Why Fred Phelps’ Death Isn’t a Cause for Celebration
Some very ugly things happen when we choose to celebrate the end of a life such as Phelps’. First, we reduce that person to a symbol instead of viewing them as someone created in God’s image and imbued with the same spirit that exists within us all. Furthermore, in choosing to respond to Phelps’ death with hate, we’re participating in the exact same project that made him infamous.
Fred Phelps is dead, but his hateful flock remains. On Friday, members of the Westboro Baptist Church steeded up and went to protest a Lorde concert in Kansas City, Missouri. Since they announced their plans in advance, KC residents had time to organize a pretty perfect counterprotest.
Living in the Past is Killing Your Future
The answer is simple: You won’t find God in the past. His name is not I Was. His name is I Am. If we obsess over what God did last, we’ll miss what He wants to do next. God’s at work right here, right now. God’s always doing something brand spanking new.
On World Vision and the Gospel
But here’s what’s at stake. This isn’t, as the World Vision statement (incredibly!) puts it, the equivalent of a big tent on baptism, church polity, and so forth.
At stake is the gospel of Jesus Christ. If sexual activity outside of a biblical definition of marriage is morally neutral, then, yes, we should avoid making an issue of it. If, though, what the Bible clearly teaches and what the church has held for 2000 years is true, then refusing to call for repentance is unspeakably cruel and, in fact, devilish.
Pagan Propitiation vs Biblical Propitiation
This description may conjure up images of animistic tribes cravenly placating their volcano gods by tossing in victims; and in fact some modern Christians have argued that, whatever the Old Testament may have been about, the New Testament can’t possibly have anything to do with propitiation. But the fact is, the idea that God’s wrath must be turned aside by a sacrifice is very much a New Testament idea. It’s just that, as John Stott has argued, “the Christian doctrine of propitiation is totally different from pagan or animistic superstitions.”
If All Religions Are True, Then God Is Cruel
If Islam, Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, and all the other world religions are true paths to God, then why did God kill his Son, Jesus, in order to make a way for men to come to him? The very notion is absurd and insulting to God. It paints a portrait of a God who is just plain cruel. He sent Jesus into the world to live a miserable life of scorn, rejection, poverty, betrayal, humiliation, sorrow, and ultimately, torture and death, in order to create a path whereby men can come to know him. Yet all the while he knew that following the Five Pillars of Islam or the Noble Eight-fold Path could accomplish the same thing.
How Pastors Can Care For Their Children
Pastors, someday your young children will be adults. From what they see at home, would they say you love Jesus? Would they say you love them? “By this all people (including these children) will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:35).
God has called you to shepherd his flock. Your children are part of that flock. They are watching you and listening to you at home. Use that influence well.
How to Keep Your Smartphone From Running Your Life
The power of technology is fun, alluring and overwhelming. We need intentionality in the way we engage in order to keep us from being too engrossed in it (or even enslaved by it). In a similar way that we give intentionality to bring health to other parts of life (God, family, exercise, eating, etc.), we need intentionally with our use of technology. In fact, in a lot of ways, our humanness and the sacred moments of life depend on it.
Samuel L. Jackson wears t-shirt saying he’s not Laurence Fishburne
After a television reporter confused him with Laurence Fishburne during an interview last month, Samuel L. Jackson has taken steps to make sure the same error doesn’t happen again.
While he was in London to promote Captain America 2, Jackson wore an “I’m not Laurence Fishburne” t-shirt.