John famously begins his gospel by saying that the Word was in the beginning with God, and that the Word was God. We have two things associated here that we don’t normally associate — identity and togetherness. I am me, but I don’t normally think of myself as being with me. I am generally close …
Hitchens on CBN
CBN has now posted the half hour show that Christopher Hitchens and I recorded with them in October. A number of clips from this show do appear in the documentary, but the show ought not to be confused with the documentary. The same goes, incidentally, with the debate that occurred at Westminster, which has its …
Merry Christmas 2008
Stories organize our lives, and the stories that won’t or can’t do that are false stories. The stories that orient us, that place us back where we should have been, the stories that bring redemption, are called true stories. They go by other names if you listen to the tellers of false stories — legends, …
BBQ Pit in Narnia
Here’s a quick snap of our front yard — I remember George Grant was here one time in February, and he made a great deal of fun of our snow-covered barbecue, as though to live in a place where spring has to arrive makes the idea of cooking meat outdoors untenable — but I digress.
Looking Over a Fence
God is light and in Him is no darkness at all (1 John 1:5). We bow before the One who dwells in unapproachable light (1 Tim. 6:16). He is the perfection of all light. But, in keeping with our theme in this series, we have skewed views of what perfection is really like. We want, …
Marduk and the Trinity
The issue is not whether God is perfect, but rather whether we have a firm grasp of what perfection actually means. We have a tendency to measure everything by our own blinkered experience and, once persuaded that something in the divine life is different from what we now know and experience, we are morally certain …
State of the Church 2009
INTRODUCTION: As we consider God’s ongoing kindnesses to us as a congregation, we need to be sure to grasp more than just the “facts.” We need also to have a biblical paradigm for processing those facts—otherwise we will radically misinterpret what is happening to us. THE TEXT: “But this I confess unto thee, that after …
Are You Crazy?
One of our most difficult intellectual problems is that of letting the Bible define perfection. Instead of this, we persist in bringing along our own notions of perfection in order to impose them on the Bible, and particularly on the Garden of Eden. And this seems okay, just so long as we don’t push it …
Best Christmas in 28 Years
Once a traveler from a far land came to visit our country, and he arrived here about a week before Christmas. He was not a tourist, or a businessman, and he was not visiting family. He could best be described as an amateur anthropologist. He simply wanted to come to America in the midst of …
Christmas and the Supper
This week is one of our culture’s high feasts. We may lament that many do not know what Christmas really means, or they have bent it into some other strange meaning, but the fact remains quite a striking one—this time of year, every year, the birth of Jesus Christ is marked and celebrated. Other contenders …