“Ultimately, the refusal of marriage to same-sex couples is a denial of their humanity. The first “not good” of creation was God’s discovery that “it is not good for the human to be alone.” When the church denies marriage to gay couples it is saying that you are not worthy of having your loneliness relieved in the only way it is possible. In other words, you are not worthy of being a human being. Imagine the anguish of a straight... Read more

For a long time I’ve been thinking and writing about ideas of God and how they intersect with LOST. I am not sure why it never struck me before that Jacob, living in a statue of a deity, does what deities were often thought to do, namely inhabit their image. Not to be outdone, of course, the “smoke monster” resembles a “pillar of cloud” or a “column of smoke.” That is one of the forms that the God of Israel is... Read more

What a great start to tonight’s episode of LOST! If you haven’t seen it yet, do not read on as this post is full of SPOILERS. Right at the beginning, Smokey catches up with Jack, explains why he ended up looking like John Locke, intriguingly says that Jack does in fact know “what he is,” and when Jack asks if he ever looked like anyone else, encourages Jack to ask him the question he really wants to. Jack does: he... Read more

There’s a debate between two individuals, Rob Bowman and Dave Burke, taking place at Parchment and Pen. One is a unitarian, the other a Trinitarian, but both assume the same view of the Bible’s authority, as far as I can tell. I have not had a chance to read the posts in any detail yet. But even in my cursory glance, I was struck by some of the arguments used by the Trinitarian in relation to John 17:3, which gave the... Read more

Is this what the infancy story would look like if it took place today? HT Unreasonable Faith Read more

In my Sunday school class, we’ve been working through Scot McKnight’s book The Blue Parakeet, which is very useful in helping stimulate discussion of a very important topic: Christians, even self-proclaimed “Bible-believing Christians”, do not “believe the whole Bible” and/or “take it all literally.” Scot helps readers, even conservative Christian ones, to recognize that Christians not only do but always have discerned that certain things that are fairly clear in the Bible we are nevertheless not going to practice. He... Read more

We still haven’t gotten a proper glimpse of the bird that has been entertaining us with its distinctive song, but we now have a definite identification based on its song. It is a White-Throated Sparrow. Here’s the song as typical in the Midwest (it varies regionally). Read more

Thanks to both Brian LePort and Celucien Joseph for pointing out and sharing that videos and audio files from the conference on N. T. Wright at Wheaton College have been made available online. Read more

HT The Dispersal of Darwin Read more

ABC World News Tonight had a segment on Bruce Waltke ‘s resignation from RTS. Peter Enns appears briefly. http://widgets.clearspring.com/o/4ae8d36a3102598f/4bc9f7db60dc795b/4ae8d36a3102598f/2745fbef/-cpid/42422231c78f02b9 The relevant clip can be found on YouTube. Read more