All this said, for those of us who walked that road of casual sex and now struggle to feel forgiven and pure, I write these things not to condemn you, but to remind you that you can choose differently now. You can remind yourself of the precious gift of sex, in the right way with the right person at the right time, that it truly is worth waiting for. Remind yourself that God sees you, the repentant one clinging to His grace, as 100% PURE, beautiful and a pearl well worth the price.
Are you Square-Peg, Round-Holing Your Theology?
I went to seminary. I did. I paid about $10,000 out of my own pockets to do it. You know what I learned? Three things:
1. God is love.
2. The simplest answer really is usually the rightest.
3. No one cares about the first two when they’re making theology.
Unconventional Ways to Fight Poverty
With all of the options to get involved in the fight against poverty, sometimes it’s hard to know what’s best to do, let alone know whether or not what you’re doing is actually helping.
But fighting poverty can come in ordinary ways, in counter-intuitive ways, and in counter-cultural ways. Here are four ways you can fulfill your calling to care for the least of these that you may not have thought about before.
75% in USA Believe the Bible is in Some Way Connected to God
Gallup sums up its research this way, “Ultimately, the finding that nine in 10 Christians believe the Bible emanates from God indicates that US Christians are Christian in more than name only.” That sounds like a good thing to us.
Hurtado on Wright and Eschatology
But, curiously, we don’t get much about such things as Jesus’ parousia/return (mentioned, but not really engaged), resurrection of the dead (Paul believed it, but little else), final judgement (same here), the glorification of believers (same again), etc. That is, as to the specific phenomena that seem to me to have a significance place in Paul’s eschatological expectations, there is surprisingly little to be found in Wright’s discussion. This is doubly surprising in a work of 2 vols, and over 1600 pages length. Hardly, one thinks, could one offer as excuse a concern to economize on space!
But, although Wright wants to read all “apocalyptic” language as symbols, essentially representing political developments (of this world), clearly (or so it seems to me), a world in which the dead are in any sense “raised” in glorified and immortal bodily existence is unlike anything we know now. So, this would seem to require some rather radical “reworking” of what we know as the world, at the very least! It can’t all be read as “political” developments. So, why so little discussion of these matters?
Father’s “house” or “business” (Luke 2:49)
One picky thing first about the NASB. “In the things of My Father” is not “literal.” It is word for word. There is no Greek “things.” And the capitalized “My Father” is interpretive. When are we going to stop thinking “literal” means word for word? Webster defines “literal” as “involving the ordinary or usual meaning of a word; giving the meaning of each individual word; completely true and accurate, not exaggerated.” “Literal” all has to do with meaning, not form.
War Gear Flows to Police Departments
During the Obama administration, according to Pentagon data, police departments have received tens of thousands of machine guns; nearly 200,000 ammunition magazines; thousands of pieces of camouflage and night-vision equipment; and hundreds of silencers, armored cars and aircraft.
So, this weekend’s news in the tech world was flooded with a “story” about how a “chatbot” passed the Turing Test for “the first time,” with lots of publications buying every point in the story and talking about what a big deal it was. Except, almost everything about the story is bogus and a bunch of gullible reporters ran with it, because that’s what they do.
June 3: Jeremy Schopper: Leaving the Noise Behind
June 5: Danny Holman: Jesus Challenge
June 10: Carl Jenkins: Give A Man A Fish