. The important thing is to establish a political climate of opinion which will make it politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right thing.”

— Milton Friedman

I’ve liked that quote for a while now. In our current political climate it seems apropos.

It can certainly be read optimistically: If you can’t get people of good character into positions of responsibility, at least there’s a chance that a determined populace might motivate the bad characters with real power to dance to the tune of public opinion.

Perhaps there’s some hope in that.

Too Hot to Handle: Facts and Opinions

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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

The most recent version of this post is available here. 

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

The most recent version of this post is available here.

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.

How Not to Crash and Burn (11)

Some people never learn from experience. Proverbs 1 talks about two of those: the scoffer and the fool.

Others learn only through negative examples, either by charging in and doing it wrong themselves the first time, or by watching others fail. That’s better than never learning at all, but for those who only learn from their own mistakes, it’s somewhat like bellyflopping your way through life. Every bad landing hurts more than the last one.

A third sort of person is well aware they know less about life than they would like, and therefore looks for guidance.

Too Hot to Handle: The Correct Church

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

In 2002, Julie Staples (for the Protestant side) debated Apolonio Latar (representing Catholics under the initials ‘AL’).

At one point in their exchange Latar said this:

“Sola Scriptura leads to doctrinal anarchy, which is further reason why you need an infallible authority. Look at all of these Protestant denominations, 30,000 of them the last time I checked. How do you know you’re in the correct church?”

Now it turns out the “30,000” is vastly, wildly overstated, as others have since demonstrated. Regardless, everyone would certainly agree that there are lots of denominations and lots of different beliefs within Christendom.

Tom: So my question is, how would you personally have answered Latar? How do you, Immanuel Can, today, know you’re in the correct church?

The God Point

The most recent version of this post is available here.

Dueling Diotrephes

“I have written something to the church, but Diotrephes, who likes to put himself first, does not acknowledge our authority. So if I come, I will bring up what he is doing, talking wicked nonsense against us. And not content with that, he refuses to welcome the brothers, and also stops those who want to and puts them out of the church.”

John’s third epistle is thought to date from around AD65, and to be one of the last books of the Bible written. When the beloved apostle wrote it, local churches had been planted all over the Roman empire, had named elders or had them named for them, and many of these had had a decade or more to mature and to benefit from and share significant portions of what we now call the New Testament.

That’s when the wolves started coming out in force.

Semi-Random Musings (8)

“Darwinism was once a well-fortified castle, with elaborate towers, moats, and battlements,” says author Tom Bethell. “Today, however, it more closely resembles a house of cards, built out of flimsy icons rather than hard evidence, and liable to blow away in the slightest breeze.” So begins Darwin’s House of Cards: A Journalist’s Odyssey Through the Darwin Debates.

What isn’t initially obvious is that the “debates” in view are almost all in-house, which to me is a big selling point. Rather than rehash the arguments of creationists, Bethell has instead elected to draw his citations primarily from a murderer’s row of big names on the other side of the table who stray here and there from Darwinian orthodoxy.

As you might anticipate, where weaknesses in their case have come to light through disagreements in the evolutionist camp, these have not always been well-publicized.

Is Your Faith Boring You?

The most recent version of this post is available here.

The Big Cover-Up

“Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins.”

The word “covers” is in Greek kalyptō, meaning to “veil or hinder knowledge”. Absent the rest of scripture to balance it, a literal reading could easily be taken to suggest that the loving thing to do when we hear about someone else’s sin is to bury it deep and keep it from coming to light.

On the Mount (34)

How firm is your foundation? For many Christians, that question is largely theoretical.

See, it’s when the rain falls, and the floods come, and the wind blows and beats on the house that its owner discovers the true value of the foundation on which he has built. Stack Western believers up alongside the apostles, the martyrs and the heroes of the faith over the last two millennia, and it’s a fair bet most of us have never seen more than a few dark clouds in the sky and the occasional bit of spatter.

Which accounts for a fair bit.

How Not to Crash and Burn (10)

One in three American children is currently growing up without a father in the home.

Fatherless children are four times more likely to live in poverty as those with a dad at home, twice as likely to die in infancy, twice as likely to struggle with their weight and twice as likely to drop out of high school. Fatherless girls are seven times more likely to become pregnant as a teen. And while the actual numbers are hotly debated, it is evident having an absent father also correlates statistically with higher levels of criminality, incarceration, drug and alcohol abuse, behavioral problems and the likelihood of having been beaten up at home.

This is going on in a country with one of the best social safety nets in the world and with more money being directed toward the social problems exacerbated by fatherlessness than at any time in human history. Despite its deep pockets, the State is no substitute for a loving, involved father.

Too Hot to Handle: Offenders for a Word

The most recent version of this post is available here.

True Revolutionaries

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We Won’t Even Say We Told You So

Advances in the study of genetics continue to raise uncomfortable questions about the credibility of Darwinian evolutionary theory, requiring ever-more-elaborate pseudo-scientific fantasies about the origin of species and, as usual, reminding Christians that the wisdom of this world is folly with God and “He catches the wise in their craftiness.”

It appears Darwin’s religion requires more faith than ever.

Two Verses, Three Interpretations

My preferred interpretation of yesterday’s kingdom parable has precious little in it that directly applies to the church, so I thought today we might consider two more verses from Matthew 13’s prophetic look at the kingdom of heaven from the perspective of the first century Jew.

In this case, the text is even shorter than yesterday’s parable (at least in English), but the folks that gave us chapters and verses in our Bibles elected to chop this verse in half.

And so long as we’re all talking about the same two verses, what does it really matter how they have been divided?

One Verse, Two Interpretations

One little verse in Matthew 13 …

It’s not the only kingdom parable in our Bibles told in a single verse, but it manages to pack eight or more possible points of correspondence with an important spiritual reality into thirty-something English words, depending on your translation.

Thus it’s long enough to be interesting, but short enough to mull over in a blog post rather than a book.

On the Mount (33)

The house on the rock. We all know what that’s about, right? As the lyrics of the old Sunday School song put it:

“So build your life on the Lord Jesus Christ, and the blessings will come down.”

Well, yes, that’s certainly one application: your life. But I don’t think we need to stop there, do we? You never know, we might miss something.

How Not to Crash and Burn (9)

Do you remember a few years ago there was a rash of child psychologists telling parents not to say no to their children? Maybe there still is, but I’m past the stage of life where finding optimal child-rearing techniques is an urgent matter; I probably wouldn’t notice.

Anyway, it seems to me the rationale was something along the lines of “No” being an abstraction that is not aligned with the need of young children to explore their world and to develop their sense of autonomy and initiative.

Still, I remember finding the word moderately useful, so I’ve always wondered how voluntarily abandoning the use of it worked out for the parents and their kids. My guess is probably not well.

Too Hot to Handle: Which Ten Commandments?

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

Richard Carrier has an alternative Ten Commandments he’d like the world to consider, apparently on the basis of their utility:

“Unlike the Commandments of Moses, when suitably interpreted, none of these is outdated or antithetical to modern moral or political thought. Every one could be taken up by anyone today, of any creed, to some extent.”

Well, why not? Let’s take these babies out for a spin and see how they compare to the real deal.

Testimony in the Twilight Zone

The most recent version of this post is available here.

Recommend-a-blog (28)

Adam Ford is the guy who started the Christian news satire site Babylon Bee. If you’ve missed that so far, well, that’s probably okay, provided you have no sense of humor. If you do, it’s a little bit like having missed Monty Python’s Flying Circus (minus the occasional bout of virulent rudeness) in the early seventies. Except with the Bee, more often than not there’s a sharp spiritual point to go with the guffaws.

Adam sold the Bee a month ago to concentrate on his new project, the Christian Daily Reporter, a plain-Jane news aggregator. CDR is ... well, why don’t I let Adam tell you in his own words?

A Brush Too Broad

Albert Mohler says, “The [Southern Baptist Convention] is in the midst of its own horrifying #MeToo moment,” and adds, “The judgment of God has come.”

It started with public outrage over some seriously bad advice in a years-old sermon illustration from the ex-president of an SBC seminary. Other comments made by Paige Patterson apparently objectified a teenage girl, and the list has since gotten longer, as The Atlantic documents here.

Naturally, sides have been taken, and the resulting scandal threatens to tear apart the SBC. No wonder Mohler is deeply concerned.

That Wacky Old Testament (11)

A hundred years ago the social safety net didn’t exist. The earliest U.S. government assistance program was conceived in 1910 and most of the rest were enacted post-1935.

Sure, there have always been rich parents that coddled their children through adulthood, handing them fully-operational businesses to destroy or trust funds to bleed dry. And there may even have been a certain number of less-well-off parents willing to sacrifice their meager savings on a dissolute youngster who stubbornly refused to pull his weight and bear his family responsibilities.

But beyond the family level, no institutions existed to provide for the welfare of society at large. There was no taxpayer-financed crutch available to help failed or unfortunate citizens get back on their feet.

Good thing times have changed. Or maybe not.

On the Mount (32)

The world is brim-full of good causes. There’s no end of things with which a genuine altruist may busy himself in seeking to do good to his fellow man.

In the Christian life, few truly “good” works involve status or recognition, but those which do almost always attract the worst elements. Simon the magician was so entranced at the prospect of being able to confer the Holy Spirit through the laying on of hands that he begged the apostles, “Give me this power also.” Likewise, the seven sons of the Jewish high priest Sceva got excited about driving out evil spirits.

You may remember both stories ended badly for the would-be doers of good.

How Not to Crash and Burn (8)

How much time do you devote to becoming wise?

You may not put it that way, of course. Reading the Bible may never have presented itself to you as some kind of quest for understanding. You may think of it as just enjoying the word of God. Or you may have been trained from childhood to read your Bible every day “just because”, and so you keep doing it like a robot. You may do it grudgingly, conscious that your life is insanely busy and twenty minutes every morning is often an imposition. Or you may go to the word of God and dig through it regularly in order to better understand yourself, your world and, most importantly, your Lord and Savior.

Whatever your motivation, if you’re reading God’s word and trying to put its principles into practice, you are becoming more skilled at living life every single day whether you notice it or not.

Too Hot to Handle: From the Pit of Hell

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

The man who would be president, former nominee Mitt Romney, is troubled that a minister from Dallas has been asked to open the new U.S. embassy in Jerusalem with a prayer.

Romney’s objection?

“Robert Jeffress says ‘you can’t be saved by being a Jew,’ and ‘Mormonism is a heresy from the pit of hell.’ He’s said the same about Islam.”

Tom: Oh dear. Let’s talk a little bit about so-called religious bigotry, IC. What do you think: is “pit of hell” maybe a tad strong?

Bottom of the Ninth

The most recent version of this post is available here. 

That Sinking Feeling

Nope, not thinking about Peter.

In Luke’s gospel we read about the Lord conferring to his twelve disciples power and authority over all demons and diseases. Thus equipped, he then sends them out to heal and proclaim the kingdom of God. Upon their return the disciples report to him all that they have done, which suggests at least a moderate degree of success in their mission.

TLDR

Have you see that short form online? Know what it signifies? Your kids do, guaranteed.

“TLDR”, “tl;dr” and other variants simply mean “Too Long, Didn’t Read”. They are an admission of intellectual laziness delivered with trademark millennial bravado; a backhanded shot in the chops to a writer who probably labored over words about to be summarily ignored. They are also almost invariably accompanied by a disparaging comment about the thing not-quite-read.

Farhad Manjoo over at Slate has a fascinating piece about how people read online. The upshot: they don’t. Well, not very well at least.

Say Yes to the Dress

“The fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints.”

The book is Revelation, and before us is the marriage supper of the Lamb. The Bride is a certain subset of God’s people (we shall not revisit that discussion in detail here), and others among God’s redeemed are present to celebrate. The Bride has clothed herself with “fine linen, bright and pure.”

It’s the most uplifting picture in several chapters of what is, at times, a very dark book, and it is the great hope of the Church.

On the Mount (31)

Here’s one of very few Greek words that are easily understood without consulting a concordance: pseudoprophētēs, meaning “false prophets”. To call something “pseudo” or “pseud” these days is to see right through it and recognize it as phony. The prophētēs part kind of translates itself.

But we live in a day when, as C.S. Lewis put it, “The dwarves are for the dwarves.” We pride ourselves on being sufficiently cynical to see through everything, to the point where many of us see nothing at all.

How Not to Crash and Burn (7)

Have you ever taken one of those biological age tests that are all the rage on the internet? (Warning: most are designed to pitch you something at the end.)

There is probably some marginal utility to such things. Obviously you have an actual age, and that age cannot change; the year you were born is the year you were born. But the medical reality at the root of these tests is that the number and intensity of stressors in your daily life tend to shorten it, while the absence of such stressors will, at very least, not make things any worse. Thus your “biological age”, as these folks define it, is something akin to your own personal doomsday clock.

Do you smoke? Lose five years. More than two drinks a day? Ooh, you’re in trouble. Hate your job or sleep too little? Another strike or two. Depending on your situation and habits, you may start to wonder why you haven’t keeled over already.

Too Hot to Handle: The Greatest Threat

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

Immanuel Can: Wow. Brian McLaren. I’m not the biggest fan of his work, to be sure. I read his book A New Kind of Christian, and thought it touched on quite a few important issues, but made the most unfortunate hash of them imaginable. But for charity’s sake, let’s assume that’s the ancient past, so full steam ahead.

“The greatest threat to Christianity is ... misguided Christians, just as the greatest threat to Islam is misguided Muslims and the greatest threat to Judaism is misguided Jews. Religious insiders can do harm to their religion in ways that outsiders never could. This is especially true in a pluralistic world, where religions are credible to the degree they bring benefits to outsiders.”

— Brian McLaren

What does he mean?

Brains With Feet

The most recent version of this post is available here.

Baiting and Switching

J.T. Wynn’s debut column at Stand to Reason certainly doesn’t waste any time getting around to the really big questions; in this case, What is Truth?

Strictly speaking, I suppose Wynn doesn’t answer the question, but that’s not really the point of his post. In any case, his account of two teachers who conflated truth with perception will definitely ring a bell with recent university or college grads, and with anyone who has watched more than a few minutes of Jordan Peterson on YouTube.

Redefining common words is a useful way to skew an argument, muddle an otherwise simple issue, or advance an agenda. Thus Christians need to be able to identify and counter the ol’ bait-and-switch when we run into it.

Quote of the Day (39)

In his book Do We Need God to be Good? anthropologist C.R. Hallpike quotes mathematician Kevin Devlin:

“Whatever features of our brain enable (some of) us to do mathematics must have been present long before we had any mathematics. Those crucial features, therefore, must have evolved to fulfil some other purpose.”

This sort of statement is incredibly common among evolutionary psychologists and biologists, but “some other [undefined] purpose” is pretty much the best they have to offer the world. The gaping holes in their theoretical framework are orders of magnitude larger than the frame itself, calling their entire dubious intellectual structure into question.

Achan and Eve

Broadly speaking, there are two approaches to sinning: Eve’s and Achan’s.

At Jericho, Achan saw treasure forbidden by the word of God, lusted after it, took it and hid it away, buried in the earth inside his tent. But I can assure you it would not have stayed there. Achan had never stopped to work out any sort of strategy by which he might benefit from his sin. That was just plain stupid.

At least the Eve Method — wicked, shortsighted and ultimately destructive as it was — had the advantage of being intellectually coherent.

On the Mount (30)

The way is hard that leads to life. Ain’t that the truth. Maybe in more ways than we are usually inclined to consider.

Matthew 7:13 is generally read as having to do with a man or woman’s ultimate fate: eternity in hell on the one hand; eternal life in fellowship with God on the other. These are the highest and most personal stakes for which human beings have ever played. In the face of everlasting separation from God and all that is good, it should be obvious that the horrors of war, the nuclear arms race and our current inability to cure cancer pale into comparative insignificance.

Understandably, we will wish to choose carefully.

How Not to Crash and Burn (6)

David Gooding has a knack for taking great wedges of ancient text and breaking them down into manageable chunks of related material, then dissecting those pieces line by line until we are able to think clearly about them. That’s not unique to Gooding of course — all decent Bible teachers do it — but I especially appreciate his sensitivity to the natural flow of poetry, narrative or argument. I have yet to find him analyzing a passage and think Boy, that structure he’s describing looks awfully artificial.

To the extent we are up to the job, it’s a useful trick to imitate.

Too Hot to Handle: Poisoning the Well

The most recent version of this post is available here.

The End of the Family Line

“With no complications,
  fifteen generations of mine
  all honoring nature.
  Until I arrived with incredible style.
  I’m the end of the line;
  the end of the family line.”

— Morrissey

“And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth …”

Relax, I’m probably not going where you think I am.

Semi-Random Musings (7)

Growing up in a Christian home, I was occasionally chastened for misbehavior with the words “Be sure your sin will find you out.” Or I heard other Christian parents using it. Or my irate Sunday School teacher. Or somebody. The memory’s a bit fuzzy, to be honest.

In any case, the line was very familiar, though for some reason I wrongly associated it with Saul and Samuel rather than Moses, who actually said it to the emissaries from the tribes of Reuben and Gad who had proposed to settle their people in the land beyond the Jordan. They solemnly promised to first fight alongside the other men of Israel in order to bring God’s people into their inheritance.

Children, Fathers and Hearts

Concerning New Jersey’s largest city, Steven Malanga says, “An astonishing 60 percent of the city’s kids are growing up without fathers.” According to a recent UNICEF report, “Britain is the worst country in the Western world in which to be a child.” Theodore Dalrymple writes of a British woman with nine children by five different fathers, none of whom contribute consistently to their children’s upkeep.

How Not to Crash and Burn (5)

Dictionary.com says a proverb is a “short pithy saying”. Most familiar Bible proverbs are no more than one or two lines.

A proverb communicates a great deal in the fewest possible words, presumably as an aid to memory, and the reader is usually left to meditate on how best to apply it. The vast majority of biblical proverbs are universally relatable. Even the more obscure sayings ring with plausibility, though they may express truths unfelt or unexperienced.

Or so we might argue. But there are some people to whom the offer of objective truth holds no interest at all.

On the Mount (29)

The so-called Golden Rule is not a new thing.

Infogalactic says, “The Golden Rule or ethic of reciprocity is a moral maxim or principle of altruism found in nearly every human culture and religion,” whether in its positive or negative form. From this ubiquity, one might reasonably conclude that the principle is inherently logical, intuitive or fundamental to human society; perhaps all of these.

Thus when the Lord Jesus laid out his own version in the Sermon on the Mount, it seems unlikely his audience had never heard this particular ethical statement — or at least something very much like it — before. History suggests it was a familiar concept.

Let the Others Weigh

Not too long ago, a grand old Bible teacher I remember fondly from my youth posted a rare thought on Facebook about teaching scripture on the Web. His concern: that the haphazard slinging of tangentially Bible-related opinion is a potential threat to the unity of local churches. Some form of oversight by seasoned teachers of the word of God is preferable. He cited Paul’s command to the Corinthian church: “Let two or three prophets speak, and let the others weigh what is said” in support of the principle.

Now, he’s not wrong here, and he’s not the first to note the problem.

Too Hot to Handle: Debby Boone Theology

The most recent version of this post is available here.

The Era of the Gentle and Reverent Lie

The most recent version of this post is available here.