Theology

This Week's Recommendations

This Week's Recommendations

1.       The Cosmos Keeps Preaching: Kevin Hartnett shares about his faith after forty years of discoveries at NASA. He begins, “Have you ever landed great seats at a concert, show, or sporting event — seats right down front, near the center of the action? That’s very much how I think about my position as an employee at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center over the past forty years (now retired), a career spent assisting in the development and testing of satellite control centers and directing the operation of various scientific missions.”

2.       Sex and Christ Crucified: Excellent post by Ed Welch, making Paul’s insights to the church at Corinth clear. He says, “Notice how we can find a belief, somewhere in our souls, that we are independent agents, free to make our own decisions. This belief can be aroused when we hear that we “are not under law but under grace” (Rom 6:14). But be careful. Even people who don’t follow Jesus would say that freedom has its limits. Some choices are good for us and some are not.”

3.       Guarding Cherished Resentments: Steve Cornell warns, “Resentment often comes with a blinding effect. It can be hard to recognize how anger and bitterness double our loss and send extended effects of the evil done against us to others.”

4.       The Unexpected Beauty of Babel: This is a fun one by AW Workman. It’s similar to a post I wrote here (but I think even better). He says, “Yet Babel was not only an act of judgment. It was also an act of creation. Creation through judgment. Apparently, when God acted, dozens of languages burst into existence instantly and then began to live and move and have stories and descendants of their own.”

5.       Two Types of Airport People: Pretty funny.

This Week's Recommendations

This Week's Recommendations
  1. Gospel Hope for Self-Haters: David Powlison with a layered analysis of something many struggle with. “He is actually saying something that competes with the false voices, and it is not just something you rehearse in your own head. He’s actually inviting you to come out of yourself, out of the death spiral, the vortex of self-hatred, as we are talking about it right now.”

  2. Men and Emotions: I’ve spent a lot of time working with men on this issue (and myself!) and love Joseph Hussung’s approach. He explains, “The purpose of using these tools is simple. We need to be able to express our emotions. We need to be able to express them to our Lord, and we need to be able to express them to others.”

  3. What’s Beneath it all? Sylvia Schroeder considers her cries to God for her daughter’s life, “Were my begging pleas like the Israelites in the Old Testament in their whining complaints? Did my request resemble theirs when they craved meat and disdained manna in the wilderness? Did He grow tired of my pleas?”

  4. Banksy and Beauty from Ashes: Tim Challies with a reflection on a graffiti artist’s statement, “Not too long ago, I read that the mysterious artist Banksy had created several new murals in Ukraine. Going to locations that had experienced the fury of war, he found broken and damaged buildings and used them as his canvas.”

  5. Four Reasons to Be Early to the Sunday Gathering: I appreciate Jacob Crouch’s simple admonitions to church-goers here, “Try showing up just 10 minutes early next week. This isn’t a law from on high, but I really think this could be a prudent way to make the most of a Sunday morning.”

Jesus Loves Me, This I Know

Jesus Loves Me, This I Know

While I grew up in a gospel-preaching church that formed the lifelong foundation for my faith, my theological awakening occurred in college. As I grew up in theology, I began to turn my nose up on some of the worship of my youth. I had outgrown Precious Moments Christianity and left behind worship that felt like nothing more than love songs to Jesus. I’m thinking of sentimental songs like “Above All” where the song awkwardly announces, “So heaven meets earth like a sloppy wet kiss and my heart turns violently inside of my chest.”

I looked down on these theologically thin offerings and rolled my eyes. Jesus isn’t our boyfriend…

Worship and Victory

Worship and Victory

We’ve all had moments in our lives where it seemed like all hope was lost. I remember sitting at my desk in high school, staring at an AP Chemistry test that might as well have been written in Latin. I felt so doomed. My mind spun. I was going to fail this test. I was going to fail the class. Would I have to take summer school? Would I be able to get into my dream college?  I had catastrophized this one test into determining the trajectory of my future years.

This Week's Recommendations

This Week's Recommendations
  1. Every Day’s a Bad Day: How Ecclesiastes Taught Me to Enjoy Life: Carolyn Mahaney wants us to see Ecclesiastes in a new light, “Ecclesiastes has shown me the secret of enjoying life, even in the midst of trouble. It has rescued me from disillusionment when labors I thought were fruitful appeared to be for naught. When friends have turned their backs, Ecclesiastes has helped me guard against bitterness. It has cured me of setting my hope on a particular outcome, and protected me from becoming bewildered and disheartened by bad news.”

  2. Hannah’s Funeral: Oh my, get your tissues out for this touching piece by Seth Lewis about their daughter they lost during pregnancy 16 years ago.

  3. What Things? D. Eaton considers Jesus’s casual two word response on the road to Emmaus and invites us to consider their spiritual power for us, “It is only because Jesus can ask, “what things?” without further suffering that we can look at our sin and ask, “what debt?” without being thrown into an anxious or guilty state. In Jesus, we have no reason to re-experience the threat of wrath that once hung over us.”

  4. Not a Dinosaur: Mitch Leventhal makes a convincing case that Leviathan in Job is Satan, not a dinosaur. “Job cannot subdue the Evil One. Satan is untamable by man, like a multi-headed sea beast in the waters of chaos. But God can overcome Leviathan. According to Jim Hamilton, ‘the whole book is bracketed by Yahweh’s enticing Satan to do his bidding at the beginning, and by his putting a hook in Leviathan’s nose at the end.’ Yahweh rules over the deep. Evil will not have the last word.”

  5. More Than Jumper Cable Christianity: JA Medders explains, “We use jumper cables when our car’s battery is depleted, dead, and in need of a jumpfrom another battery to get going. We connect jumper cables to another car, get some juice, and then go about our day and way. I fear far too many of us approach “abiding” in Christ this way.”

Do You Have a Resurrection Faith?

Do You Have a Resurrection Faith?

“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?   

Do You Have A Holy Saturday Faith?

Do You Have A Holy Saturday Faith?

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.

This Week's Recommendations

This Week's Recommendations
  1. How Much Money Americans Say They Need to Feel Rich: Kamaron McNair reports (note how much one’s current income determines one’s response), “An annual income of $1 million or more was the most popular answer, with 22% of respondents saying they need to rake in seven figures to feel rich.”

  2. Wrinkles in Time: Kristin reflects, “Stirred by her actions, I realized that I want to move happily ahead on the path called today, serving my family and friends, playing peekaboo with our grandson, and forgetting all about me. This does not happen naturally, does it?”

  3. How the Doctrine of Exclusivity Made me a Christian: Mason Jones reflects on his conversion, “Before I became a Christian, I had a strictly physicalist worldview that left no room for objective moral principles. My biggest objection to such principles was that they’d require some absolute standard that transcended the physical universe.”

  4. The Devil is Blinding You to Glory: Jacob Crouch begins, “Have you ever felt cold towards the gospel? Have you heard that Christ died for your sins and was raised from the dead and just felt blah. If that is you, because I know it has been me at times, then I want to alert you to something. This is more than just unfortunate; this is war. And this coldness to Christ is a direct attack from the enemy. The devil is blinding you to glory.”

  5. The Prince: This podcast series on the backstory of the world’s most powerful man, Chinese Communist leader Xi Jinping, was an eye-opener for me.

Why Does Jesus Talk About Hell?

Why Does Jesus Talk About Hell?

What was Jesus’ personality like? If our culture were to create Jesus’ personae, it might look like Mr. Rogers’s personality: gentle, unassuming, two-dimensionally meek and mild. In short, a sweet pushover of a man. There is truth in our culture’s depicture. When sharing the nature of his heart, Jesus says that he is “gentle and lowly” (Mt 11:29) So he is. He is patient and merciful. He is kind and caring.

This Week's Recommendations

This Week's Recommendations
  1. The Most Dangerous Type of Parenting: Aaron Earls explains, “Reputation parenting is primarily concerned with the spiritual reputation of the parent. We do what we do as a parent with the goal of having others see us as a respectable Christian parent.”

  2. Why Do Christians Make Such a Big Deal About Sex? Rebecca McLaughlin responds, “Whenever people ask me why Christians are so weird about sex, I first point out that we’re weirder than they think. The fundamental reason why Christians believe that sex belongs only in the permanent bond of male-female marriage is because of the metaphor of Jesus’s love for his church.”

  3. What does “the prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective” mean? Kevin Halloran asks, “But what exactly does this phrase from James mean? Does it mean that we will receive everything we pray for, or that holiness strengthens our prayers?”

  4. My Broken Engagement: Olivia Davis begins, “Has God forgotten me? No, my heart said. But it wasn’t a statement of faith. It was a cry of sorrow: I wish that he had. Because if he had forgotten me, it would mean that he didn’t know about my broken engagement, that he wasn’t an indifferent observer watching me sprawled out on my living room rug like a dead spider, sobbing until I had to run to the bathroom and vomit.”

  5. Does Jesus Still Sympathize with Sinners? Mark Jones with a rich reflection concludes, “we can rejoice that his compassion to us is not mere sentiment, but a powerful compassion whereby he can supply us with his grace in our times of need, just as the Father supplied Christ with the Spirit in his time of need.”