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NOT THE END OF THE WORLD
“Heaven is important, but it’s not the end of the world.” – N. T. Wright The theologians I have been following on YouTube and reading in books – N. T. Wright, Ben Witherington, Michael Heiser, John Walton, and Tim Mackie – seem to have at least one thing in common. (Outside of a love and appreciation for God’s word. And expertise in Biblical languages.) They are all trying to nudge the popular conception of “the gospel” towards a deeper and more accurate understanding of what the Bible portrays as THE good news. Most people seem to believe that Jesus came…
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SOME IDIOT
“If you have an idea that you genuinely think is good, don’t let some idiot talk you out of it.” – Stan Lee That sounds like good advice to me. But my question is this – What if the idiot who talks me out of a good idea is ME?
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CANDY JUICE
There was a carbonated soda available in Haiti literally called “Candy Juice”. This strikes me as a better, more descriptive term for what we currently call “soda” or “pop”. I was in the grocery store yesterday and overheard a couple talking as they stood in the candy juice aisle. The woman was perplexed because her child had requested blue Mountain Dew candy juice and she could not find it on the shelf. This brought several questions to mind: Overhearing this conversation and still aching from the fact that I had earlier purchased (and consumed) a rather large bag of addictive…
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THE DEVIL MADE ME DO IT
Although I was young at the time, I remember seeing some performances of a comedian who was popular on TV in the 1970s, Flip Wilson. If you remember him, you probably remember a sassy character he created named Geraldine. (This was 50 years ago, when it was allowable – and even encouraged – for people to openly laugh at a man in a dress.) In his comedy Wilson/Geraldine popularized the phrase “The devil made me do it!”. One of his bits was about a preacher’s wife who gets dragged into a clothing store and almost physically forced into buying an…
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WHAT IS SATAN’S ROLE IN CALVINISM?
I have listened to a lot of Calvinist preaching over the last few years – it is all over YouTube. The sermons are loaded with abundant talk of God’s grace and glory on one hand and mankind’s depravity and wickedness on the other. But it struck me recently that I have never heard much from the Calvinists about Satan. All of humanity is depicted as full of wickedness, rebellion, and hatred towards God. Where is the Calvinist condemnation of Satan? In Genesis 3, the Lord curses the serpent for his role in deceiving Eve. But He doesn’t curse Adam or…
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ABOUT THE DEVILS
In his preface to The Screwtape Letters, C. S. Lewis made the following observation: There are two equal and opposite errors into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them. They themselves (the devils) are equally pleased by both errors and hail a materialist or a magician with the same delight. Since I am a preacher and since I am striving to look at Scripture with fresh eyes, I have taken some interest recently in the devil…
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BUILDING A CONGREGATION THAT CAN BUILD A CHURCH
Here’s a little article I am working on for the upcoming Mission Resource quarterly newsletter. Many of our “loan officers” are pastors and this sort of thing happens all the time in their churches as a result of having capital available to the congregation: Here in the States, we tend to take our church buildings for granted… But in developing countries like Ghana, local congregations can struggle to find the means to put up even a crude structure to shield against the weather. This is why we get extra excited to hear reports about how Mission Resource loans are indirectly…
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NEW HOBBY
Recently I realized I don’t have any hobbies to speak of, unless you count listening to YouTube debates over Calvinism or complaining about our dogs. A recent voluntary activity has started to fill that void and given me what hobbies are supposed to provide: enjoyable time disconnected from the pressures of “reality”. My new interest is in using Canva to create advertisements for local businesses. I have found it especially satisfying to replace lame existing ads with something I hope will be more effective. The fruits of my new hobby are being published in Westport’s Town Crier. It’s a neat…
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CONVINCING
It’s late and I have to give a 10 Minute Presentation at my BNI meeting tomorrow morning at 7:00 am! So I am just leaving a couple of quotes here tonight. These are ideas that would have not caught my attention even five years ago, but now I think the concepts here are incredibly important – in matters of theology, politics, and life in general. See what you think: “The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow-witted man if he has not formed any idea of them already; but the simplest thing cannot be made clear to…
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PUNISHMENT OR CONSEQUENCE?
I think it makes a big difference to our theology as to whether we think of death and separation from God as Adam and Eve’s punishment or as a natural consequence of their actions. A punishment is like a parent saying, “If you touch that TV again, I’m going to spank you!” A consequence is a parent saying, “If you touch that stove top, you’re going to get burned!” I see the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden as a consequence more than a punishment. If your child touches the TV again after you’ve told her…