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Doubt is a Felt Tension
Doubt is really the felt tension that exists between a belief you have and a contrary claim you do not yet believe…Simply put, doubt is that experience of one of our beliefs seeming like it might be f... -
scripture guide
Scripture Guide, John 6:24-35
Ancient Lens What's the historical context? The Lakeside Community On the Sea of Galilee, it is not unusual to see from one shore to the other. It is essentially a lake, and as is often the ... -
lectionary
11th Sunday after Pentecost
Ancient Lens What's the historical context? The Lakeside Community On the Sea of Galilee, it is not unusual to see from one shore to the other. It is essentially a lake, and as is often the ... -
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A Map & Our Beliefs
A few years ago I was with my family in Washington, D.C., a wildly complex city laid out like a square wheel with broken spokes making an angular maze that is a nightmare to navigate. However, my fami... -
Quote
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... -
scripture guide
Scripture Guide, 2 Corinthians 4:3-6
Ancient Lens What’s the historical context? Mixed Loyalties Diving straight into 2 Corinthians 4:3-6 without giving a nod to 2 Corinthians 3:1-4:2 gives a strange impression, because Paul’s point... -
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Ideas Have Consequences & Doomsday Prepping
Let’s talk about how our beliefs shape our actions, especially when fear is involved. You've probably heard the phrase, "ideas have consequences," right? It's easy to see this in act... -
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What Do You Believe?
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... -
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The Cave
The Cave One of the most famous passages in Plato's Republic is his "Allegory of the Cave," which is found at the beginning of book seven . Socrates imagines the human condition al... -
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Vance Vanders and the Witch Doctor
In The God-Shaped Brain , Timothy R. Jennings tells a well-attested story about how belief can affect the body. Late one night in a small Alabama cemetery, Vance Vanders had a run-in with the local... -
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God Believes in You
There was what an Orthodox Hasidic rabbi had said on a flight westward. He’d put his prayer shawl in the overhead compartment and sat down, sweeping aside the tassels dangling from his pockets. And so... -
scripture guide
Scripture Guide John 20:1-8
Death Is Common to All Shakespeare’s Queen Gertrude of Denmark implores her son Hamlet to move past mourning his deceased father, Thou know’st ‘tis common,—all that live must die, passing through n... -
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False Narrative: You Are An Accident
The Russian writer Leo Tolstoy describes a view (not his own view, because Tolstoy was a Christian) of the human person, based on a theory of reality he saw emerging in his day. It is a narrative that... -
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Psychoanalysis . . . daily demonstrates to us how youthful persons lose their religious belief as soon as the authority of the father breaks down. -
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The Courage of the First Disciples
These disciples turned the world upside down because they saw a dead man come back to life by the power of God. And whatever that “knowing” and “seeing” did in them, it did it at a deep level because ... -
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Trust is faith that has become absolute, approved, and accomplished. When all is said and done, there is a sort of risk in faith and its exercise. But trust is firm belief; it is faith in full bloom. ... -
liturgy
Dear Heavenly Father, We are grateful
Dear Heavenly Father, We are grateful that we can come to You at any time, about anything. We know that You listen to the earnest cries of our hearts. We know that You have great power; You are the Cr... -
lectionary
Easter: Resurrection of the Lord
Preaching Commentary Death Is Common to All Shakespeare’s Queen Gertrude of Denmark implores her son Hamlet to move past mourning his deceased father, Thou know’st ‘tis common,—all that live must... -
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Getting In The Wheelbarrow
One of my favorite stories of revealing authentic belief is the story of Charles Blondin, the French tightrope walker. On June 30, 1859, he did his most famous act when he became the first person to c... -
liturgy
Inspired by John 6:68
As I repeat these words of your disciple Peter, let us believe them in our hearts: Lord, to whom can we go? You alone have the words of eternal life. Help us to hear your word and put them into prac... -
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It is Just so Good it Must be True
One day when George MacDonald, the great Scottish preacher and writer, was talking with his son, the conversation turned to heaven and the prophets’ version of the end of all things. “It seems too goo... -
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The disciples want to take Jesus aboard, and “immediately” they are already at their destination. Jesus’ spiritual destination, this chapter will teach us again and again, is believing disciples; futu... -
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One False Assumption
On a cold January day, a forty-three-year-old man was sworn in as the chief executive of his country. By his side stood his predecessor, a famous general who, fifteen years earlier, had commanded his ... -
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If man tries to grasp at truth of himself, he tries to grasp at it a priori . But in that case he does not do what he has to do when the truth comes to him. He does not believe. If he did, he wou... -
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Forever Wrestling with Belief
Lauren F. Winner tells a story about her friend Julian. When she was 12 and going to be confirmed, she had a crisis. She told her father, the pastor, that she wasn’t sure she could tell the church tha... -
liturgy
Adapted from John 11
Leader: Martha said to Jesus, "Lord, if you would have been here, my brother would not have died. Even now I know that whatever you ask of God, God will give you." People: Jesus said to he... -
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Thomas Jefferson’s Bible
The great American statesman and president Thomas Jefferson was a man of science who did not believe in miracles but really liked Jesus. Unfortunately, right next to Jesus’ ethical teachings are stori... -
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Getting to the Roots
The word radical comes from the same root as the word radish and literally means “root.” It’s truly a root word! But apart from the painful pun, it has something to teach us. So often, when we think o... -
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On Heaven and Hell
There’s a story of a young girl on a plane who was reading her Bible, and there was a businessman sitting next to her. He looked over to her and he said, you don’t really believe that do you?” And she... -
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Belief, Explained
When people are asked what they believe in, they give, not merely different answers, but different sorts of answers. Someone might say, “I believe in UFOs”—that means, I think UFOs are real. “I believ...
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