How do we live out our faith? What does it look like when it is lived out faithfully? These are the questions that theologians of Christian spirituality attempt to answer. I am not a theologian, though I do pretend to be when I am snugly perched in my burgundy leather armchair. Yet I would like to take a crack at sketching a verbal portrait of the Christian faith as it is lived out on a day to day basis. What... Read more

I guess I’m on a bit of a book kick right now. That can be a good thing, namely because it allows me to share with you a few books I’ve found insightful and noteworthy. I mentioned Fleeing Fundamentalism last Friday and want to comment today on recent events that tie in with it. How tragic is the news of Ted Haggard, a man enacting the terrible scenario of Fleeing before our very eyes. Ministerial infidelity and immorality claim another... Read more

Don’t worry, I’m not. But Carlene Cross has. She wrote a book of the above title to tell the world of her exodus from the Christian faith. I picked up Fleeing Fundamentalism, published just this year, expecting to encounter all kinds of rants and raves about the evils of biblical Christianity. There’s a little bit of that sort of thing in the book, but there is a much more disturbing issue at the book’s core, one that cannot be written... Read more

A few days ago I posted about a fascinating article by Malcolm Gladwell, a popular writer and pop culture analyst. Several of you pointed out that I got the article wrong. Here is the correct article. I’m glad that those who read this blog communicate with me and tell me when I’ve messed something up. This article focuses on Allen Iverson, a basketball player who has been the NBA’s MVP and scoring champion. Yet Gladwell shows that numbers aren’t everything... Read more

With this one you have to be careful, because there is definitely a place for giving thanks to God for His work in our lives. In fact, we must do this. And we need not do it only when praying privately to God. God is richly glorified when we tell of His great works to others. We ought never to equate recounting His work with false humility. That said, it is yet entirely possible to show false humility and to... Read more

Time for a new series. This one should be fun and mildly enlightening, I hope. I often think about what a secular documentary of a Christian church would look like. I think to myself a fair amount about the hypocritical tendencies the crew might pick up. One of the easiest spots of hypocrisy to spot, I think, would be false humility. There are many in the church who are good at projecting humility without inhabiting it. Able to smile, quick... Read more

So the week is winding down, the weekend’s almost here, and it’s raining here in Louisville. Life is good. I thought I would give you a good article to read. It’s by Malcolm Gladwell, currently a very popular public intellectual, and it covers a new way to measure the productivity of basketball players. It will be interesting to you not because it is technical (it’s not), but because it takes conventional wisdom and flips it on his head. It’s always... Read more

The soul of America has gone soft. Our will has dulled. When it comes to discipline, we are collectively the five year-old howling not to be spanked. We know we deserve it–we just don’t want it. You see this instinct everywhere. I often think that we as a society are more prone to feel sorry for the criminal than the victim. Something terrible happens, and we’re so quick to look into the killer’s background, sympathize with his family, and generally... Read more

I want to take a few days and speak on things that we modern evangelicals need to do. The first, as I see it, is the need to act. Too often we stare into the sun, becoming blind to the world around us. We need to see what is before us. We need to act. We need a personal theology that rightly balances trust and action. It seems to me that most evangelicals have a healthy understanding of trust. We... Read more

Brian, a reader of this blog, a Kentuckian, and a kind fellow with a thoughtful blog, was nice enough to ask how I came to SBTS. I’ll happily answer that question, though I want you to know that next month I’m returning to my mostly-impersonal posting. I have a fun series coming up. After I was gripped with my sin, and after I came to realize the simultaneous reality that I was terrible but grace was beautiful, I was caught... Read more