psalms on Worldview

In their excellent book Misreading Scripture with Western Eyes, E. Randolph Richards and Brandon J. O’Brien share the importance of recognizing the lens through which see the world: We speak as insi...

I had a memorable lunch a few years ago with my friends Mike and Claudia, who had recently returned from Malawi, a small country in southeastern Africa. We were sitting in a booth at one of those chai...

We need to be careful to define what the Bible does and does not mean by “the world.”  It does not mean the created order—mountains, lakes, forests, deserts, seas, animals and people—especially people...

Jesus didn’t die on the cross to change God’s mind about us; Jesus died on the cross to change our minds about God!”

In 1889, the French novelist Paul Bourget penned The Disciple , where he depicted the life of a renowned philosopher and psychologist, whose existence was marked by a seemingly monotonous routine...

Preaching Commentary Dissolving the Divisions The Psalms divide—we would call it an over-simplification—the earth’s inhabitants into “Israel” and “the nations” (the earth). Psalm 98, quite interest...

Charles Darwin, known for his theory of natural selection, noticed that his later life included a “loss of happiness.” While he never acknowledged that it might have been related to his changing world...

If one looks at the world scene from a missionary point of view, surely the most striking fact is that, while in great areas of Asia and Africa the church is growing, often growing rapidly, in the lan...

Jesus is understood in the light of the assumptions which control our culture.  When “reason” is invoked as a parallel or supplementary authority to “Scripture” and “tradition,” what is happening is t...

Ancient lens What’s the historical context? Psalm of Lament or Psalm of Trust? We’ve categorized this psalm under the psalms of lament. The psalms of lament highlight the problems and enemies tha...

While the search for the divine has been somewhat crowded out in modern times by our busy and overstimulated lives, it is still one of the most universal of human strivings. C. S. Lewis describes this...

Ancient lens What’s the historical context? Psalm of Lament or Psalm of Trust? We’ve categorized this psalm under the psalms of lament. The psalms of lament highlight the problems and enemies tha...

Introduction, 1:1-4 While Hebrews is an anonymous letter, it is interesting to note that the KJV’s first verse is, “God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers ...

Preaching Commentary Introduction, 1:1-4 While Hebrews is an anonymous letter, it is interesting to note that the KJV’s first verse is, “God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time...

Christ is not American. The church is global. Our neighbors are all of humanity. The national anthem is not a gospel song.

Maybe this sounds silly, but go outside and look up. You cannot see yourself. All you see is a vast expanse of possibilities. Look down. You will see yourself and little else. This is true in life. Lo...

To frame is to put a language boundary around our experience. It is to name what happens in particular ways, to say how we see the world, and to see the world how we say it is. Framing includes tellin...

One of the gravest dangers to the Christian faith is its wholesale appropriation of the larger culture. When this happens, the citizens of those places cannot recognize the difference between their cu...

One discovery was a time-released revelation to me. On my way to classes each week, I had been passing Emerson Hall, the building that houses the philosophy department at Harvard. The enormous inscrip...

Nature, the world, has no value, no interest for Christians. The Christian thinks only of himself and the salvation of his soul.

I am convinced that the scourge of our scientific and technological age is depersonalization. There is a heartbeat pulsating at the center of the universe, giving life and meaning to everything, but o...

By virtue of Creation, and still more the Incarnation, nothing here below is profane for those who know how to see.

Historically the West has tended to throw its chief emphasis upon doing and the East upon being. . . . Were human nature perfect there would be no discrepancy between being and doing. The unfallen man...

No matter how much the world shatters us to pieces, we carry inside us a vision of wholeness that we sense is our true home and that beckons us.

“Moral”…is an orientation toward understandings about what is right and wrong, just and unjust, that are not established by our own actual desires or preferences but instead are believed to exist apar...

If you go against the grain of the universe, you get splinters.

When the missionaries came to Africa they had the Bible and we had the land. They said 'Let us pray.' We closed our eyes. When we opened them we had the Bible and they had the land.” For more,...

In those same weeks, Harper’s Magazine featured an evening-long conversation between two professors, Neil Postman and Camille Paglia, about the meaning of television for persons and for polities...

When we understand every single secret of the universe, there will still be left the eternal mystery of the human heart.

Like the eye which sees everything in front of it and never sees itself, faith is occupied with the Object upon which it rests and pays no attention to itself at all. While we are looking at God we do...