When we think of “love,” we tend to think primarily of romantic love. For example, if I were to do an image search for “love,” I’d get a lot of pictures of couples, pictures of couples holding hands, engagement pictures, wedding pictures etc., maybe even some babies thrown in the mix. However, when the scriptures … Continue reading Perfect Love
If you'd like to see the other articles in this series click here It’s incredibly common to find people proof texting to make their arguments. And of course many of us know that proof texting is supposed to be bad, but the tricky part is defining proof texting. It seems to be one of those … Continue reading How NOT to Read the Bible Part 6: Proof Texting
In part one of this series we looked at what an overarching narrative is and how they function. These big narratives help us to answer basic questions like “Who am I?” “What is my purpose?” and “Where is all this going?” It’s not really possible to go through life without a narrative, but more often … Continue reading The Christian Narrative Part 2: Not What You Think
Go to a Christian bookstore and take a look at their selection of study bibles and many if not most will tout their notes that help you to “apply the Bible to your life.” Some will even go as far as to call themselves Life Application Study Bibles, or something like this. As another example … Continue reading Why You Shouldn’t Apply the Bible to Your Life
When I spent time serving as a camp counselor, I remember getting several versions of this question: how do we know that the text of our Bibles are right? And it’s a sensible question. After all, we’re talking about writings that were written thousands and thousands of years ago in ancient languages. How could we … Continue reading How Do We Know the Text of Our Bibles is Right?
You turn on the news and you find out that there’s been another horrific school shooting or a natural disaster across the country. The next story is about a deadly attack by some militant group you hadn’t heard of until just now in a city all the way across the world that you didn’t know … Continue reading The Upside-Down-Topsy-Turvy Kingdom of God
It’s not uncommon to hear Christians claim that other Christians are “denying the word of God.” This is a pretty serious accusation, so we should probably be careful about making this kind of claim. After all, it’s certainly possible to deny the word of God; people do it all the time. However, we mock God … Continue reading Denying the Word of God
Much of our discussion about the doctrine of the scriptures centers around the doctrine of inerrancy. This is usually in reaction to those who would say that the scriptures are unreliable and unfaithful sometimes theologically, but also with respect to matters of science and history. They might be spiritually helpful or something like that, but … Continue reading What Do We Really Mean by “Inerrancy”?
Note: After writing and posting this article, it came to my attention that Shane Claiborne and others officially refer to themselves as "Red Letter Christians." I was not aware of this at the time that I wrote this and I would like to make it clear that this article is not intended to be a direct … Continue reading Why You Can’t Be a Red-Letter Christian
When I worked at a camp there were a few instances where I got various versions of the question, “how do we know that the Muslims aren’t right?” It’s an interesting question that I think requires us to think about the differences between the fundamental claims of various religions. In our culture, which often seeks … Continue reading Mormonism, Islam, and Christianity: One of These Things is Not Like the Other
