At some point a Christian says he loves Jesus. I think that is an infallible test of anyone who might be a Christian. Not everybody who says they love the Savior is a Christian, but nobody who doesn’t is.
What does it mean to say I love somebody I have not seen?
It does not mean I love a mere idea. The ideas of Jesus are interesting, but not as intriguing to my intellec...
Read More...
The Barna researchers tell us that one reason people leave the Faith is that they find the exclusive nature of Christianity hard to swallow.
They can accept that it is true, but not that it is the Truth.
Only man narrow enough to see down a straw with both eyes would be unsympathetic to this worry. There is so much to learn from people who are not Christians and so many n...
Read More...
Being a Packer fan in the Eighties was hard, not perhaps Great Depression hard, but depressingly hard. I had to watch childhood hero Bart Starr fail to lead the Packers back to glory as a head coach. Lynn Dickey’s knees were so bad, my entire family feared he would fall down every time he dropped back to pass.
The less said about the record “8-8” the better.
Then came...
Read More...
A soul created in the image of God has gone to God. An enemy of the United States has received justice for his crimes. This is a moment for solemn thanksgiving.
Not for a biblical Christian is the easy path of pretending America’s foes are always enemies of God. Neither have traditional Christians been allowed the soft path of passivity in the face of evil. Christians know...
Read More...
Problems lurk in the future that will test Christendom.
We live in a nation with legal abortion, in a world with human trafficking, in a time of revolution. Legitimate cares burden any head of house in America. Will I keep my job? Will the house ever be worth what we paid for it? Should my family celebrate Halloween?
Actually, the last is a luxury worry, the sort of conce...
Read More...
One criticism of Mitt Romney is that he has "flip-flopped" on conservative issues.
Nobody likes an opportunist and there are some politicians who adopt positions just to be elected. People are right to worry about Romney, because Romney ran as a social liberal in Massachusetts and then changed his views to become a social conservative.
Still only a crank refuses to win. S...
Read More...
As a boy I saw people come to help us in West Virginia. They usually had great motives and there were problems in the region, but these good hearted souls often made things worse. Other times our hapless helpers ended up being used by powerful people with less noble motives to gain even more power.
Occupy Wall Street is turning into good intentions married to horrid solution...
Read More...
Featured Essay
The Beatles are history.
Some of the band members are alive and you can still buy their music, but the Beatles are history in the sense of being more dated than datable.
I am too young for Beatle mania, but too old to have missed hearing how great they (allegedly) were. Dimly I recall Christians being concerned about them (sex! drugs! hair!) or defending them (relate to t...
Read More...
The new project called Theological Engagement with California Culture is moving out of the initial planning phase and onto the public stage this November. Since the national meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society is in California this year, we are holding our first major presentation in conjunction with ETS in San Francisco. You can read more about TECC's goals and pla...
Read More...
John Wesley is one of the great interpreters of Jesus' Sermon on the Mount. The Sermon plays a central role in Wesley's own thought. In Wesley's Standard Sermons, the series of sermons dedicated to expounding Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount is the longest series of continuous discourses in the whole volume, running from Sermon #21 to #33.
The reason Wesley gave such a large pe...
Read More...
Featured Essay
Thomas Traherne was born in England in 1637, educated at Oxford and ordained an Anglican priest. During his short life he served as a parish priest and as a private chaplain. He died in 1674 at only 37 years old. During his lifetime he published only one work, the Roman Forgeries but just after his death Christian Ethicks appeared and in the past three and a half centuries othe...
Read More...
Nobody should be confused by this post into thinking that I am a likely Obama voter. My family joined the GOP when Lincoln made our home a state: West Virginia. Short of nominating Donald Trump's hair, I am likely to support the nominee of the Republican Party, but that does not mean I blame our President for all our woes.
I don't agree with some of what he has done, but he ...
Read More...
