To be released— like a slave bought to be set free. Something? Someone? Everything? Everyone? However all-encompassing, narrow, or personal our thoughts, the Scriptures speak of redemption in earthshakingly, cosmic, and personal terms. Who or what doesn’t need to be released from bondage in the grand scheme of redemption that has been set in motion by Jesus’s […]
In reading over the conversation about the last post, I’ll admit that I too have been bothered by what Solomon writes in Ecclesiastes. Am thinking there are some of us who would rather that our daughters or wives not hear Solomon saying, “This is my conclusion,” says the Teacher. “I discovered this after looking at […]
While reading the story of WW2 prisoner of war, Louis Zamperini, Devil at my Heels, I’ve found it to be a sickening reminder of our universal human capacity for evil. About half way into a story of suffering, first on a raft, lost at sea, and then in a series of prisoner of war detention […]
In my last post I asked whether it is possible to abuse power, strength, and freedom—but not authority. The question sounds ridiculous to those who know the misuse of power and authority when they see it. Yet, as our discussion showed, many of us know people who think they have the right to push others […]
Can the authority God gives be misused? The question may seem, at best, like a no-brainer. How else can we explain corruption of power or the evil things people do in the name of God? But I’m increasingly convinced that it’s important to carefully weigh the difference between God-given authority, strength, power, and freedom. Here […]
Some of the most gruesome events of the Iraq war involved the beheading of enemies by terrorist cells. Yet long ago, David did it to the Philistine giant, Goliath (1Samuel 17). The Philistines later beheaded King Saul and hung his headless body on the city wall of Beth Shan (1Sam 31:9). John the Baptist suffered […]
In The God Delusion, author Richard Dawkins makes a connection between Moses and the Taliban that must have occurred to some of us as well. Who among us has not listened with horror to reports of young women being stoned for adultery or for going out in public without head coverings. Some of us may […]
A lot of thoughts have been going through my mind as we’ve wrestled together with the issue of how to respond as followers of Christ to the social debate regarding a national public policy on abortion. In some ways I’m unnerved by the fact that this is one more subject over which many of us […]
One of our goals at RBC (the publishers of Our Daily Bread) is to attach authority to no more or no less than the necessary implications of the Bible. I don’t find that easy to do. Seems so hard to avoid reading more into the Bible than out of it (by treating possible implications as […]
Since our last discussion on men and women I’ve spent a lot more time thinking, studying, talking to co-workers, and trying to make progress with a problem that I believe creates confusion among ourselves and misunderstanding in those who are not yet followers of Christ. I realize that by coming back to the subject of […]
