One of the more interesting aspects of the story of Jesus and his debate with the Sadducees as found in Luke 20 is the whole question of God as a living God.  What the Bible means by such an assertion is not merely that God is real or alive, but that God, as the beginning of Genesis makes clear, is the very source of life.  God not merely has life and is alive, God is so alive that it can be… Read more

Several Evangelical scholars, including yours truly,  have been asked to contribute to a critique of the various claims of Bart Ehrman in his more popular level books  (e.g. Jesus Interrupted).  There is now a website up and running which brings together all these resources.   You will find it here— http://ehrmanproject.com/ Read more

   For reasons not clear to me, Protestant Christians, whom I spend the most time with, seem to have some very funky notions about prayer, that are not well grounded in the Bible, or for that matter the early Jewish practice of prayer.  And some of them are based in a very bad exegesis of what Luke 18 says and implies about prayer.   Luke Johnson in his fine commentary on Luke (p. 274) has this to say about the matter:… Read more

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I was reflecting on Luke 14 and intense way Jesus makes demands in this chapter, if one wants to be a disciple.    All too often, Christians confuse ordinary suffering with cross-bearing.   Your physical pain or suffering may well be your thorn in the flesh, but it’s not ‘your cross to bear’.  Cross-bearing as a metaphor for discipleship to Jesus has to do with a deliberately chosen course of life, not something that simply happens to you.   The second thing to… Read more

A long time ago one of my senior pastors at Myers Park UMC, Gil Adams,  preached a memorable sermon on what some have called Christo-paganism, but Gil Adams called it, rabbit’s foot religion.  It stuck with me, and the longer I have lived, and the less Biblically literate the church has become, the more rabbit’s foot religion I have seen. You know about the old rabbit’s foot.  You keep one in your pocket, and maybe you rub it, and it… Read more

LB’S (A Good ole Southern Country Song by BW3–think Johnny Cash with help from the Beatles– to the tunes of ‘I hear that train a comin’ and ‘Carry that Weight’) It’s sweepin’ cross America The plague of pulchritude It’s gripped the country’s midrift The bare facts are quite rude, We’ve put on pounds around our waist That we cannot divest And when we were not lookin’ We got a sunkin’ chest. CHORUS (ala Beatles) Boy, you gotta carry that weight,… Read more

Greetings  Friends in Cyperspace.  If you have reached this hallowed ground then you are now at my new blog site.  You will want to look in the upper right hand corner here and subscribe to the feed.   Click on the post button in the top right corner, and it will take you to a page where you can subscribe to the RSS feed and you will get this blog automatically without a lot of searching hither and yon.  For… Read more

Pat Metheny: Interview in Israel A Q&A with the master guitarist American jazz guitar legend Pat Metheny appeared at Hangar 11 in Tel Aviv, Israel on November 26-27, playing with an all-star trio featuring bassist Larry Grenadier and drummer Bill Stewart. Metheny was interviewed by writer Scott Krane. What prompted you to record What It’s All About, a collection of pop standards? I felt like making a record that addressed some of the specific music that was on my radar… Read more