Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. The kingdom of the earth belongs to the tireless. The kingdom of the earth belongs to those who can walk the fine line between self-promotion and humility. The kingdom of the earth belongs to those who embrace certainty. The kingdom of the…
Up to this point, Jesus was on pace to be an A-List celebrity in no time. Not more than a few months into his public ministry, he already has a solid inner circle of loyal followers. Even if you account for the unusual choices among them. More impressively, he had already preached in the synagogues…
Ok, so now that we have established that we have every bit as much (if not more) capacity to be wrong as our fathers before us, let us get into the questions surrounding the discussion. The first issue is the nature of hell. If Jesus descended into hell, what did he descend into? Was it…
He descended into hell. Troubling. Confusing. Mysterious. True? For two millennia the answer from the church seems to have been “yes.” Today, we are not so sure. Did Jesus not say to the thief Today you will be with me in paradise? Did he not cry out with his dying breath It is finished? How,…
Do you remember the old days when we could only come into the presence of God once a year? And even then, only one of us was allowed to step into the place of God. That would have been a bad time in history to be a bull or a sheep or a goat- or…
Once sins are taken care of for good, there’s no longer any need to offer sacrifices for them. -Hebrews 10:18 Sounds simple enough, right? If you were to pay my car insurance bill before the first, I might do a lot of things but paying the bill anyhow would be the last reaction you might…
Love. Friendship. Sacrifice. These are words that bring warmth to our hearts and a song to our lips. Somewhere deep, deep down, these words resonate with us like an ancient melody. We know they go together. We know that the one who really loves sacrifices. We know that the one who puts his life on…
Are you ready for a little theological discussion? I hope you are. Since I have the pen, I suppose it is up to me to get this ball rolling. Ok. I’ll give you a topic: total depravity. Discuss. What is total depravity? It is that warmest and fuzziest of all theological doctrines that says, as…
When my brother and I were in high school we had the opportunity to drive my dad’s sweet Ford Bronco II. It may have had a few hundred thousand miles on it but that thing was sweet for a couple of sixteen-year olds who lived in the country. You can imagine our pride on the…
Who can’t love a freedom fighter? I mean, seriously, it is almost irrelevant to us how the freedom fighter achieves his ends, we just love to see somebody fighting to the end for the liberty of captives. We love Gandhi because of his “passive resistance” strategies (Bonhoeffer, in particular, loved the writings of Gandhi and…
