Not too long ago I wrote about how Christians tend in general to be supportive of science (properly understood), but get pretty tense when the science in question is psychology. I mentioned that a couple of people have  cautioned me about bringing any sort of social science into my upcoming dissertation, and I continue to give that a lot of thought. This morning in Sunday school, I brought up “confirmation bias” in relation to the story of Simon the Pharisee inviting Jesus to dinner at his house and then being aghast at Jesus allowing a sinful woman to touch his…

I just finished writing a 16 page exegesis paper, so I am done writing for the day. On the bright side, this means my preaching is just about entirely in manuscript form already – which is one of the requirements for this Sunday’s sermon – the one based on this exegesis and needing to be submitted on video for a grade. It is good to be this far along on the sermon because tomorrow (Saturday) evening is our VBS program. There will be no time for last minute sermon writing tomorrow evening!  I do still need to put together a…

Although I have been grumbling a bit lately about the workload I have to carry for my classes, when I truly got into this week’s assignment, I got caught up in it and time passed very quickly. That’s a good sign. A sign that the homework is accomplishing its purpose – and not just getting turned in for a grade.  This work is a multi-layered inductive Bible study of James 1:19-27 serving both of my classes. Tomorrow it becomes a paper for hermeneutics class and next the basis for my sermon this Sunday morning. (To be videotaped and submitted to…

Author Andrew Klavan is fond of saying that anger is “the devil’s cocaine”.  He’s right. Anger is addictive. It feels so good sometimes. Anger, though, is most often only a symptom of a deeper problem: self-righteousness.  Self-righteousness expresses itself in more than just anger, though. To name a few, there’s virtue signaling and feeling offended and looking down on others. Worst of all, self-righteousness keeps you unaware of your need for Christ’s righteousness. Worse than addiction, it is flat out deadly to one’s spirit.  So if anger is the devil’s cocaine, self-righteousness is the devil’s fentanyl. 

I am currently preaching from the book of James and so I have read through the book as a whole several times now. It’s an interesting process to read a Biblical book repeatedly before focusing on some smaller part of the whole – you find that much of the depth of Scripture is not revealed in casual or patchy reading.  The book of James used to strike me as being a fairly random collection of commandments, but I am starting to see the author’s framework more clearly. James seems to build the entire book around a basic contrast of how…

Context is so important when it comes to understanding specific Scripture verses. But most preachers put little effort into studying the context themselves and so have little to pass along to their listeners.  It doesn’t take much effort to reveal the unavoidable importance of context to comprehending a speaker’s meaning.  Consider the following scenario: You are looking over a transcript of a conversation I had with a friend and come across this sentence from me: “People are weasels. I don’t trust anybody.”  I said what I said.  Does it matter what the conversation as a whole was about? You betcha. …

James, the brother of Jesus, asks, “What is your life?” (James 4:14) And then he offers his own answer: “You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.” I guess he wasn’t into sugarcoating. When I think of a mist, the words that come to mind are fragile and temporary. This morning at church we prayed for a boy with leukemia, my mother-in-law battling cancer, and others who were victims of car accidents.  A good friend was recently diagnosed with celiac disease. Our oldest child, Caleb, is experiencing chronic fatigue and brain fog. But even with…

I think “sin” is another one of those basic theological words that we assume we understand – but in reality we just don’t hold an accurate definition in our minds. In this case, we tend to think too narrow. We associate “sin” with drunkenness or gambling or drug abuse or cheating on your spouse.  If we’re not guilty of that sort of living, we assume we’re doing pretty good in God’s eyes. We always think of sin in terms of commission – doing what we shouldn’t be doing. But Jesus said the 2 greatest commandments were to love God and…

Last Sunday, after hearing me preach for the first time, my old college friend visiting from California said something like the following: “This might sound like a criticism, but it’s not meant to be. You don’t preach like you’ve got the Bible all figured out. I really appreciate that.” I am glad. I strive to be as authentic as I can be – in and out of the pulpit. So it would be extremely difficult for me to preach like I have Christian faith and the holy Scriptures all figured out – because I don’t. This might be a liability…