There may be a pattern here, but if there is, I don’t see it. My first-hand experience with mega-churches is pretty slim, so I’ve never seen a Singing Tree Christmas Spectacular. Wow. I’m watching this video — — and as the singer in the angel costume is being lifted up above the choir on a wire rigging, all I can think is how awesome it would have been if she’d suddenly intoned, “Greetings, Prophet! The great work begins!” The world... Read more
Just a small bit more here on that passage in Romans I’ve been referring to as Paul’s mini-Sermon on the Mount. I call it that because it closely follows many of the things that Jesus taught in that sermon in the Gospels. Paul wasn’t quoting the Gospels — he was writing years, maybe even decades earlier — but what he says very closely parallels those teachings of Jesus. At a couple of points, though, Paul is a bit more accommodating,... Read more
In the first epistle to Timothy, the author includes this challenge and encouragement: Let no one despise your youth, but set the believers an example in speech and conduct, in love, in faith, in purity. It’s interesting there that the writer assumes that this will be advice that Timothy will need — that some will, in fact, “despise” his youth. And these despisers, the writer suggests, may well be among “the believers.” The writer was most likely not actually Paul,... Read more
The rule of three suggests that there ought to be a joke. It all but requires that there be a joke. “So Christopher Hitchens, Vaclav Havel and Kim Jong Il are standing at the Pearly Gates. And St. Peter says …” I’m afraid I can’t figure out how the rest of it goes. Part of my problem is that I don’t much care for the set-up. It’s a standard trope, and we should honor the classics, but the whole Pearly... Read more
Three sharp observations about words and language — Richard Beck quotes Scot McKnight: Evangelicalism is known for at least two words: gospel and (personal) salvation. Behind the word gospel is the Greek word euangelion and evangel, from which words we get evangelicalism and evangelism. Now to our second word. Behind salvation is the Greek word soteria. I want now to make a stinging accusation. In this book I will be contending firmly that we evangelicals (as a whole) are not... Read more
Tribulation Force, pp. 445-450 Stymied by traffic jams and nuclear war, our heroes will be forced to hike half a mile on foot to reach the just-bombed hospital where their friend Bruce Barnes was lying in a coma. “I’m going,” Rayford said. “Me too,” Buck said. “We’re all going,” Chloe insisted, but Rayford held up a hand. Silly little girl, this is a man’s job. “We’re not all going. It’s going to be hard enough for one of us to... Read more
North Korean leader Kim Jong Il has died at age 69. This is big news, I think, but I don’t really know what it means for the future. My thoughts are similar to those of Dr. Thompson: The strange leader of North Korea, Kim Jong Il, has died. Everyone is worried about what’s going to happen. Hell, we couldn’t figure out North Korea before. North Korea has never been predictable. … I suspect that they will continue to be a... Read more
First let me tell you a story from almost 20 years ago. My buddy Dwight and I were arguing over what I was going to wear to a meeting. “I’m not a catcher,” I told him. Catchers have to wear their baseball caps backwards because of the mask. But if you’re not a catcher and you’re not, say, riding a bike into a headwind, then it seemed to me that wearing a baseball cap backwards was unnecessary. “Just turn it... Read more
Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out. Playwright, dissident, Velvet Underground fan and the first president of the Czech Republic after the Velvet Revolution, Vaclav Havel has died at age 75. “There’s always something suspect about an intellectual on the winning side,” Havel once said, even though he himself was an intellectual who wound... Read more
Exodus 16:14-18 When the layer of dew lifted, there on the surface of the wilderness was a fine flaky substance, as fine as frost on the ground. When the Israelites saw it, they said to one another, ‘What is it?’ For they did not know what it was. Moses said to them, ‘It is the bread that the Lord has given you to eat. This is what the Lord has commanded: “Gather as much of it as each of you... Read more
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