If you were Satan and your desire was to keep Christians from delighting in and talking about the gospel, what would you do? You would certainly want to find something that they would get passionately behind that would appear to be important but, in the grand scheme of things, be far less important than the glory of God and the advancement of the gospel. You would want to take their eyes off the ball. Because when our eyes are off the ball then we are not in the game; we are just commentators, analysts, and activists. We stop being ambassadors, workers, and soldiers. We are not ignorant of his schemes (2 Cor. 2:11)—or are we?
Did Old Testament Men Treat Their Wives Like Property?
Throughout the Bible, we see interactions like this as a rule, not as exceptions (though, of course, there are exceptions of bad behavior, just as there are today). All verses in the Old Testament (particularly in the Law), since they come from a culture unfamiliar to us, ought to be interpreted in light of passages like the ones quoted above. There’s a tendency for people to jump to the worst possible interpretation of everything, but that isn’t fair to the text. The sense I am left with after reading the Bible as a whole is that men loved and appreciated their wives, just as they do today.
Ancient Theologians on 1 Corinthians and the Silencing of Women
The reason I look to ancient Christians to try to understand this issue is precisely because of the varying interpretations that I’ve read. This isn’t to say that all ancient theologians agree on everything at all times, but it’s often the case that their commentary on such passages can aid my personal reconciliation of what may appear to be disputing facts.
Advancing God’s Kingdom: Calvinism, Calvin College, and Betsy DeVos
I appreciate the hard work and massive research it takes for a journalist to understand a culture or religion that may be foreign—especially when doing so on a tight deadline. But if we are really seeking understanding, then we can’t approach another culture or religion by searching for ways to confirm our fears. Especially in the case of someone we oppose, it becomes all too easy—and all too tempting—to find and misconstrue from a long and broad religious tradition the best details to demonize the foe.
Most Americans oppose churches choosing sides in elections
Our polling shows that Americans like their politicians to have strong religious convictions. And nearly half of Americans also say they want churches and other houses of worship to speak out on social and political topics. But there has long been a consensus that churches should not endorse specific candidates for public office.
According to the United Nations, there is currently an unprecedented number of displaced people in the world; almost 34,000 people a day flee their homes to escape conflict and persecution, per the UN’s 2015 statistics. Out of the estimated 21.3 million refugees in the world, only a small portion resettle in the United States. Since the federal refugee program was created in 1980, 3 million refugees have entered the U.S., with 85,000 entering between October 2015 and September 2016.
Trump’s anti-immigration playbook was written 100 years ago. In Boston.
These familiar themes about bans, borders, and walls — and especially about how the radical and dangerous new immigrants don’t measure up to the “quality” ones we used to get — weren’t crafted by Donald Trump or his Breitbart consigliere, Steve Bannon, sitting in Trump Tower channeling the grievances of the white working class. Instead, they are part of an immigration Ur-text painstakingly assembled, brick by nativist brick, in Boston, by three Brahmin intellectuals, beginning in 1894. That’s when the trio founded the Immigration Restriction League, the equivalent of a modern-day think tank, just five years after all three had graduated from Harvard.
Jenna Bush Hager shares father’s ‘Islam is Peace’ speech
In the excerpt shared Tuesday, Bush says that the “face of terror is not the true faith of Islam.”
“That’s not what Islam is all about. Islam is peace,” Bush said in the speech. “These terrorists don’t represent peace. They represent evil and war.”
The former president argued that Muslims make “an incredible valuable contribution to our country” and said they must be “treated with respect.”
How to make Facebook and Twitter more pleasant in difficult times
If you find it useful to have everyone unfiltered and exposed, that’s great. If you want to exclude ideas you find abhorrent and not let people you know and don’t trust to hear your honest appraisals, that’s also great.
For the latter position, you can take various measures at Facebook to control access. Twitter has a much different approach, but there are ways to deal with control there, too.