Studies on Contrast

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Chiaroscuro: Light and Dark Together

Author

Keywords

Scripture

Genesis 1:3-4, Exodus 10:21-23, Isaiah 9:2, John 1:4-5, 2 Corinthians 4:6, Psalm 112:4

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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A Contrast to the Realm of Eternity

Author

A. J. Swoboda

Keywords

Scripture

Isaiah 57:15, Psalm 90:4, Revelation 1:4, Exodus 20:8-11, 2 Corinthians 4:18, Ecclesiastes 3:11, Genesis 2:2-3

The framework of seven days is rich with divine intention. Certainly, in biblical numerology, the number seven symbolizes divine perfection. But perhaps it goes deeper than that. Echoing church father...

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No Right to Exist (for contrast)

Author

Jean-Paul Sartre

Keywords

It was true, I had always realized it—I hadn’t any “right” to exist at all. I had appeared by chance, I existed like a stone, a plant, a microbe. I could feel nothing to myself but an inconsequential ...

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Dawkins View of Faith (For Contrast)

Author

Richard Dawkins

Keywords

Scripture

James 2:18, Romans 10:17, John 20:29, 1 Peter 3:15, Romans 1:20

Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence. Faith is belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence…. Faith, being belief that isn...

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The Fox and the Hedgehog and the Two Hemispheres of the Brain

Author

Daniel H. Pink

Keywords

Brain

In 1951, Isaiah Berlin wrote an essay about War and Peace and gave it a room-emptying title: “Leo Tolstoy’s Historical Skepticism.” Berlin’s publisher loved the essay but hated the headline, so he cha...

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Systems Can’t Fix Us

Author

Dallas Willard

Keywords

Scripture

Matthew 5:20, Romans 14:17, Luke 17:20-21, Matthew 28:18-20, Philippians 2:14-15

T. S. Eliot once described the current human endeavor as that of finding a system of order so perfect that we will not have to be good. The way of Jesus tells us, by contrast, that any number of syste...

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Foolishness and Nobility Are Similar

Author

Os Guinness

Keywords

Scripture

Proverbs 1:7, 1 Samuel 25:, Luke 12:16-21

The Hebrew word for “fool” is very close to the Hebrew for “noble,” with only one letter different, and it is sometimes only in the outcome of their lives that the people considered noble by the peopl...

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The Martyr's Mindset: Ignatius of Antioch and Death as Worship

Author

Ryan Bundrick

Keywords

Scripture

Matthew 16:25, Romans 8:17-18, Philippians 1:21, 2 Corinthians 4:17, Psalm 116:115, Daniel 3:, Daniel 6:

How many modern Christians consider dying to be the worst thing that can happen to them? We pray for safety, healing, and protection, and rightly so. However, do we live in the truth that death has tr...

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Honoring and Leaving

Author

A. J. Swoboda

Keywords

Scripture

Exodus 20:12, Jeremiah 35:18–19, Proverbs 22:1, Philippians 2:3–4, Matthew 6:1, Psalm 37:5–6

The challenge each of these faced in their deconstruction—and what we may face—is walking the tightrope between becoming our own person and honoring our past. In The Homeless Mind , sociologist P...

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Joy must be morally clean

Author

Christopher H. J. Wright

Keywords

Scripture

Galatians 5:19–23 , 1 Peter 4:3–4 , Psalm 100:1–2, Deuteronomy 16:14, Numbers 25:31:16, Exodus 32:34

Joy must be morally clean. God warned Israel not to be tempted by the kind of debauched “joy” of the Canaanite festivals, which included sexual immorality, drunkenness, gluttony, and idolatry. They ha...

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Thinking Critically about Power

Author

Jamin Goggin and Kyle Strobel

Keywords

Scripture

Luke 6:42, Matthew 6:12

For years Kyle and I [Jamin Goggin] had no trouble looking critically upon others in their quest for power. We bemoaned the rock-star pastors who were in the spotlight, whose churches appeared to be m...

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God Hinting

Author

Debra Hirsch

Keywords

Scripture

1 Corinthians 7:1-9, Matthew 19:3-12 , Psalm 139:13-16 , Genesis 2:18-25, Song of Solomon 4:1-16, Proverbs 5:15-19, Genesis 2:18

James Nelson describes sexuality as the central clue to what God is up to in the world. While this might seem a little over the top, when you think about it, sexuality factors integrally in our relati...

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The Roots of the English Word “Worship”

Author

Fleming Rutledge

Keywords

Scripture

Isaiah 9:6-7, Micah 5:2, 1 Kings 8:10-11, Matthew 2:1-12, Philippians 2:6-11 , Psalm 95:6-7

In the English language, worship is an important word. It comes from ancient Anglo-Saxon and means “worth-ship”—to ascribe ultimate worth to something or someone. Matthew is portraying the nature of t...

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The Glory of Man & the Glory of God

Author

Fleming Rutledge

Keywords

Scripture

Exodus 33:18-23, Isaiah 6:1-4 , Daniel 4:28-37, John 17:1-5 , 2 Corinthians 3:7-18, Psalm 19:1

What resonance does the word glory have in today’s English language? How often is it used, and with what meaning? The adjective glorious is familiar enough—we might say that we saw a “glorious” sunset...

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The Two Runners

Author

The Pastor's Workshop

Keywords

Scripture

Matthew 6:33, Colossians 3:23, Psalm 39:6, Luke 12:15, Acts 15:29, Matthew 5:14-16, Ephesians 2:10, 1 Corinthians 10:31, Jeremiah 9:23-24, Matthew 16:24, Luke 9:62, 2 Corinthians 4:8-9, James 1:12, Romans 8:16-17, Galatians 2:20

The true story of Eric Liddell and Harold Abrahams, two British sprinters who qualified for the 1924 Olympic Games, illustrates two contrasting approaches to life and identity. Abrahams was driven by ...

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Was the Star of Bethlehem a Comet?

Author

The Pastor's Workshop

Keywords

Scripture

Matthew 2:1-12

As early as AD 248, Origen suggested that the star of Bethlehem was a comet—and there continue to be astronomers who think that he was right. Comets are icy objects that orbit the sun. When seen fro...

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God's Image in Humanity

Keywords

Nahum Sarna writes in Understanding Genesis: Perhaps nowhere is the contrast between the mythological and the Israelite conceptions more striking and more illuminating than in their respective descr...

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Tearing Down the Dividing Wall

Author

John M. Perkins

Keywords

Scripture

Ephesians 2:14-16

In 1973, Voice of Calvary Ministries, the ministry Vera Mae and I started after we moved back to Mississippi in 1960, opened a health clinic in the black section of Mendenhall. We had an X-ray machine...

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Contemporary Treatments of the Seven Deadly Sins

Author

Rebecca Konyndyk DeYoung

Keywords

Vice

Reading Aquinas, I found the vices to have revealing and illuminating power. By contrast, many voices in contemporary culture, unfortunately, dismiss, redefine, psychologize, or trivialize them. Some...

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The “Softness” of the Sermon on the Mount

Author

John R. W. Stott

Keywords

Sermon on the Mount

Probably nobody has hated the ‘softness’ of the Sermon on the Mount more than Friedrich Nietzsche. Although the son and the grandson of Lutheran pastors, he rejected Christianity during his student da...

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Values Vs. Virtues

Author

Vigen Guroian

Keywords

Virtues

There are real and very important differences between what we now call values and the virtues as they had traditionally been understood. Let me put it this way. A value is like a smoke ring. Its shape...

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A Post-Christian America?

Author

Phillip Yancey

Keywords

The United States is undergoing a marked change in its attitude toward religion, and Christians here face new challenges. When a blogger named Marc Yoder wrote about “10 Surprising Reasons Our Kids Le...

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The Devastation of Residential Segregation

Author

George Yancey

Keywords

More people of color than whites live in the city of Dallas and in the city of Fort Worth. But they are more likely to live in poorer inner-city areas while whites live in the more affluent suburbs. D...

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The Easter Message

Author

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Keywords

Easter

Scripture

Matthew 28:20

In this sermon preached by Dietrich Bonhoeffer in Barcelona, 1928, the young pastor (just 22 years old), preaches on Mathew 28:20 and the promise of Jesus to be with the disciples, even after he ascen...

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What are you Looking for?

Author

Craig Groeschel

Keywords

You will always find what you are looking for. Think about the difference between two birds: a vulture and a hummingbird. Vultures soar high in the sky, looking and searching. What does a vulture find...

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The Origin of the Sabbath

Author

The Pastor's Workshop

Keywords

Where did the observation of a Sabbath come from? Nahum Sarna points out that it is never instituted within Scripture. Instead, it is taken for granted that the people already observe it: “There can...

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The Legacies of William Borden and King Tut

Author

Randy Alcorn

Keywords

Legacy

The streets of Cairo were hot and dusty. Our missionary friends Pat and Rakel Thurman took us down an alley. We drove past Arabic signs to an overgrown graveyard for American missionaries. As Nanci an...

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Yearning for a Higher Answer

Author

David Friend

Keywords

This paragraph from the scientist and atheist David Friend provides a stark contrast to a Christian conception of life, humanity, and the world we inhabit: We are here because one odd group of fishe...

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Describe Your First Encounter with Race

Author

Daniel Hill

Keywords

Race

Whenever I lead a training session on cultural identity—particularly when there’s a strong white presence—I begin with this question: “Describe the first encounter you remember having with race.” Most...

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A Concert Hall or a Banquet Hall

Author

Mike Cosper

Keywords

Worship

My friend Isaac Wardell, a pastor of worship and founder of Bifrost Arts, asks whether we think of gathered worship as being more like a concert hall or a banquet hall. If it’s a concert hall, we show...

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Genesis

Exodus

Leviticus

Numbers

Deuteronomy

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Judges

Ruth

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