I was going to write something on the dying of conservative radio icon Rush Limbaugh, and before I got to that I listened to this interview from the Dallas Theological Seminary’s The Table podcast about embracing our mortality. That’s quite the counter intuitive notion, especially in our secular age, so I had to check it out. Given I think about death a lot, my own, but also death in general, I found the discussion right down my alley. Dr. J. Todd Billings, the interviewee, wrote a book calledThe End of the Christian Life: How Embracing Our Mortality Frees Us to Truly Live. He should know about the topic. He was diagnosed with incurable cancer in 2012, so immanent death is something he can’t help thinking, and writing, about. The reality for all of us is that our death’s are immanent as well. It may happen in five minutes, or in 50 years, but it will happen before we know it and are ready for it.
Since this is Christmas, and we’re focused on the miraculous birth of a baby over 2,000 years ago, a baby who would be the Savior of the world, I thought it an opportunity to broaden our focus on the one who made that birth possible. That would of course be the living God, all powerful, all knowing, all present. In all of biblical history there was no conception and birth like that of the young peasant girl Mary. Going back to Abraham and Sarah, there were several times when barren women beyond child-bearing years got pregnant, including Mary’s cousin Elizabeth, but they all got pregnant the old fashioned way. God being God, he was able to impregnate the virgin Mary by the power of the Holy Spirit, as we read about in Matthew and Luke. The old fashioned way, though, is every bit as miraculous, but we’re so conditioned by secular Western culture that we think women getting pregnant is somehow “natural.” There is nothing natural about it! (more…)
I recently wrote a post on I Timothy 2, where Paul says something that is a favorite proof text for Arminians, but they ignore the difficulty the text presents for their position. Reformed theology has been a critical part of attempting to build an enduring faith in our children, so I thought for the record I’d put my argument down here as well. I’m not sure I’ve addressed this passage directly with any of them, so I will enjoy sharing this to see if I’m as persuasive as I think I am. (more…)
I write this, and my title, while we as a nation are in the middle of a bitterly contested election. It seems to many of us that a whole lot of chicanery is going on, or more accurately fraud and outright theft of a presidential election. We have lived through four years of a terribly dishonest and partisan media that has tried to destroy the President of the United States, with what everyone knows are lies heaped upon lies. Does what’s going on now surprise us? It is shocking in it’s brazenness, but not at all surprising. We trust that eventually the truth will win out, but that is a great challenge when an entire political party doesn’t even believe there is such a thing as truth. Form them, postmodern to the core, there is “the narrative,” and that is only what furthers their political power. If they “win” this time without transparency, without evidence that the apparent fraud is not in fact fraud, it will be very bad for this country, and people of any political party. (more…)
As I’ve been writing my way through the Bible, I’ve recently been engaging with Paul’s letters, and his focus on knowledge in the life of the Christian has stood out to me. Since the Second Great Awakening in the early 1800s, for much of Christianity knowledge has taken a back seat to feelings, emotions, and the human will. In typically American fashion, the focus of much Christian teaching has been on the Christian’s personal choice, both in terms of salvation, and growth in the Christian life. Too many Christians are taught, or pick up from teaching, that what we do or don’t do, can or can’t do, should or shouldn’t do, is what drives the Christian life, instead of what God has done for us in Christ. Big, huge, amazing difference! The former is self-focused, the latter God-focused, and that makes all the difference. Here are some verses that tell us what the Apostle Paul thinks of knowledge, which is fundamentally outside of us: (more…)
One of the most important things to teach your children, and to remind them and yourself daily, is that life is hard. The root of anger, and bitterness, and frustration, and just an overall bad attitude, is to expect it not be hard, as if the difficulties in life are somehow just a bug and not a feature. In one of the great understatements of history, Jesus said, “In this world you will have trouble.” Some translations use the word tribulations, and in the Greek it means, properly, pressure (what constricts or rubs together), used of a narrow place that “hems someone in”; tribulation, especially internal pressure that causes someone to feel confined (restricted, “without options”). Yeah, that sums it up pretty well. God said to Adam and Eve that life in a fallen world would be full of painful toil by the sweat of our brow, with constant thorns and thistles. In other words, life is hard! For Christians, however, hard is good. (more…)
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