Bart Ehrman has perhaps done more to undermine the credibility of the Bible than anyone else in my lifetime. But his story didn’t begin that way. Ehrman is a New Testament scholar and skeptic. Ehrman grew up in a Christian home, attended a conservative Bible school, and then found his way to a liberal seminary where his faith in the God of the Bible unraveled. That seminary happens to be the seminary I would attend a couple of decades later.
For Ehrman, everywhere he looks he sees holes in the biblical story. The inconsistencies that he sees have led him to determine that he cannot trust in the God of the Bible.
“Don’t listen to your feelings; remember what Jesus did for you!”
“Don’t be guided by your feelings; listen to what God commands you to do!”
In just the past week, I heard both of these warnings. Two very different Christian speakers urged their audiences to shut down their feelings. These admonitions resonate. They contain truth. It is correct that our feelings don’t override truth, nor do our emotions negate what God has done. Neither do our feelings give us an out for what God commands us to do.
I had outsized emotions as a child. Games, especially, would get the best of me, whether cards or boardgames or sports. In response to a stroke of bad luck, a hot surge of anger would erupt, followed quickly by tears and then embarrassment.
Emotions are God’s gift to us in many ways. They are one of his kind ways of showing us where our deep attachments lie.
Our son started his freshman year at the University of Arizona this fall. It’s been a great experience for him, but not without its adjustments. The climate of a secular school is quite different than the Christian school he graduated from
Most have heard of the famous Stanford marshmallow experiment. In 1970, psychologist Walter Mischel invited kids into his lab. A child was offered a marshmallow that they could eat, or, if they waited until the researcher returned, they were given a second marshmallow. About one-third of the kids waited approximately fifteen minutes for the additional reward.
The study then tracked those children over time and found that children who waited for the second reward tended to have higher SAT scores and lower body mass indexes. Later tests have challenged those outcomes, but it hasn’t stopped parents everywhere from running the experiment on their kids, often with humorous results.
Happy election day!
In 2016, data scientists Eitan Hersh and Yair Ghitza analyzed data among registered voters to determine how often Democrats and Republicans married. They learned that 9% of marriages had the spouses registered in the two parties. Over the next four years that meager number would drop precipitously, down to 4%.
As Jonathan Haidt and others have successfully argued, the ideological disparity between FOX News and CNBC are child’s play compared to the engineered social media algorithms that create hermetically sealed echo chambers for our political views.
This past week has been one of the hardest in my calling as a pastor. Within 24 hours we had three deaths in our congregation: one by cancer, one took his own life, and the other two by a murder-suicide.
There is no sufficient response to these tragedies on this side of heaven. There are no answers, no sense to be made of such senseless loss. There is only grief and the promise that God is sovereign and he grieves with us.
Imagine if God came to you in a vision tonight and said that he is giving you a choice: you could live the rest of your life with Jesus as your neighbor and best friend, but you wouldn’t have the Spirit, or you could keep the Spirit, but wouldn’t meet Jesus face-to-face until heaven. How many of us would choose to keep the Spirit? But Jesus says option B is the better option.
“Christ has risen!” “He has risen indeed!”
Millions of Christians around the globe greeted one another with those triumphal words on Easter Sunday. And yet, many of us who declared that marvelous truth two days ago, functionally disbelieve in the resurrection.
Do you ever despair of the grip of sin on your life? Does it feel as though you will never shake that addiction or stronghold?
Six freshmen squeezed around a cafeteria table during orientation week, voices competing with the din in the room. We were all posturing in our own ways, trying to impress our peers. A moment of rare silence passed, and then she shared about her parent’s recent divorce. Her voice wavered, and her eyes welled with tears. It was a crack of vulnerability in a conversation marked by ego and self-protection.
“We don’t go there.” I’ve heard many express that sentiment about their family. I think of couples who refuse to talk about sex, or the family that hides dad’s explosive anger. When such toxic behaviors become normalized, they turn into dysfunction. From the outside, anyone can recognize these areas of avoidance as a sign of dysfunction. The pain of pressing into such challenging areas hinders the full formation and growth of healthy familial relationships.
Little kids love re-watching movies. The movie might play in the background as a sort of interactive wallpaper, as their attention is locked on playing with the nearest doll or a truck. Then they’ll freeze, attention rapt on the screen, “This is my favorite part!” The movie is no longer the wallpaper; it is a focal point.
Many of us have faith that latches onto specific parts of the Easter story. But the gospel includes every part of the story. Is there an aspect of the Easter story that you focus on? Over the next two weeks, we will consider five parts of the Easter story and reflect on how each component can enrich our faith.
Christ is risen! He is risen indeed!
What emotions do those seven words invoke in you? How does the resurrection make you feel?
What if we could feel more like God? What if we could allow God into our emotional life? This series of posts invites us to consider Holy Week as revelatory to us not just in its spiritual impact, but also its emotional impact (perhaps next year we might walk through Holy Week and consider the ramifications it has for our bodies!).
1. Is Easter Believable? Des Smith begins, “Is Easter believable? That’s a question people have been asking for 2000 years. It may be a question you’re asking.”
2. Is Christianity Bad News for Women? Jen Oshman responds, “[T]he Christian culture in the first century then becomes this safe place and harbor for women. Women turned to Christ, and the Christian community has been predominantly female ever since.”
3. Faith Like a Beach House: Chris Thomas begins this moving extended metaphor this way, “The excitement ebbed away with my first breath. Now, to be honest, I’m not an overly excitable guy; I’m fairly reserved in my displays of emotion, but I had been undeniably excited, that much was clear. But not any more. A week or two earlier, my wife and I had purchased on old van, circa late 70’s, that had been permanently parked on a slab of concrete”
4. An Open Letter to a Christian Disheartened by Temptation: Don Carson and John Woodbridge begin, “That you are experiencing rounds of temptation is not as unusual as you might suppose. From the inception of the church believers have found this pilgrim way to be strewn with multiple temptations.”
5. Were You There? A beautiful rendition by the Three Mo’ Tenors.
My wife and I curled up on our daughter’s first big girl bed. Camille was three at the time and Soren was just one year old. We picked up where we were in their children’s Bible as we read to them before they slept. I flipped the cardboard page past the story of the Last Supper to the crucifixion.
Alongside the picture of Christ hanging on a cross, the author explained, “Then bad men who didn’t like Jesus put him on a cross.”
Angel and I looked at each other quizzically. That’s it? That’s the crucifixion story? I flipped the page where the story continued with the story of the resurrection of Christ. That didn’t help. The author hadn’t even explained that Jesus had died. And what was the reason he died? Because “bad men” didn’t like him?
We both realized we would have to go off script for this story. There was much more to share about Jesus’ crucifixion with our kids than the author thought was necessary.
As a culture, we cringe at sharing hard things with our kids. We brush over disappointment and sadness and shut down negative emotions in our children. For many, this is a learned behavior. We were taught that we were only allowed to share good things with our families.
It’s not surprising, then, that we have a hard time going to dark places with God in our lives, then. But to the heights of the rescue of Christ, we must also experience the valleys of his death. God invites us to walk with Jesus into the emotions of the cross. The crucifixion of Christ isn’t a static spiritual reality, but a physical, emotional, and spiritual experience God invites us into.
The Passion of the Christ hit box offices in February of 2004 to mixed reviews. Some criticized the movie for being overly graphic in its depiction of Christ’s death. Because of their understanding of the second commandment where God instructs his people not to make any graven images, other Christians were uneasy with a depiction of Christ on screen.
Whether you loved or hated The Passion of the Christ, if you watched the movie, I doubt you forgot it. The movie flattened me emotionally and spiritually. For that, I’m grateful.
As we approach Good Friday, I invite you to experience the cross again. As you read Matthew’s account, what emotions do you think Jesus was feeling? The thief on the cross? Mary? John? The Centurion?
How is your life shaped by Easter week? I mean other than the obligatory 3 pounds that is about to be added to your waistline courtesy of honey baked ham, deviled eggs, and Reese’s Peanut Butter cups (if you’re going to put on the weight, it might as well be good… not Peeps or generic jelly beans!)?
What reminders do the final week of Jesus’ life bring to our every-day lives?
The final week of Jesus’ life takes up a disproportionate amount of the gospel narratives. Approximately a third of the gospel accounts are devoted to the final week of Jesus’ life:
· 8 of 28 chapters in Matthew
· 6 of 16 chapters in Mark
· 5 of 24 chapters in Luke
· 9 of 21 chapters in John
Of the 52 weeks of our year, Holy Week is highlighted and underlined. On this week the other 51 weeks of our year hang, on this week, the other 51 are shaped.
How does the Holy Week shape our lives?
1) Palm Sunday reminds us how different the true King is.
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