For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away.
The pursuit of truth, I have come to learn, is not an easy path. It is very tempting – as so many are content to do – to find a comfortable, sheltered place along the road and settle there. Sometimes it does seem attractive to me, I need to admit, to just cling to the... Continue Reading →
I hope my regular readers will pardon my relative silence lately. I have been trying to get all my ducks in a row, workwise. To be honest, I am not even sure I own ducks anymore. Certainly we don’t seem to occupy the same farmyard. So I haven’t had time to do a lot of... Continue Reading →
A friend of mine made the following statement to me last week: "The difference between Catholics and Protestants is that Catholics believe in "Jesus and..."; Protestants believe in "Jesus only". He's wrong, of course. Nobody believes in Jesus only. We all add something. And if I were to be cynical, I would argue that Protestants don’t worship... Continue Reading →
People like walls. Walls make people feel safe. People have formed the impression that by keeping Them out, letting Them be with Their own kind, and by keeping Us sheltered inside, everybody can live in peace and harmony. As long as everybody stays on their own side of the wall, everything will be okay. Unfortunately,... Continue Reading →
Picture, for a moment, a hypothetical, completely dysfunctional family. The son’s academic performance is poor and he has become rebellious at school. The daughter’s devotion to her work borders on the obsessive and – although very few of her classmates know it – she cuts herself compulsively. Dad demands perfection from his children. For him,... Continue Reading →
The reason I get passionate about theology is because it matters. Not because of any eternal consequences, but because theology determines how we treat others in the here and now. If our picture of God is of an angry and violent brute, we tend to become violent and brutish ourselves. And it so happens that... Continue Reading →
If you move in vaguely Christian circles, or if you are part of the LGBTQ community, you have probably heard of the Nashville Statement. And if you have heard of the Nashville Statement, you almost certainly have an opinion on it. The Nashville Statement was the brainchild (I almost wrote brainlesschild, but I have reminded... Continue Reading →
The problem with believing that God was punishing Jesus on the cross for our sins, as Michael Hardin points out, is that it doesn’t take sin nearly seriously enough. It limits the power of sin to the personal. In other words, it implies that the primary problem with sin is that I will be harshly... Continue Reading →
