Do you know Him?
I found this on this blog and although I had heard it before the graphics were new and I liked this version.
Understanding Love
After sitting with my wife and catching pieces of The Notebook while I was working, I listened as a woman told a man that she loved him but she couldn’t commit to him exclusively because she loved another man whom she was cheating on with the first man. This rubbed me the wrong way and after thinking about how many people who claim to love each other get divorced and end up hating each other I started to wonder, what is our societies view of love? I have been trying to pay attention to how much I have bought into this view. Now I haven’t bought into the total concept, but certain aspects of what I perceive to be “love” are actually shallow, hollow, worthless shells of what God has called us to. It’s difficult for me to analyze...
Hubris
“Now when Joshua was near Jericho, he looked up and saw a man standing in front of him with a drawn sword in his hand. Joshua went up to him and asked, ‘Are you for us or for our enemies?’ ‘Neither’ he replied.” Joshua 5:13-14a Back in the fall of 1994, some friends of mine and I had gathered to hang out one Tuesday evening. We interrupted our planned activities to check out how the mid-term congressional elections were going. I don’t think any of us was expecting anything significant to happen any more than we would expect the Yankees to get blown away by a little league team. The Democrats had controlled the Congress as long as any of us could remember and we all just assumed that this was the way things were. We were all therefore quite surprised...
Heaven is a state of mind (and other soul crushing lies)
In 1994’s Usual Suspects, Kevin Spacey’s character delivers one of the more memorable quotes of the movie saying, “The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist” While I think that Spacey’s character was right on in many ways, I would have to say that the devil has done better. A better trick the Devil pulled was convincing the world that heaven is not something to look forward to or sacrifice for. The Bible is filled with people looking forward to the reward to come. Christ’s sermon on the mount is focused for a large part on heaven. Blessed are the meek for they will inherit the earth. This admonition is clearly pointed at eternity, because the meek have been and will be trampled on in this world. Hebrews...
NY Times: Who Would Jesus Smack Down? The Ministry of Mark Driscoll.
Interesting post by jonosmith. I recommend that you read this article from the New York Times that analyzes the ministry of Mark Driscoll and Mars Hill Church. It’s a flattering article, for the most part, but I think the author misses the mark with some of her very generalised statements about Calvinism. For example, the last sentence of the article reads: “Driscoll’s New Calvinism underscores a curious fact: the doctrine of total human depravity has always had a funny way of emboldening, rather than humbling, its adherents.” I would argue that, in fact, adherents of Calvinism have always been emboldened by their belief in an all-sovereign, all-powerful, all-knowing God — Not because of (and certainly not merely because of) their...