It was about 9 years ago. I was sitting in the floor of our den, surrounded by our house church family, and one little boy from our neighborhood who had started to join us, along with his even younger brother and sister. His name was Parker, and he was six years old, going on 26. Smarter and sharper and more clever than any other six-year-old I had ever met before. The first person to greet us when we had moved... Read more
Now that we’ve moved to Idaho, Wendy and I are really starting to miss our house church family back in Orange County, California. Here’s one of my favorite memories from our time together with those wonderful people: One Sunday, after our house church gathering in the morning, we shared a potluck lunch together. These were always pretty amazing, on both the food and fellowship scale. On that particular afternoon, our conversation started to drift into an exploration of “What Makes Us... Read more
Dispensationalism, the dominant theology of Evangelical Christianity today in America, originated in 1830 with John Nelson Darby. Or, so we might assume. But, recently I came across a bit more evidence of where Darby got his strange ideas about the Rapture, End Times Tribulation, and the identity of “True Israel.” As a result, I also uncovered an odd connection between Darby and famed Satanist Aleister Crowley, which is fascinating. For some background, John Nelson Darby popularized and was largely responsible... Read more
If Penal Substitutionary Atonement Theory is true, then we need to re-write John chapter 3, verse 16 to say: “For God was so filled with wrath against the world, that he sent his only begotten son to take the beating that we all deserved. That if anyone would want to escape eternal suffering, and would raise their hand and repeat this prayer after me, they would escape this horrible wrath. For the son was not sent into the world... Read more
I wrote an article recently about the dangers of Tribalism and how Jesus invites us into a Tribe where the leader isn’t tribal and everyone is welcome into the tribe and loved and accepted even if they never join the tribe. Most people agreed that tribalism is bad and that Jesus wasn’t tribal, but several people argued that there’s nothing wrong with sports tribalism, and even went as far as to sing the merits of sports as a way to... Read more
In preparation for an upcoming online debate about PSA [Penal Substitutionary Atonement] Theory, I started wondering whether or not Jesus, or any of the Gospel authors, specifically communicated the Gospel as being about Jesus dying on the cross for our sins, or to appease the wrath of God, etc. In the process of exploring this question, I started with John 3:16 because, growing up, I had always equated it with the crucifixion. However, I realized that this entire conversation... Read more
Tribalism is human nature. We tend to gather with those who are most like us. Whether that’s people who love the same music, or the same sports team, or share the same values, or beliefs, or sense of humor. Jesus understood this. He didn’t tell us to stop being tribal. But, he did try to show us another way to think of who was in, our outside, of our tribe. When he told the Parable of the Good Samaritan, for... Read more
When God established rules for who could – and who could not – enter into or serve within the Tabernacle, and later the Temple of God, He made a curious prohibition against those who were castrated, or who “had their testicles crushed”. [See Lev. 21:20] These people are more commonly referred to in the Scriptures as “eunuchs”. Later, through the prophet Isaiah, God made these eunuchs a promise: “Let not the eunuch say, “Behold, I am a dry tree.”... Read more
Christians, we have a huge problem. Instead of following the teachings of Jesus, we’re mostly waiting around for Jesus to come back and fix everything. For example, we live in a violent world. War, genocide, murder, hate crimes, mass shootings, and riots are commonplace in our world. Instead of seeing this as proof that we have more work to do, we tend to throw our hands in the air and say something like, “this is just the way things are”... Read more
Nearly every Saturday morning I used to drive my two teenage boys up to a collectibles warehouse in Diamond Bar, California for the morning. It’s one of the main things the three of us loved to do together on a regular basis, and I loved spending that time with them as often as possible. One weekend, as we drove underneath an overpass my oldest son pointed out a hand-drawn sign that someone had fastened to the outside of the... Read more
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