Links are provided as food for thought. Inclusion of any article doesn’t imply endorsement nor agreement with what is said.
Scripture as Witness to the Word of God
If you can’t see the distinction between Jesus and the Bible, you are very confused indeed! And not in a trivial manner either. Biblicism is a rival faith to Christianity. Oh, believe me, I have a high view of Scripture…but Jesus is Lord! It is Christ who rules the nations…not the Bible. Can I give an example of how this distinction might matter? Consider that the Bible does not give a clear denunciation of slavery, but the living and reigning Christ surely does!
What Christians Live and Die For
Paul Robert Schneider (1897-1939) was the first Protestant pastor to die in a concentration camp at the hands of the Nazis. His story is one of unmitigated courage, self-sacrifice, and martyrdom. Only in recent years has he begun to receive some of the recognition he deserves.
Schneider was not a theologian of first rank like Karl Barth or Dietrich Bonhoeffer, nor a hero like the Polish friar Maximillian Kolbe, who sheltered thousands of Jews and eventually exchanged his own life for one of his Auschwitz cellmates. Nor did Schneider live in a large urban center like Martin Niemöller, the Confessing Church leader in Berlin or the Catholic bishop Clemens August Graf von Galen, the “Lion of Münster.” Paul Schneider, rather, was an obscure village pastor who could have escaped persecution completely had he simply been willing to keep his mouth shut.
Some of the most self-willed, abrasive, and confrontational women I have ever known have ironically been the most adamantly opposed to women having leadership roles in the church. These self-willed women are actually guilty of what they claim to fear most—women usurping authority. They are quick to wag their fingers in the preacher’s face, demand his resignation, send him nasty letters, speak to him in angry tones, or run informal gossip campaigns against the leadership.
While being the first to argue that women should be silent in the church, not possess authority over a man, and direct doctrinal queries to their husbands at home, these self-willed women do not practice what they “preach.” Their understanding of authority is limited to designated public roles. While not holding such roles, the self-willed women are nevertheless usurping authority in a manner unbecoming of either men or women.
Evangelizing Prosperity Gospel Adherents
He shared that he was a member of a large church in our area (one that preaches the prosperity “gospel”), and that he believed the Bible was primarily a book about God’s intentions to bless us.
I replied that the Bible is actually a book about who God is, who we are, and what God has done to reconcile us to himself. I began sharing the gospel, and noted that Christians were promised suffering as part of following Jesus.
Don’t Waste Your Weaknesses in 2014
What is your goal in 2014? I hope it is to be humble and to magnify the power of Christ. If it is, then one key strategy is to identify and exploit your weaknesses.
What does this mean? Negatively, it means that we stop complaining (to God and to people) about the things we are constitutionally not good at. And, positively, it means that we look for ways to turn our weaknesses into a Christ-exalting experience.
The Most Important Leadership Trait You Shun
Imagine two lists: One contains the qualities that a business person should have, and another includes the attributes that most business people would say they wouldn’t want to have. There’s only one term I can think of that might top both lists: vulnerability.
How Language Seems To Shape One’s View Of The World
Lera Boroditsky once did a simple experiment: She asked people to close their eyes and point southeast. A room of distinguished professors in the U.S. pointed in almost every possible direction, whereas 5-year-old Australian aboriginal girls always got it right.
She says the difference lies in language. Boroditsky, an associate professor of cognitive science at the University of California, San Diego, says the Australian aboriginal language doesn’t use words like left or right. It uses compass points, so they say things like “that girl to the east of you is my sister.”
