As Scripture instructs, we must be adult in our understanding. But we must also cultivate what Luke records in the books of Acts when he says that the early Christians ate their bread with gladness and simplicity of heart. We may be refreshed with both when we come to understand how much of the water …
Modest Advertising
“At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore” (Ps. 16: 11) Growing Dominion, Part 149 “Whoso boasteth himself of a false gift is like clouds and wind without rain” (Prov. 25:14). The Scriptures have a lot to say about giving and the “advertisement” of giving. Jesus says not to let the right hand know …
Reverent Minds and Irreverent Conclusions
“One might have hoped that, with so gracious a creature as wine, even the most ardent religionists and secularists would have made an exception to their universal custom of missing the point of things . . . Consider first the teetotalers . . . Something underhanded has to be done to grape juice to keep …
Misleading Infaux
The word antithesis is found one time in the Greek New Testament, referring to the opposition that false information or knowledge present to the faith. Perhaps we should call this false info infaux. “O Timothy, keep that which is committed to thy trust, avoiding profane and vain babblings, and oppositions of science falsely so called: …
Falcons and Owls
“Some men never can do much for God in the way which they would prefer, for they were never cut out for the work. Owls will never rival falcons by daylight; but, then falcons would be lost in the enterprise of hunting barns at night for rats and mice . . . Friend, be true …
No Kidding
“Films, videos, and commercial television have come close to replacing the Church, the arts, and the university as the primary shaper of the modern sense of reality” (Michael D. O’Brian, A Landscape With Dragons, p. 61).
What Merciful People Receive
Periodically I preach through ten psalms, and have now come to the fifth decade of psalms (41-50). Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.
A Tsunami of Malice
Democracy is, as the fellow said, two coyotes and a sheep voting on what to have for lunch. But if the sheep is the rich guy, then the parable needs to be expanded. In the global economy, sheep can always move assets offshore, and you know, this metaphor is getting away from me. The point …
Eucatastrophe at the Eschaton
The fifth section of The Doors of the Sea contains Hart’s central concerns with inadequate Christian theodicies (as he considers them), and is the section where he showcases Ivan Karamazov’s rebellion against God. “This is the splendid perversity and genius of Ivan’s (or Dostoyevsky’s) argument, which makes it indeed the argument of a rebel rather …
Judgmental Non-Judgmentalism
In the next chapter, Boyd’s tendency to hydroplane on various evangelical cliches catches up with him. His central argument is that evangelical Christians have the beam in their eye, and hence are in no position to be “moral guardians” for the rest of the country. There’s a lot to that argument, actually, but the problem …