The Bible is the word of God. God is perfect, thus everything he says is perfect and 100% true. Therefore, the Bible is 100% true without error. It seems pretty straightforward. The reality is a little more complicated. Anyone who’s read the Bible has noticed some discrepancies between books. There’s some stuff in the Bible that can’t be confirmed by […]
I have heard this said before: “All sins are equal.” I actually hear it enough that it seems to me to be a common, even standard position, that Christians hold: that all sins are of equal severity in God’s sight. Whether you tell a white lie or murder somebody in cold blood, sin is sin, and all sin incurs the […]
The United States of America has a very polarized climate nowadays. From both sides of the political aisle, we don’t have a lot in common. On nearly every issue imaginable, conservatives and liberals can find something to disagree on. Through all the battles, though, there’s one value that everyone agrees is among the highest of human goods, and most of […]
Easter was a couple weeks ago. Fun fact: If you reckon Easter by the modern solar calendar instead of the lunar calendar of the Hebrews, Easter would be either April 3 (if Jesus died and rose in AD 33) or April 6 (if Jesus died and rose in AD 30). Typically modern culture does its best to ignore the origins […]
It’s been a while since I posted on here, and it’s mostly because I’ve been preparing for and on a trip to Chicago to help out with a Bible Quizzing regional tournament, and I’ve been preparing a Sunday sermon. So I figured I would post that sermon here. The focal verse is 1 Peter 3:15, how we need to always […]
The Bible is not a book to gloss over or minimize the harsh realities of life, either in this world or in the next. There are stories about war, descriptions of sacrifice and sexuality, and many other things that make our modern sensibilities cringe. Even more, there are things that might terrify us. So what is the worst of these? […]
The Bible doesn’t shy away from the problem of suffering. Many religions and forms of spirituality deal with suffering in different ways. Some say we deserve it; some say it’s an illusion; some say we have the power to end our own suffering; and some don’t have much to say about it. The Bible’s treatment of suffering would not be […]
*I will say from the start this is a longer post than normal. It’s because I think this question is important enough to warrant careful analysis. But at the end, there are very real and practical implications the answer to this question has. When it comes to what separates us from the animals, free will has to be one of […]
Words have meanings. I point out this painfully obvious fact because, even though we are aware from our first year that words have meanings, we don’t always put much effort into figuring out the meanings of the words we use. This is egregiously obvious when you listen to our political discussions these days. People seem to throw around -isms and […]
You want to know the questions many youth pastors hope they don’t get asked? You might think it’s possibly questions about homosexuality or abortion, or maybe transgenderism, or possibly about hell, why God lets people get cancer, or why God ordered the Israelites to violently drive out the Canaanites in Joshua’s day. You’d probably be right about all those. Those […]
Just another jar of clay, named Clay. I’m a Christ-follower who messes up a lot, blessed to be a husband and youth worker, trying to share the message that saved me. My aim with this blog is to explore how we ought to live and think as Christ-followers in the midst of the realities of today’s world.
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