As iron sharpens iron,
one person sharpens another. (Proverbs 27:17)
Read Part 1.
If fun is good, but not all fun is good, then we ought to choose our fun thoughtfully and wisely. Fun ought to be to our benefit, not a means of our destruction.
So how do we choose? Can we just choose what we like?
Likes are important. There’s no sense in seeking relaxation in things you don’t like; if this is about pleasure and rest, then that’s obvious.
“Welcome to the first Credo Colloquy, an exclusive dialogue between theologians…. In this new series leading theologians engage one another on some of the most important issues in theology facing the church.” - Credo
“The vast majority of supposed “contradictions” in Scripture are relatively easy to reconcile. However, for the sake of honesty, I must acknowledge that there are a handful of problems in Scripture that are exceedingly difficult.” - R.C. Sproul
“Over-realized eschatology is an underlying hermeneutical assumption of prosperity-doctrine (health-and-wealth) teachers… permeates the eschatological expectations of NAR ‘apostles’ at one end of the theological spectrum, and pervades some sectors of politically-obsessed fundamentalists on the other end.” - Kenneth Berding
“A New Right has arisen in America. Its adherents are anti-liberal, at war with the woke Left, opposed to pluralism, enamored of state power and nationalism, and ready to abandon such niceties as civility and toleration.” - Public Discourse
“Saddleback is among three churches that will make their case before Southern Baptists at their annual meeting in New Orleans next month.” - CToday
“In the U.S., 39 percent of respondents expressed the belief….The belief is lowest in Thailand, a largely Theravada Buddhist population, polling at 27 percent.” - BPNews
Read the series.
(Discipleship in the Original Jewish Context, continued…)
When Protestants have visions, they usually have visions of Jesus. When Roman Catholics have visions, they often have visions of Mary. And when Jews have visions, they typically have visions of Elijah. He is a central figure among devout Jews.
“In an effort to make coffee accessible to everyone and to enforce the idea that the enterprise is not a capitalist venture, the shop had a ‘pay what you can’ model that was subsidized by pricier drinks” - Fox
“From a Christian viewpoint, however, there are real concerns about economic fairness and justice. Yet, even after decades of pondering these issues, I still have lingering questions.” - Providence
“You could, hypothetically, have four different pastors preach the same text four Sundays in a row and have a variety of applications and illustrations while still remaining faithful to its original meaning.” - 9 Marks
“among people born in the 1980s, over 40 percent expressed a great deal of confidence in organized religion when they were coming into adulthood…. Now less than 20 percent of these birth cohorts think they can trust organized religion.” - TGC
“Epigraphic analysis of the data revealed a formulaic curse written in a proto-alphabetic script likely dating to Late Bronze Age that predates any previously known Hebrew inscription in Israel by at least 200 years.” - Jerusalem Post
“Despite acknowledging the FBI had sufficient reason to open… a preliminary investigation, the report states that the bureau should not have gone as far as opening a full probe into whether individuals associated with the Trump campaign were coordinating with the Russian government.” - CNN
“Want to know how to cause a church split? The deepest fault lines – sex, money and pride – have been obvious for centuries, said Archbishop Kanishka Raffel of the Anglican Diocese of Sydney, Australia.” - GetReligion
https://www.mbu.edu/blog/events-press-releases/new-president/
The Board of Trustees of Maranatha Baptist University appointed Dr. David Anderson, a 1986 graduate, as the sixth president of the institution on May 11, 2023. He will assume the office on August 1, 2023, in preparation for Maranatha's fifty-sixth academic year.
“Just over two years ago now, I baptized my 79-year-old mother after we had prayed for her for 47 years.” - Chuck Lawless
The case is “Micah’s Way v. City of Santa Ana, which is centered on city officials trying to force the charity to move out of a neighborhood due to their giving food and drinks to the homeless and offering other services.” - CPost
“In 1904, thousands of indigenous people were brought to the St. Louis World’s Fair to be put on public display. Scientists offered them as examples of lower stages of human evolution.” - CToday
“As I’ve said before, the SBC Executive Committee will vigorously defend ourselves from this troubling attempt to recast an accused perpetrator as the victim of an imaginary conspiracy. We look forward to our day in court.” - BPNews
“Those who changed faith traditions are more likely to believe that ‘the Bible is totally accurate in all of the pictures it presents’ (64%) than those who have stayed with the same faith tradition (47%).” - CPost
This essay aims to help ordinary Christians rightly consider the relationship between the church and the state. This is important because Christians receive many contradictory messages about this issue. Some Christian influencers call for believers to “take America back for God.” Others just want good, old-fashioned Christian values to influence society and feel marginalized because Mayberry is gone and isn’t coming back. Still others just want nothing to do with politics—perhaps to the extent that their churches neglect to speak truth to a decadent culture.
Aged baby boomers introduce choruses from the 1990’s as contemporary choruses. Are they right? The term is quite relative. Compared to the hymns of Isaac Watts, for example, they are contemporary. But only relatively so, IMO.
Others use the term as a code word for “rock” or “light rock,” which, at one time, was a taboo word in much of the evangelical world at large (esp. Baptists).
So when you hear the term, how do you interpret it?
Your comments make polls more interesting, so please feel free to opine.
“How can a person who has betrayed trust, lied, broken promises, and deceived even their own loved ones come to share in the blessing of God? Hope begins for these brothers… when God awakens the conscience” - Colin Smith
“Wilson’s Mere Christendom confirms two important ideas… (1) building Christian nations is inherently a postmillennial/paedobaptist project, and (2) forming a robust Christian public theology does not require Christian Nationalism.” - Scott Aniol
“Faulty Assumptions…Assumption #1: I should start with me and my questions….Assumption #2: The Bible is (primarily) a collection of principles….Assumption #3: The goal of reading the Bible is improving my life.” - TGC
“Conservative groups such as Texas Values Action have voiced support for the bill, and the National School Chaplain Association, an arm of the Christian group Mission Generation, testified in support during committee meetings last month.” - RNS
“…my mom said people are more likely to listen to those who don’t talk all the time. Because she didn’t, I have lessons from her I’ll never forget.” - BPNews
Read the series.
Dispensationalism is definitely in decline. I have written two major articles1 probing the causes of that issue and—though I take no delight in that conclusion—it is certainly one that deserves our attention.
The history of dispensationalism’s downturn is well known. But, for those who may not be aware, let me rehearse a few general facts. There was a time, before the so-called Reformed Resurgence,2 when dispensationalism carried the day in evangelicalism on the popular level and, to a large extent, on the academic level.
“The Dunning and Kruger experiment did find a real effect – most people think they are better than average. But according to my team’s work, that is all Dunning and Kruger showed.” - The Conversation
