Welcome to this blog. It contains my thoughts on our efforts to love God with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength, and to love our neighbors as ourselves. My current update schedule is once a week as time permits. Thank you for reading.
Jesus spoke many parables which people praise, from the prodigal son and the lost sheep to baking bread and planting fields. And then there is the parable of the shrewd manager (Luke 16:1-9). Godly commentators may hesitate over the parable of the shrewd manager because the hero is something of a crook. When the manager in the parable finds out he is about to be fired, he calls in his master's…
I have seen a situation recently in which payment of wages was delayed long after the work was complete. Here are some Bible verses discussing the obligation to pay work-for-hire, and the injustice of improper delay. The worker is worthy of his hire / The worker deserves his wages. (Luke 10:7, 1 Timothy 5:18) When a worker works, the wages are not credited as a gift but as an obligation. (Romans…
Jesus' most famous teaching is possibly the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you (Matthew 7:12). Odd, then, that this is followed immediately by a teaching that can be viewed unfavorably: "Enter at the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and easy is the way that leads to destruction, and many enter there. But narrow is the gate and difficult the way that leads to life, and…
The New Testament has many passages about love, everything from love of God (good) to love of money (not). As a current research project has led me to review the New Testament in the original Greek, I was touched to find that there were special words underlying those translations, such as a special word that means "love of God" or that means "loving your children." (I expect Greek is more fluid in…
"I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." -- Jesus (John 14:6) Jesus' bold saying is a challenge to modern and post-modern minds. There is a tension between the ideal of truth and policy of tolerating all. Below are some notes on the more common objections I've heard to Jesus' claim, and ways to move the conversation forward. Objection: There are…
If my memories had view-counters like a video on the web, some memories would hardly have any views and others would be well-worn, their view-counters easily spinning up to double digits or more. As relentless as an ad algorithm, my mind can replay some of these memories when at rest. After some work trying to root out pockets of sin, it's clear that the worst parts of me tend to hide behind the…
The Old Testament often repeated the command to Be holy as the Lord God is holy. The New Testament is clear that this applies to us also (1 Peter 1:16). But how do we become holy in that way? Of course we stay back from sin. I'm here considering times when we have done that, but still do not find ourselves having become a fountain of God-pleasing graceful thoughts, words, and actions. When the New…
My pastor recently recommended the book Leadership and Self-Deception (The Arbinger Institute (c) 2000, 3d ed 2018), which I read this past week. While the book does not acknowledge Christianity anywhere in the text, many teachings of Christianity are strong and plain, and I can see why the book would receive a pastoral recommendation*. It is a book that takes one premise and runs with it: "If we…
Though my own father passed away many years ago, I am still grateful for the kindness and support he provided over the years. To all fathers who have stepped up, great and small: Happy Father's Day!
Many humanitarian organizations have good intentions. Good intentions do not always translate into good results. The God's Love In Action series focuses on people or organizations that seem to be able to translate those good intentions into results. Family Promise is an organization that tackles a particular type of homelessness: when families with minor children become unable to maintain a home.…
Previously in the "God's love in action" series, I'd looked at how Habitat for Humanity works. Specifically, we focused on why their approach seems to be more successful than other approaches to the same problem. This post continues in the vein of looking at largescale solutions not only for good intentions, but for measurable success in tackling the problem. I have heard it said that, as…
Today, on Trinity Sunday, I am reminded of how eagerly we can pursue a knowledge of God, how thirsty we are for a deeper understanding of God. But the pictures we draw of God often pursue the lines of our curiosity, not the lines of his gifts and his self-disclosure. I am as prone to curiosity as the next person. But if I were to try to draw God based on Scripture taken as God's self-revelation, I…
(Next-to-last post in the current series) So far we have looked at various passages in which the "Spirit of God" and "Word of God" are used in ways that can test our assumptions about them. First, the New Testament authors really do speak as if they mean it literally that God's Spirit is the spirit that comes to live in us, giving us new life. Consider St Paul here, speaking while the literal…
Because the Word of God affects us in different ways, I want to be sure to make my point without detracting from other ones that could be made. For example, the word of God can be strikingly beautiful. We can feel the way certain words fill our soul with a longing for holiness, or an awe and reverence for the majesty of God's creative power. When the word of God is beautiful, that beauty goes…
(Continuing the current series ...) Matthew, Mark, and Luke all repeat at least some of Jesus' parables of the seed, but the entire Gospel of John has no seed parables at all. There is majority agreement that the Gospel of John was the last written of the four gospels in the canon of Scripture. In some ways it skips (or assumes) material covered by the earlier gospels. And so rather than telling…
When Peter described us as being born of imperishable seed from the Word of God, that was not an innovation on his part. Jesus often equated the word of God with seeds. Probably the best-known instance is the parable of the sower, recorded in the gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Mark and Luke's retellings make the point plainly: Now the parable is this: The seed is the Word of God. (Jesus, Luke…
This continues a short series on the power of the Word of God. As a short recap of the prior post: When we look at words we are accustomed to looking for their meaning, and with good reason: words are typically meant to carry meaning. But in the previous post we reviewed St Peter's claims about the Word of God , where his argument did not depend on the content of God's Word but on the character of…
When we think about powerful words, we may think of rhetoric: skillful persuasion. There is a tendency to think of evangelism and even faith itself in terms of persuasion. To be sure, persuasion done well can help build understanding and overcome barriers. But the power is not wholly in persuasion, not even in the skill of the persuader. The Bible often discusses the power of God's word in terms…
In Christian circles, evil has long been understood as the lack of good. Evil, we believe, is not a thing in itself, much like darkness is not a thing in itself but the absence of light. So far so good. But nature abhors a vacuum. When there is a lack of good, the vacancy does not remain empty. When a nation lacks god, it tends to create idols. If it lacks faith in any god, humans do not stop…
On Good Friday, we have a solemn service in remembrance of Jesus' death. And we do achieve solemnity. But we probably do not come anywhere close to the devastation and grief that the apostles felt when they first laid Jesus in the tomb. Because for whatever solemnity we observe on Friday, we likely have already made some preparations for the feast on Sunday. Whenever in life I find myself at the…
This is a conversational response to a post over at Ken Schenck's blog, " The war of the 2 natures ". As Mr Schenck writes, "After reading about the crazy battles that resulted in what we now call orthodoxy, there seem two possible conclusions: 1) God was behind the scenes making sure the right answers won out or 2) it's all a crap shoot and orthodox Christianity is a sham." I don't think that…
How can you speak good, when you are evil? For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. (Matthew 12:34) There were people who had seen Jesus heal a man who was blind and mute, and saw that Jesus had driven out a demon from the man. So Jesus' opponents accused that he was demonic, to explain why he had power over the demons. Did they believe themselves and their accusations? Only God…
In the season of Lent, we turn to resisting the powers of evil. I'd like to start by surveying some tools and strategies of evil that we see in the Bible: Deception - whether outright lies, half-truths, or omissions, the intent is to mislead (see Genesis 3). As Jesus said of the devil: Lies are his native language (John 8:44). Confusion - a half-truth can be more confusing than an outright lie…
This past Monday I was called for jury duty, which normally makes for an uninteresting morning in the jury pool followed by (usually) a week on call or (sometimes) a trip to a courtroom for voir dire , in which some lawyer (usually the prosecutor) decides they don't want a professional programmer/analyst on the jury. On Monday, the immense size of the potential-juror pool was the first sign of a…
Last week's post reviewed the verses that Jesus employed to rebuke the tempter. My own temptations are different. Of course I'm as much at risk of temptation as any person is. Still I am confident that the tempter will never try to goad me to turn stones to bread or offer me the kingdoms of the world. So what are my own common temptations? What verses would I want to call to mind for the…