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I AM BLESSED
Today was a good day. Sunday, February 1st, 2026. The drive to church was absolutely magical this morning. An early morning frost had frozen on all the trees and across the stubble in the fields, poking out from under the 14 inches of snow that fell last weekend. My good friend from seminary days, Tim Price, and his wife Suzanne and their daughter Macy had come to provide music for the morning, but now all of that was in jeopardy due to a malfunctioning church furnace – on a morning when the outside temps were in the negatives. A couple…
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SIMPLIFY
Typically, I keep my online “mouth” closed when it comes to political events. When it comes to the latest outrage, I am just not as certain as a lot of people are that I know the full and obvious truth or that I have THE proper interpretation. Nor am I convinced that the world is dying to know where I stand. And, thankfully, I personally long ago gave up the immature notion that if your beliefs don’t align with mine, then you are a terrible person and probably not even a true Christian. I am nervous that the current river…
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JUST A TICKET TO HEAVEN?
Free Grace Theology – with it’s “Believe these propositional truths about Jesus and you are irrevocably in the Eternal Life Club, no genuine righteousness required” – ends up with this big question: Why does God arrange this particular system for entry into heaven? The Free Grace folks highlight this arrangement as bringing glory to Jesus – “He paid the price for you. It was ALL Him. Your righteousness or lack of righteousness had nothing to do with it. All you have to do is believe. And because He is faithful, once you believe, the Father will honor this arrangement, no…
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NEW TRADITIONS CAN BE WORSE THAN OLD ONES
As I look into “Free Grace Theology”, I am not familiar enough with its history and core doctrines to distinguish between teachers who are pillars and those who are outliers. So I could be wrong, but this is what I am seeing as core doctrines from a couple of different teachers: This is a mess and there’s so much to unpack here. So here’s one good rule of thumb to avoid getting enmeshed in a misguided theological tradition in the first place: If you are tempted to hitch your horse to any particular theological movement, make sure its roots go…
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TRADITION CAN CLOUD WHAT IS OTHERWISE CLEAR
I love the concept of the perspicuity of Scripture. If you’re not familiar with the term, “perspicuity” is the ironically complicated word which the scholars have chosen instead of “clarity”. So the idea is that Scripture, though layered, nuanced, and sophisticated in structure, is accessible and understandable to the average reader. Although the meanings of some passages have been obscured by differences in culture and time, everything that a person needs to understand God’s plan of salvation is plain enough to the reader. I do believe Scripture is generally clear … and yet I also believe the average believer has…
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WHEN THE CHECK IS JUST THE CHERRY ON TOP
Did you see footage online of a young man named Alex Honnold climbing up the outside of Taipei 101, a 1,667-foot skyscraper in Taiwan? (The 101 refers to the number of floors!) It took him a little over an hour and a half and he did the whole thing without any ropes or safety gear. Netflix did a live broadcast of the climb – with a ten second delay, just in case Alex lost his grip along the way. Why did Ales make the climb? Well, Netflix paid him half a million dollars. But Alex says he didn’t do it…
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TOO SMALL
We believers like to assume we know the definition of all the churchy words, but when we are called on to define one, we often stumble over our words. It seems like people feel pretty confident about “faith”, though. “Faith is just believing in the truth that Jesus died for your sins.” And “gospel”? People might be a little more hesitant, but eventually you would get a definition something along the same lines: “The gospel is the good news that Jesus died for your sins.” But what do we do when our assumed definitions make no sense in a particular…
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ON BEING AN INFLUENCER
I am still seeking guidance from God on what my dissertation studies will result in – since they won’t become a degree. I firmly believe that the Lord led me into the program for a good reason, I just have to uncover it. Caleb is encouraging me to do some longform writing on X or start a podcast on YouTube. Truthfully, I have wanted to write longer content somewhere that would allow for receiving more comments and challenges from readers. Blogspot here is kind of clunky in that respect while X has just instituted a new form for longer essays. And…
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A HYPOTHETICAL REGARDING “FAITH ALONE”
A whole lot of (Protestant) preachers get very passionate about salvation/justification coming from faith alone, where faith seems to consist of nothing more than mental assent to a propositional truth, specifically “Jesus died for your sins”. (Otherwise, you get into the “dangerous territory” of “good works”.) At first glance, it all sounds biblical and there are plenty of proof texts to support the idea. But gathering proof texts is not a solid way to build your theological imagination. It feeds into confirmation bias. You end up “studying to affirm” rather than “studying to learn”, as Christian YouTuber Will Hess puts…
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ANOTHER BIG QUESTION
I have recently felt an inner challenge to wrestle with one more of the big questions of the Christian faith – and that gets scary because you might come to the conclusion that widely accepted and preached ideas don’t actually have as strong of a Scriptural foundation as you have always assumed. In recent years, I have wrestled with the nature of hell, the doctrine of original sin, all of TULIP, and the definition of “the gospel”. Now I am exploring “faith alone” and the relationship between “faith” and “works”. What does the Bible mean by “faith”? Is faith the…