Job 38:1–11, Jonah 1:4–17 , Exodus 14:21–31 , Mark 4:35–41, Acts 27:13–44 , John 20:24–29
It was late October 1991. The crew of the fishing boat Andrea Gail , out of Gloucester, Massachusetts, had taken the vessel five hundred miles out into the Atlantic. A cold front moving along the...
Scientist John Haldane once proposed to the English priest Ronald Knox that, given the vast number of planets in the universe, the emergence of life by sheer chance was inevitable. Knox responded with...
Sir Isaac Newton was one of the great scientists of all time. Most men of science today agree that his great book Principia is the greatest scientific book ever written. Yet of his achievemen...
Thomas Aquinas, the famous medieval theologian, created one of the greatest intellectual achievements of Western civilization in his Summa Theologica. It’s a massive work: thirty-eight treatises, thre...
My faith life, like that of every one else, fluctuates. There are ups and downs and hot spots and cold spots and boredom and ennui and all the rest can be there. And so I’m not asked on a Sunday morni...
Genesis 18:10-15, Numbers 13:14, Job 1:42, Matthew 14:22-33, Psalm 73:
It is quite common for Christians to experience doubts from time to time. Unfortunately, doubts about our Christian beliefs are often treated in the same way we would treat a common cold. We wait it o...
John 20:24-29, Mark 9:24, Job 23:3-4, 8-10, Job 19:25-27, Psalm 23:4, Psalm 13:1-2, 5
When most of us grow up in a faith tradition, we begin with an assumption that faith is good, while having doubts is bad. As we mature however, we realize that faith and doubt are not opposites, but i...
In ordinary times we get along surprisingly well, on the whole, without ever discovering what our faith really is. If, now and again, this remote and academic problem is so unmannerly as to thrust its...
Medical doctor Paul Brand, who is best known for discovering the cause of leprosy and developing a treatment for it, reflects on the nature and design of the universe. The more I delve into natural l...
In the Middle Ages there were theologians who wrote volumes on proofs of God. Anselm (1033–1109) came up with the ontological proof of God that there exists in our minds an idea of a being than which ...
My friend Scot McKnight is a New Testament professor in Chicago. For years, he taught a class on Jesus, and he would start every semester with two surveys. The first was a set of questions about the s...
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...
Those who believe they believe in God but without passion in the heart, without anguish of mind, without uncertainty, without doubt, and even at times without despair, believe only in the idea of God,...
Among the hills a meteorite Lies huge; and moss has overgrown And wind and rain with touches light Made soft, the contours of the stone. Thus easily can Earth digest A cinder of sidereal fire, And ...
Job 1:20-21, Daniel 3:17-18, Habakkuk 3:17-18, Luke 22:42, Psalm 34:18-19 , John 6:66-69
A few days ago I met with a young couple. Their toddler was injured in a car accident. When I visited them in the hospital, the child was on life support. As we stood outside the ICU and spoke, I saw,...
Job 38:1-11, Genesis 1:, Matthew 8:23-27, Luke 8:22-25, Psalm 74:14, Psalm 104:26, Genesis 1:21
Note: This was originally part of a guide for the Fifth Sunday after Pentecost (RCL Year B) , which includes Job 38:1-11 and Mark 4:35-11 . I have adapted the discussion of each of these t...
Mark 4:35-41, Job 38:1-11, Psalm 107:, Jonah 1:, Genesis 1:, Matthew 8:23-27, Luke 8:22-25, Psalm 74:14, Psalm 104:26, Genesis 1:21
A Sopping Wet Week in the Lectionary Today’s readings are thoroughly wet. In Job, God is master of the sea, Psalm 107 concerns mariners in the storm, Paul is a little drier, but still gets shipwrecke...
Those who believe that they believe in God, but without any passion in their heart, without anguish of mind, without uncertainty, without doubt, without an element of despair even in their consolation...
I am ignorant of His designs, but I will not cease to believe in them because I cannot penetrate them. And I will prefer to doubt my own lights rather than His justice.
The ancient man approached God (or even the gods) as the accused person approaches his judge. For the modern man the roles are reversed. He is the judge: God is in the dock. He is quite a kindly judge...
Forgive us, O God, when we limit you – When we remake you in our image, When we claim our causes as your own, When we box you in, And explain you away, And in our attempts at understanding, whittle aw...
Job 38:1-7, Isaiah 29:13-16 , Proverbs 14:12, Luke 1:1-4 , 2 Peter 1:16-21, Psalm 19:1-4
Some books were no more than assumptions piled on assumptions…. Conclusions were reached on the basis of little or no data at all…. The whole case for the nondivine Jesus who stumbled into Jerusalem a...
Intellect is therefore a vital force in history, but it can also be a dissolvent and destructive power. Out of every hundred new ideas ninety-nine or more will probably be inferior to the traditional ...
In an article entitled, What the New Atheists Don’t See , the British author Theodore Dalrymple shares his honest struggles with atheism. The subtitle of his article is fascinating, “To regret re...
John 20:24-29, Mark 9:24, Job 42:2-6, Isaiah 55:8-9, John 6:68-69
Charles Templeton was a close friend and preaching associate of Billy Graham in the 1940s. He effectively preached the gospel to large crowds in major arenas. However, intellectual doubts began to nag...
A doctor, an engineer, and a politician were arguing as to which profession was older. “Well,” argued the doctor, “without a physician mankind could not have survived, so I am sure that mine is the ol...
Genesis 22:1-19, Numbers 13:14, Job 1:42, Matthew 14:22-33, Psalm 43:
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 ...