RFRA & My Wedding Ring
Had we been noisy enough, I might have gotten the thing I wanted at the time. But at what price to the commonweal?
The way to protect religious liberty is not to bleat for it but to expose the distortions, conjectural ploys, and rabble-rousing used against it. It requires tooth. By contrast, the bishops’ bridge-over-troubled-waters approach signaled to RFRA antagonists that self-serving outbursts really do work. It cooperated with bootlicking politicians in ceding ground that was never in... Continue Reading
Biblical Love: Seeking My Joy in Your Joy
True, biblical love consists in the sharing of mutual joy—of seeking one another’s joy as one’s own.
My prayer is that the Spirit of God would so work true, biblical love in the hearts of His people, that I would pursue your good as my good, that you would seek your joy in my joy—that God’s people would seek our happiness in one another’s happiness. Do you know what would happen then?... Continue Reading
Must Christianity Change Its Sexual Ethics? History May Hold The Key
The churches that have thrived over the centuries were those that offered their world something more than the echo of the times.
Churches that accept society’s dogma on marriage and sexuality may think of themselves as “affirming,” but the global church sees them as “apostate.” Meanwhile, it is the height of imperialistic narrowness for a rapidly shrinking subset of white churches in the West to lecture the rest of the world — including those places where Christianity is... Continue Reading
Hymns We Should Sing More Often: ‘Stricken, Smitten, And Afflicted’
Most of the hymns in this series are not unfamiliar, just underutilized
Thomas Kelly (1769-1855) wrote more than 750 hymns, including Stricken, Smitten, And Afflicted in 1804. Kelly planned to be a lawyer but after his conversion the Irishman decided to enter the ministry. He was ordained as an Anglican priest in 1792, but later became a “dissenting” minister. This is part of an intermittent series... Continue Reading
Material Dimensions of Spiritual Friendship
Part historical survey, part Biblical analysis, and part personal reflection, Spiritual Friendship manages to be informative and insightful but also unnerving and challenging
The need for intimate friendship and the practices that foster it is all the more pressing in our day and age, as our culture has not only drained friendship of its public social benefit but placed a variety of economic, technological and political counterweights against it. The local church can be a place to nurture... Continue Reading
Great Expectations?
Do people view me as a man of integrity? Do people view my children as people of integrity?
My children will make some bad decisions now and then, but hopefully not as bad as some of mine. When they do, I hope that I will be there for them, showing them love and forgiveness, and helping them to learn from the consequences. Hopefully my children will look to me and see me as... Continue Reading
Islam, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and the Jesus Movement
There are differences between Christianity and Islam; there is no moral equivalence.
“My observation is yes, Christianity is different from Islam…The worst thing that a Christian has ever said to me, the rudest thing that a Christian has ever said to me, the thing that made me most uncomfortable that a Christian said to me was ‘I’m going to pray for you. I hope you will be... Continue Reading
Inerrancy Is Not a New Idea, Just Ask Irenaeus
Irenaeus based the fidelity of the apostolic writings upon the absolute truthfulness of the Lord Jesus Christ and the conviction that truth and falsehood are polar opposites
Haykin argues that this framework was the foundation for Irenaeus’s dispute with Gnostics and others over the truthfulness and sufficiency of Scripture. As Haykin notes via Norbert Brox: “[In] Irenaeus this principle stands at the beginning [of his thought]: that the Bible is in every respect perfect and sufficient.” Okay, okay. I do need... Continue Reading
When Bad Things Happen to God’s People
James says that we are to consider it all joy when we face trials. Whatever shape or size they take, we are to meet them with joy and expectation.
Life’s hardships should prompt us to do inventory, starting with a prayer for the Spirit to search our heart and expose what is holding us back (see Psalm 139:23-24). Pastors should be able to lead the sheep in such an inventory, to pull alongside them in time of adversity and help them take advantage of... Continue Reading
The Outward Show: Holiness from the Inside Out
When your outward show matches your inward reality before God and man you look like Jesus Christ.
The problem with the Pharisees was not their external piety. No, the characteristic of these men which was deplorable to Jesus was their lack of interest on an internal purity that matched their outward show. It was their duplicity and hypocrisy that offended Jesus, and not their dutiful holiness. Man looks on the outward appearance, but God... Continue Reading