Bible
« Previous Entries Friday, May 2nd, 2008Self Help and the Bible
I have a really hard time with self-help books. I am always finding them to be either too specific or too generic. Either the book gives you a blueprint for the exact 12 things you need to do to improve whatever in your life or it gives no practical advice whatsoever. I […]
Friday, April 25th, 2008Jesus and Compassion
I read something in the comments the other day over at Eugene Cho’s blog that I haven’t been able to stop thinking about. The post was in relation to the whole Seeds of Compassion event. I’ve been slightly disturbed by the outcry from some sects of the faith as to why Christians (Doug Pagitt […]
Tuesday, April 1st, 2008Do I Like Jesus?
I’ve always disliked that icebreaker/college essay question “if you could have dinner with anyone who has ever lived who would you choose?” Of course most Christian versions of that question add the caveat, “besides Jesus,” and therein lies my problem. The expectation is that my first choice would be to sit down and […]
Friday, March 28th, 2008And so the witchhunts continue…
Westminster Theological Seminary Suspends Peter Enns
So I thought that Inspiration and Incarnation (the book Enns is being suspended over), was a fairly conservative and very evangelical book. I guess saying the Bible is interpreted crossed too many lines for the minority of the faculty at Westminster. Once again, expulsion instead of dialogue…
Tags: Peter […]
God and Gender
A couple of days ago, Mark Oestreicher posted his thoughts on gender pronouns for God. He described his lengthy journey into understanding that solely using male pronouns limits God and alienates many women. It is an open an honest reflection on how seeking to understand God and scripture better brought him to a […]
Saturday, March 15th, 2008Rumors and Lies
So this has been a busy week again. Sorry for the lack of posts, comments, or returned emails. I’m working on it. So once again I give you a weekend rant out of frustration.
This past week on Andrew Jones’ blog, he hosted some comments from Chuck Colson who was promoting his new […]
N.T. Wright for Children?
I finished reading N.T. Wright’s Surprised by Hope recently and have been pondering its implication the last few days. This is one of those must read sorts of books if one cares about defining and developing a biblical view of salvation and Christian hope. Wright explores here the concept that the hope for […]
Thursday, February 21st, 2008Life of the Mind - Part 3
The most common critique of “the life of the mind” that I hear is one for which I have the some sympathy. This critique states that the life of the mind takes the focus off of just living for Jesus. I understand the sentiment behind it, but get frustrated with the “all or […]
Wednesday, February 20th, 2008Life of the Mind - Part 2
To continue my commentary on Christianity and the life of the mind I want to address another anti-intellectual stance I’ve often encountered. This is the “it’s so easy a caveman could do it” line that I’ve been fed my whole life. Granted it’s usually phrased along the lines of the bible being easy […]
Thursday, January 10th, 2008What to do with the Early Church
I’ve recently seen a lot of buzz around blogs regarding Barna and Viola’s new book Pagan Christianity. I haven’t read the book yet, but I am intrigued by the topics it seems to address. With quotes such as, “We are also making an outrageous proposal: that the church in its contemporary, institutional form […]
Friday, December 21st, 2007Spanking Continued…
Okay perhaps I am really really stupid to create a separate post for this, but I wanted to address a few of the common objections raised in my recent post on spanking. I’ve addressed the issue in general before (here, here, and here), so here I just want to address three common rationales others […]
Monday, November 26th, 2007Symbols and Biblical Literalism
I came across this section recently in Sallie McFague’s Metaphorical Theology that caught my attention. She writes -
But there is, I believe, an even deeper reason why religious literalism runs rampant in our time. It is not only that many people have lost the practice of religious contemplation and prayer, which alone is […]