“The Bible tells us that it is legitimate to mark someone’s position in a particular culture or society by how they dress. Having students on the way home from school recognized as students is fully in keeping with a general human pattern, and is observed in Scripture and seen regularly in other situations. To illustrate, …
Scurrilous Is As Scurrilous Does
In ancient Israel, one of the purposes of the Mosaic code was to start putting restraints on the still more ancient practice of blood vengenace. It had been that when a man was killed, a relative of the victim would be “deputized” by his tribe or family to go and execute vengeance. Now clearly, this …
Strong Consolation
If believers come away in despair from a study of the sixth chapter of Hebrews, this is an indication of a serious misreading of the text. This portion of Scripture provides some of the strongest comfort that can be found in the entire Bible. For God is not unjust to forget your work and labor …
The Great Bluff
“I am using the term secularism, then, to refer to the values of the modern age, especially where these lead to the restructuring of thought and life to accommodate the absence or irrelevance of God. Secularization is the process that creates the public environment in which these values seem natural and inevitable” [David Wells, No …
The Centrality of Peripherals
“In all this, we must remember the centrality of peripherals. The point is not to favor the peripherals instead of the center. That would be the sin of majoring on minors, swallowing camels, and all the rest of it. Rather, the point is that on this question the Christian world has fallen into the fallacy …
More On RC
I want to follow up my previous post on RC Jr. I am doing this, not because I have anything new to say, but rather because the situation demands that we go over the basics again and again. My point has been that those who jump into a situation like this with glee, and who …
Your Curriculum of Law
Minister: Lift up your hearts! Congregation: We lift them up to the Lord! Down to the dust my soul bends down, Quicken me with spoken Word. I have declared Your Word and ways, You heard my supplicating cry, Teach me Your statutes and Your law. Make me to understand Your precepts now, Then I will …
Too Educated To Be Wise
One afternoon, a pastor was leading a Bible study at the church with a group of seminarians, young men with gray eyes, profound thoughts, and ambitious hearts. They were hanging on his every word, or were at least trying to, because the noise from the youth group upstairs was irritating and distracting. The pastor was …
Loved and Shaped in the Supper
Christians are accustomed to think that a worldview consists of the things that you think. What are your “views” about the world? What are your opinions about this and that? I am afraid that this is a very truncated view of what it means to have a worldview. We need to develop this at length …
No Matter How Thin You Slice It
One of the standard responses to postmodernism is to point out the self-contradictory nature of it all. Incredulity to the naive belief that truth can be ascertained through words is an incredulity that reached us all via words. And when ordinary people point this out (har, har), the response is usually an urbane and sophisticated …