“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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Thursday, September 24, 2020
Wednesday, September 23, 2020
The Language of the Debate (2)
The Christian media urgently wants Christians to stop believing —
and even more importantly, to stop circulating — what it calls “conspiracy
theories”. I previously came across and responded to one of the earliest of these calls to cease and desist back in September of last year, and lo and behold, here are a whole bunch more folks writing almost exactly the same thing Aaron Brake wrote at Stand to Reason, and maybe even more so.
Interfaith Now says Christians “have to do better”. Christianity.com says,
“Let’s unite together in spreading God’s truth, not rumors!” Relevant magazine argues
that Christians only believe in “conspiracies” because they need
to feel like they are in control. Christianity Today insists, “Gullibility is not a spiritual gift.”
Labels:
Conspiracy
/
The Language of the Debate
Tuesday, September 22, 2020
Out of Sight, Out of Mind
My youngest son has an amazing memory for detail. If you
play him a song he’s familiar with, he can tell you when he first heard
it — year, month and sometimes day — where we were and what we were
doing at the time, and probably what video game was released that week.
I, on the other hand, can go back into the ComingUntrue archives, read a two-year-old
post, and wonder “Who wrote that?”
It was usually me.
Monday, September 21, 2020
Anonymous Asks (111)
“How often do you need to say ‘amen’?”
This is kind of a different question, because it’s really
more a matter of etiquette than morality.
Amen is one of those weird words
that is exactly the same whether you’re looking through a Greek or a Hebrew
concordance. It’s a Hebrew word that Greek-speaking Christians in the early
church picked up and used to mean the same thing it meant within Judaism. In
the King James it is often translated as “verily”. It is an affirmation of
agreement. It simply means “indeed”, “so be it” or “absolutely”. Sometimes it
means Yeah, me too. I feel that exact feeling, I think that
exact thing and I want exactly that to happen. “Amen” is
convenient shorthand for all that.
Labels:
Amen
/
Anonymous Asks
Sunday, September 20, 2020
Time and Chance: The Post-Game Show
The heavens declare
the glory of God and God’s invisible attributes have
been clearly perceived in the things that have been made; our Old and New
Testaments are in absolute agreement on this. Even if the Creator had never
uttered a word to his creatures, men would be without excuse.
We would also be hopelessly confused, frustrated, and
conflicted, grasping for an explanation of meaning and purpose that forever
eludes us, feeling the pull of eternity in bodies destined only for the grave.
Labels:
Ecclesiastes
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Revelation
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Time and Chance
Saturday, September 19, 2020
Time and Chance (54)
We have arrived in our study of Ecclesiastes at what the Preacher calls “the end of the
matter”. The matter under consideration, if you have a long memory, was this: “What
does man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun?” What is the point of man’s existence? Why
are we here? This was the question he set out to answer.
Through twelve chapters, the Preacher has undertaken the task of examining the
experience of being human from every possible angle in hope of gaining insight
into its meaning and purpose, always using only what he could observe and infer
from the input of his senses. What he discovered was that when you approach the
big questions of life in that way, the experience is frustrating and the
answers elusive.
Labels:
Ecclesiastes
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God
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Meaning
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Time and Chance
Friday, September 18, 2020
Too Hot to Handle: After COVID
In which our regular writers toss around subjects a
little more volatile than usual.
Immanuel Can: I’m noticing a very common
theme springing up in news organizations and on the internet right now. There
are lots of articles talking about the changes to society that will persist
after the COVID-19 crisis is over. For instance,
ABC says the major things that
will remain different will be: more automation and more work-from-home options
in employment, increased telemedicine, stricter travel regulations and precautions,
and more virtual education. Another media source predicts masks everywhere,
no more handshakes, loads of anxious parents, closer cliques, more centralized
government control, smaller cities ... and a whole bunch of other things.
All that’s speculation, of course. But some of it’s probably going to turn out
to be right.
It seems what’s missing from such articles, Tom, is any reflection on what all the
shifts will do to local congregations of Christians. Of course they will be
subject to the same changes as anyone else, for starters. But are there any
special concerns that Christians should take note of? What trends do you
see as either opportunities or ominous possibilities for Christians after COVID?
Labels:
Church
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COVID-19
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Too Hot to Handle
Thursday, September 17, 2020
Three Reasons to Get Going
Ah, these little sayings that sometimes escape our notice.
I don’t know about you, but I always find it very
exciting, and yet also not a little embarrassing, when I come to realize a
verse I’ve known all my life has waaaay more to it than I ever realized.
This is one of those verses. Let’s break it down.
Wednesday, September 16, 2020
What Does Your Proof Text Prove? (13)
“Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the
desires of your heart.”
The commendably-honest Sarah Frazer acknowledges she once
believed this familiar promise in Psalm 37 meant “I can
have anything I want.” If so, that would be quite a promise, but it
would reduce God to a mere term in a larger equation, where if you treat that term
a consistent way, you can always expect a predictable outcome.
Nice deal if you can get it, but quite a comedown for the
Creator and Sustainer of the Universe to be reduced to a component of your personal math
problem.
Let’s suggest that might not be the verse’s intended meaning!
Labels:
Desire
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Psalms
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What Does Your Proof Text Prove?
Tuesday, September 15, 2020
That Guy Outside Starbucks is NOT Jesus’ Brother
God bless the poor.
In fact, I don’t even have to ask him: we’ve been told he will;
at least inasmuch as their poverty is primarily one of the spirit.
But we should pray for the poor, of course, and share as we are able. We should care, we ought to avoid partiality and we need to act. Our faith does not amount to much if it does not make us compassionate in a very practical way
toward those in need, and toward those who may have started life at a huge
disadvantage, or have encountered trials and troubles we have never
experienced.
But that guy outside Starbucks who invades your space — the one with the tatty green or brown jacket, bad breath, body odor and uncomfortable social habits — while he may be made in the image of God and deserving of whatever we
are able to do for him for that reason alone …
Sorry, that guy is just not Jesus’ “brother”.
Labels:
Mason Slater
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Matthew
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Poverty
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Recycling
Monday, September 14, 2020
Anonymous Asks (110)
“What should a believer do before he dies?”
Some denominations prescribe rituals to be administered by
the church in a man or woman’s final moments on earth, and perhaps this week’s
question is coming from someone with that sort of ecclesiastical background.
If religious routines are what the dying are calling for, we
would not wish to rob them of their comfort, but I should probably point
out that we do not find any commands at all about “last rites” in our Bibles.
The Christian is neither obligated to perform them nor to have them performed. It
may even be that the practice encourages a false sense of security about one’s relationship
to Christ and one’s eternal destiny.
That would be very unfortunate indeed. In any case, it’s not
the sort of preparation we are going to discuss today.
Labels:
Anonymous Asks
/
Death
Sunday, September 13, 2020
Act Like What You Are
Clean living requires an act of the will, and acts of the
will require a changed mindset — at least if they are going to stick for
any length of time. Down through the centuries, men and women who sought to control
their natural appetites have attempted to “live clean” with different goals in
view.
Plato taught the suppression of fleshly desires in order to
free the soul to search for knowledge. The Stoics disciplined themselves to manage their emotions in order to uphold
what they believed was the essential dignity of human nature. Kant advocated moral asceticism in hope of cultivating virtue. Monks of various religious orders idealized
poverty, fasting and celibacy as ways of expressing devotion to their gods.
Labels:
2 Corinthians
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Adoption
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Holiness
Saturday, September 12, 2020
Time and Chance (53)
With the advent of the internet, we have become all too used to people sharing their opinions
with us.
Editorializing is far from a new activity — human beings have engaged in it for millennia. What’s new is the
sheer scale of useless bloviating made possible through social media. More
information is fine, but information bereft of both authority and coherence is
not worth the effort it takes to process.
Back in Ecclesiastes, the Preacher is about to tell his readers something similar.
Labels:
Authority
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Ecclesiastes
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Time and Chance
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Wisdom
Friday, September 11, 2020
Too Hot to Handle: The Christian Globalist
In which our regular writers toss around
subjects a little more volatile than usual.
For the last fifty years, the media has quietly endorsed it. Politicians in every country in the world have worked
tirelessly to build public support for it. Mega-corporations love it: who
wouldn’t like to have the entire planet to choose from when optimizing for low
taxes, inexpensive manufacturing and cheap labor?
Tom: Globalism is officially out of the closet, Immanuel Can.
The Economist declares: “The danger is that a rising sense of insecurity will lead to more electoral victories for closed-world types. This is the gravest risk to the
free world since communism. Nothing
matters more than countering it.”
“Nothing matters more.” That’s pretty clear. So tell me, IC, is it possible to be a Christian globalist? Can we hold
such an ideological position coherently and biblically?
Labels:
Globalism
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Nation
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Recycling
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Too Hot to Handle
Thursday, September 10, 2020
Inbox: Was Christ Actually ‘Good’?
I’m going to share with you a short exchange I had with
a couple of philosophers, because it was interesting to me, and helped me think
through a few things more carefully. The issue it raises might be something
you’ve thought about as well.
A short aside: for the most part, I have reproduced my
partners’ conversation mostly verbatim. I’ve only altered a couple of punctuation glitches, and made a couple of small
line changes in my response. I’ve also inserted a few lines after-the-fact to
help you track and to make it work as an article. But the substance is pretty
much exactly as it really happened.
Wednesday, September 09, 2020
If It Happens Again I’m Leaving
Doug Wilson is not the only Christian blogging about the
phenomenon of people leaving a church over the issue of compulsory mask-wearing,
but he’s probably more quoted on the subject than most. Responding in a
recent post to questions from believers frustrated by the stand their own
elders have taken over the issue, Doug has (perhaps inadvertently) opened a
larger can of worms than the mask issue itself, which is the authority of
elders to bind the consciences of those under their care over matters about
which scripture is silent.
And the mask issue is certainly that.
Labels:
Church
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COVID-19
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Douglas Wilson
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Elders
Tuesday, September 08, 2020
Inbox: ‘Systemic’ Racism
God gave a plethora of laws to Moses on Sinai, yet they did not make for a perfect society because people are not perfect. Individuals observed those laws from time to time, and in doing so, benefited from them. But on a national level, Israel would not — nay,
could not — follow those laws, notwithstanding the fact that they were
morally excellent, decent, orderly, and
taught lessons humanity absolutely needed to learn, not to mention they
pointed to Christ. So God gave them, man received them, and the result was systemic failure.
Or was it?
Labels:
Government
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Inbox
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Racism
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Repentance
Monday, September 07, 2020
Anonymous Asks (109)
“If God loves the world, why does he make people choose between loving
him back or spending eternity in hell? That sounds more like an ultimatum than
love.”
I agree: that choice does sound a bit like an
ultimatum. The Bible also frames it as a
command.
Why is that? Why is there no third option where God simply
leaves me alone to do my own thing, and I leave him alone to do his?
Surely a policy of benign indifference would be more loving than condemning
millions of people to a lake of fire.
I wonder what simply leaving humanity to its own devices
would look like ...
Labels:
Anonymous Asks
/
Choices
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Hell
Sunday, September 06, 2020
Semi-Random Musings (21)
Most of our readers would not be aware that I have been
at the office almost non-stop these last few weeks as a consequence of a
plethora of COVID-related staff absences. That’s not because even a single employee
of hundreds across the globe has contracted the coronavirus — so far as
I know, they are all healthy as horses — but because almost nobody currently
working from home has any enthusiasm about returning to work in the current
environment, and the corporate powers that be are even less enthusiastic about
ordering them to do so. The vast majority of my co-workers seem content to hunker
down in their basements doing not too much of anything until sometime in Spring 2021.
Yeah, sure … that’ll be the end of it. Right.
Labels:
Choices
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Church
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COVID-19
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Semi-Random Musings
Saturday, September 05, 2020
Time and Chance (52)
Just this week, a friend of mine took his three-and-half-year-old grandson hiking through
a local terraced cemetery. As they climbed, they stopped to read a gravestone
together at every level. Recognizing the shape of the recurring word forms, the
little boy soon began to repeat phrases like “In loving memory” and “beloved
wife”.
When the two returned home to tell Grandma what they had been up to, her agitated
response was, “I hope you didn’t tell him what the numbers mean.”
Yeah, those numbers …
Labels:
Age
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Ecclesiastes
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Time and Chance
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Youth
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