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Evil is Triumphing over Good, God Will You Do Nothing?
“These are dangerous times, and the threat of war is greater now than at any time since the end of the Cold War, Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats told the Senate Armed Services Committee… (2)
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Things Are Feeling a Little um…Apocalyptic Lately: Is this God’s judgment?
Like an opening fanfare we experienced a total eclipse of the sun. As a native Houstonian living in Columbia, South Carolina, we've been writing checks and sending Facebook touches to Harvey-flooded friends back home and lashed down our deck furniture in anticipation of Irma. What are the odds that two of the worst hurricanes in American history would hit back to back? And then there’s Maria coming right behind… Friends who were headed to Montana cancelled. Montana is choking on the smoke from fires that have burned over 1,000,000 acres this summer. The schools in Olympia, Washington, where my cousins live, have cancelled sporting events because of the smoke…
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6/26/2015: Supreme Mistake
As we approach the second anniversary of a date which will live in infamy, the Supreme Court’s ruling on homosexual “marriage” in Obergefell v. Hodges, I thought it important to remind Christians, so as to keep them awake and vigilant in our culture war. The Roe v. Wade anniversary is often marked by a March for Life. Let us also mark this day as, at the very least, a day of prayer for our wayward nation which has, thus far, bound itself to self-destruction. I do not advocate violence, but vigilance. And even as we warn the unbelieving culture to “repent and turn back so that your sins may be…
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A False god to Bring You Comfort in “The Shack” (“The Shack” Review, part 2)
“True worship must worship God as He exists, not as we wish Him to be. The essence of idolatry is the making of images of God. An image is a shadow, a false representation. We may not bow before a statue or a figure, but if we make an image of god in our mind that is not in accord with God’s revelation of himself, then we are not worshipping in truth….” writes James R. White. “If we love Him and worship Him as He deserves, we will not dare to ‘edit’ Him to fit our desires.”[1] “Watch out for false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing” (Matthew…
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“The Shack”, a Review, part 1
“Brazen and insolent, they are not afraid to insult the glorious ones…” (2 Peter 2:10).[1] “Mack turned and faced him, shaking his head. ‘Am I supposed to believe that God is a big black woman with a questionable sense of humor?’ Jesus laughed, ‘She’s a riot!’” – Excerpt from The Shack, by William Paul Young.[2] The long-awaited movie version of the novel The Shack, by William Paul Young, is finally released. According to the book’s front cover, The Shack has sold over 20 million copies worldwide. Wikipedia lists it as a “Christian novel”, and one that has made the New York Times best seller list. Well known people, including Christian…
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Some Deep Thoughts about San Andreas
It’s a disaster movie designed to be a roller coaster ride–the kind of scary fun you expect from summer blockbusters. Not quite a Spielberg roller coaster, but still, pretty intense, with a story of family reconciliation to boot. My original title for the post was going to be “San Andreas: There is no thoughtful cultural commentary to offer on this movie. Just have fun.” But even insurance companies acknowledge that earthquakes are "acts of God," so it's natural to see a link between earthquakes and earthquake movies and God. But first, the movie… Unlike the 70’s disaster movies–Earthquake/Poseidon Adventure/Towering Inferno–the San Andreas disaster isn’t a quick prelude to a long, drawn…
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Noah. Genocide. The Goodness of God.
This week Darren Aronofsky’s Noah will flood theaters (sorry, I couldn’t help it) with a story kind of like Genesis 6-9. It’s definitely a prodigal movie, taking the text and wandering off to a far country, but it does stick to the basic story line: The humans he made have become God-sickeningly corrupt. So he pours out his judgment in a flood, and all flesh “in whose nostrils was the breath of life…died.” In response the highly inflamatory (and proud of it) TV talk s how host Bill Maher says, "It's about a psychotic mass murderer who gets away with it, and his name is God…. Conservatives are always going…
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Do you expect captives of the enemy to act like they are free?
Would the non-Christians you know label you as "judgmental"? How do we walk in the tension between maintaining our principles and standards while wooing people to Jesus? How did Jesus do that? These are critical questions that we must wrestle with if we want to be Christ-followers in our post-Christian world. In a series of interviews with sixteen to twenty-nine-year-old outsiders, 87 percent of them labeled Christians as judgmental (UnChristian, What A New Generation Really Thinks About Christianity And Why It Matters, Baker Books). They described most Christians as people who looked down their noses at anyone different from them. They said that most Christians they knew reflected a…
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Do you expect captives of the enemy to act like they are free?
Would the non-Christians you know label you as "judgmental"? How do we walk in the tension between maintaining our standards while wooing people to Jesus? How did Jesus do that? These are critical questions that we must wrestle with if we want to be Christ-followers in our post-Christian world. In a series of interviews with sixteen to twenty-nine-year-old outsiders, 87 percent of them labeled Christians as judgmental (UnChristian, What A New Generation Really Thinks About Christianity And Why It Matters, Baker Books). They described most Christians as people who looked down their noses at anyone different from them. They said that most Christians they knew reflected a "holier than…