Explore our collection of theological essays, biblical studies, and reflections on faith and culture.
In my last essay, we saw how consumer culture has gutted the familial category necessary to understand the church. When a consumer visits a church, he expects another service-provider, such as a hospital or a restaurant. He doesn’t understand the role of men in ministry, and thus, not the role…
First time visitors to our church sometimes express their surprise that children, even the youngest, participate with their parents in the entire worship service. Many congregations created an expectation for the parents (and children) of Sunday School or Child Care being available during the entire worship service or during the…
Quantifying the Love of God “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever believes in him should not perish, but have everlasting life” ~ John 3:16 This most beloved verse in all the Bible was spoken by the Savior himself to Nicodemus. As…
While The Lord’s Prayer enjoys wide recognition throughout the Church, its richness and depth may be unrealized due to a lesser familiarity with, what I will argue is, its primary inspiration: the Tabernacle. There, Christ’s intent can rightly be discerned. The Prayer’s methodological correction to the Jews and Gentiles wasn’t…
The Consumption of the Covenant Idea of the Church Last time we saw consumerism, having canalized its attitudes in our culture, shapes what the consumer sees when he or she steps into a church. Here, we’ll see how it has eviscerated the covenant and familial ideas necessary to understand the…
The ignoble Jayber Crow can stir your appetite for the noble. It’s the simplicity of a good ol’ Port William boy that builds the charm of the book. In fact, the elitists in Port William receive the harshest blows and severest outcomes, as they should. But before delving into the…
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Corey Latta borrows the title of his When the Eternal Can Be Met from CS Lewis’s The Great Divorce . The book is a study of the influence of Henri Bergson’s theory of time on the post-conversion writings of Lewis, TS Eliot, and Auden. He notes that none of these…
In his Babel and Bible , Friedrich Delitzsch pointed to the leftovers of “Sumerian-Babylonian culture” in the modern world - the Zodiac as a system of twelve signs, the circle divided into 360 degrees, the hour divided into sixty minutes and the minutes into sixty seconds (66-7). Babylonian influence is…
Curtis White observes in The Science Delusion that scientists regularly appeal, without admitting it, to extra-scientific values. Natural selection, Dawkins says, lifts us “to the dizzy heights of complexity, beauty and apparent design that dazzle us today” (quoted p. 16)). Hawking finds the “miracle” of a fit between logic and…
Rupert Shortt, author of Christianophobia , complains that the media misreports incidents of Christian persecution: “The battle for sexual equality clearly has a long way to run. But this doesn’t mean that any hardship suffered by a woman can be ascribed to misogyny. The logical false move has been especially…
Yahweh won’t rest until Zion’s righteousness and salvation burst out like a flash of lightning. No one will miss it: “Nations will see your righteousness, and all kings your glory” (Isaiah 62:2). Visible glory make sense. “Glory” is by definition visible in the Bible - the fiery glory cloud of…
Jesus promises the overcomers in the church at Philadelphia that He will set them up as pillars of His temple and inscribe them with a triple name - the name of God, the name of new Jerusalem, and Jesus’ own “new name” (Revelation 3:12). New names are common in the…
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