By John Frye “You don’t know what you’re talking about,”I was told. Like me, you probably have been disparaged in several ways in your ministry. I have been accused of being a liar, of not teaching the Word of God, of getting the facts all wrong (usually from someone with a pending divorce), and of being a willing dupe of others. In some ways these accusations come with the territory of being a pastor. Yet, thankfully, I have never been... Read more

This was originally published at OnFaith. 1.  If there is a just God, there must be a heaven. To believe in a future, endless and human-populated heaven beyond the grave requires that one believe in a God who transcends all creation. The God of the Christian is a just God. And surely a just God creates a world designed for justice, but our world constantly reflects injustice. If this world is all there is, God must be unjust. But if... Read more

Dede Donahue: It was the most awkward and divisive of questions that I would ask of other parents, usually new acquaintances, but also of old friends. We’d be on the phone, discussing our young children, laughing, and the subject of play dates would come up. The other mom might say, “Can Chloe come over here tomorrow to play with Maddie?” I would ask, “Do you keep guns in your house?” Always it would lead to the most illuminating of answers,... Read more

Last week I put up a post summarizing Walter Moberly’s chapter on Jonah, Forget the Fish Already!.  The post focused on the genre and message of the book. Moberly, like most OT scholars, considers the book to be something of a parable rather than a record of an historical event. Many Christians object to this reading, not because the Bible cannot contain books other than history, but because of the references Jesus made to Jonah. Although no comments brought this... Read more

By T Is God a Libertarian? Something only a relative few know about me is that I used to be, not just a student of economics (it was my major at college), but fairly obsessed with economic and monetary policy. I studied and came to trust in the kind of supply-side economic theories that Milton Friedman made famous and the kind of monetary policy that the central banks of Germany and the US have implemented, on the whole, for about... Read more

Andy Parker: We are engaged in a war in this country. It is a war between rational, responsible people and self-interested zealots; a war between good and evil. It is a war to decide whether we will continue to let the senseless tragedy of gun violence continue. It is a war to put reasonable safeguards in place to prevent incidents like that which occurred in Oregon yesterday. On one side of that war is a group that is successfully fighting... Read more

Yes, say Saul Cornell and Eric M. Ruben, in The Atlantic: Gun-rights advocates have waged a relentless battle to gut what remains of America’s lax and inadequate gun regulations. In the name of the Second Amendment, they are challenging the constitutionality of state and municipal “may issue” regulations that restrict the right to carry weapons in public to persons who can show a compelling need to be armed. A few courts are starting to take these challenges seriously. But what... Read more

“Grace is something you can never get but only be given. The grace of God means something like: Here is your life. You might never have been, but you are because the party wouldn’t have been complete without you. Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don’t be afraid. I am with you.” -Frederick Buechner Lance stands 6’1”. He’s built like a door frame. His head is a giant muscle. Even when he smiles he scowls. In this... Read more

Whether we are talking about same-sex relations, about angel experiences, about near death experiences, about church and culture, about salvation, about the ethical life — nearly every topic eventually runs up against what Scripture says (as properly interpreted, as best we can do, as done in consort with other Bible readers, etc). Eventually we face a question whether we will believe what the Bible says or what an experience leads us to think. At times they are very similar or... Read more

Silence Is Not Always Golden: Jesus and Arguments from Silence (by Allan Bevere) Anyone who is scholarly inclined knows how problematic arguments from silence are, and yet people continue to use them. As a scholar (at least I think I am. Some might question that) and as a Christian (at least I think I am. Some might question that), I find it particularly perplexing when I read Christians of various political stripes using arguments from silence in an attempt to... Read more