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The Good News or the Bad News
I read in a book recently about a young pastor who was fired from his church over a theological controversy. When he went to share the news with his wife, he said, “I’ve got good news and bad news, wh... -
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Bible Controversies come from our Hermeneutics
Many of the modern controversies surrounding the Bible—for example, human sexuality, creationism and the “openness” of God—revolve around questions concerning hermeneutics. The science of hermeneutics... -
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Sunday observance of the Sabbath was the subject of forty-seven acts of Parliament and often debated by American legislators in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. -
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Confrontation Defined
The Latin term for confrontation means “to turn your face toward, to look at frontally.” It merely indicates that you are turning toward the relationship and the person. You are face-to-face, so to sp... -
scripture guide
Scripture Guide, Mark 2:23-3:6
Context Authorship of Mark Mark’s account of the story of Jesus is commonly held to be the earliest of the four canonical Gospels. Early church tradition identifies the author as Mark (or John Mark)... -
lectionary
Second Sunday after Pentecost
Preaching Commentary Context Authorship of Mark Mark’s account of the story of Jesus is commonly held to be the earliest of the four canonical Gospels. Early church tradition identifies the author... -
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Mutual Accusations
In the mid-1980s, I helped facilitate a series of conferences between top Soviet and American policy advisers on the question of how to prevent a nuclear war. The times were tense and the accusations ... -
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The Scandalous Reputation of Jesus
In his book Breaking the Rules , Fil Anderson talks about the scandalous reputation of Jesus: He breaks all social etiquette in relating to people. He acknowledges no barriers or human divisions.... -
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Gentleman, There are Your Enemies
Internal conflict is not only dangerous—it can threaten the long-term flourishing of any organization, including the church. According to tradition, during the Battle of Trafalgar, Lord Horatio Nelson... -
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The reason we fight with each other, and often believe the worst about each other, is that we form convictions about things for which we care deeply. Unfortunately, we all care deeply about different ... -
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If you go against the grain of the universe, you get splinters. -
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If “evolution” is…elevated to the status of a world-view of the way things are, then there is direct conflict with biblical faith. But if “evolution” remains at the level of scientific biological hypo... -
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Blaming Creation Instead of Sin
The great danger is to always single out some aspect of God’s good creation and identify it, rather than the alien intrusion of sin, as the villain. Such an error conceives of the good-evil dichotomy ... -
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The problem is not recognizing the importance of the individual. The problem is the glorification of the individual. When the individual self is glorified over the greater good of the community, right... -
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The Heresy of Body/Spirit Dualism
Christianity Does Not Reject the Body The “spirit-good / body-bad” dualism that often passes for Christianity is actually an ancient gnostic error called “Manichaeism,” and it couldn’t be further from... -
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Defining Crisis
The word krisis was used by the Greeks to refer to “a legal process of judgment.” Aristotle used it to refer to a legal procedure that secured civic order. In his case, it was a judgment that helped k... -
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An attempt to wrest from God the prerogatives of absolute freedom and infinity leads to the inversion of Pentecost and what is in effect a new Babel. 'Postmodernism' represents that Babel perf... -
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Interpretive strategies have gone through cycles
Interpretive strategies have gone through cycles of strict-constructionist (or Originalism) and broad-constructionist (or Living Constitution) perspectives. Originally the procedure of interpreting th... -
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Preventing Vengeance
I did some of my Clinical Pastoral Education Units in Gastonia. One of the units that I served was the Emergency Department. If there was an incident that was suspected to be gang related, they would ... -
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The Root of the Word Doubt
The root of our English term doubt has to do with duplicity. It is being divided or doubled up in our thinking. But this isn’t a matter of simply being confused or unable to make up our mind or ... -
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It is Better to Question than Merely Accept Difficult Circumstances
If the Book of Job reaches across two and a half millennia to teach anything to men and women who consider themselves normal, decent human beings, it is this: Human beings are sure to wander in ignora... -
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We know the Incarnation mysteriously unites all of humankind to God and one another, but so often the lines of Christianity feel like they do nothing but divide us. -
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Christian politics concerns how we integrate our confession that Jesus is Lord with our call to love our neighbors. -
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When the Church Isn’t so Welcoming
Lamin Sanneh, the African theologian who would be pivotal in the development of missional theology, was raised in an orthodox Muslim household in Gambia. He found himself drawn to Christianity after e... -
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A Theology of Interruptions
I have a friend who says he wants to write a book on the life of Jesus and call it “a theology of interruptions.” Because, he says, so many of the things that Jesus said or did in the Gospel stories h... -
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The Whole Trouble with You
Lucy says to Charlie Brown: ‘You know what the whole trouble with you is, Charlie Brown?’ ‘No; and I don’t want to know! Leave me alone!’ ‘The whole trouble with you is you won’t listen to w... -
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Spiritual Battles on the Journey of Faith
While I am not one to see a demon behind every bush or spiritual warfare in every difficulty, the fact is that we are regularly engaged in the struggle against good and evil—whether we know it or not.... -
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Chiaroscuro: Light and Dark Together
The very nature of light provides contrast. In juxtaposition, differing levels of light illuminate in extraordinary ways, helping us to see what we’ve been missing. In the late 1400s, the art world ma... -
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Many economic fallacies are due to conceiving of economic activity as a zero-sum contest, in which what is gained by one is lost by another. This in turn is often due to ignoring the fact that wealth ... -
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Understanding the Bible is a Struggle
Thomas Merton’s words about the Bible in general apply to the Old Testament in particular: There is, in a word, nothing comfortable about the Bible — until we manage to get so used to it that we ...
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