As iron sharpens iron,
one person sharpens another. (Proverbs 27:17)
“Assertions are often mistaken for arguments….An argument is required to back an assertion. By asking, ‘How do you know that’s true?’ the conversation moves beyond dueling assertions to why an assertion should be taken seriously.” - Breakpoint
“Reasons are the explanation for why you started holding a position or taking an action…. Rationalizations are facts, arguments, principles, etc., that you offer to justify a conclusion you have already reached.” - DBTS Blog
“We’ve come a long way since Mark Noll lamented the scandal of the evangelical mind in 1994. Or have we? Perhaps we have to go back to the 19th century before we can make progress in the 21st.” - Acton
Read the series.
Believe it or not, one year I played football. American football. I was an offensive lineman.
Pop Warner League. Seventh grade. Weight limit was 110 pounds at the top, 75 at the bottom. I was 2 pounds too light, but they let me play anyway.
We called ourselves the Patriots. (We were in a Boston suburb.) We lost every game but one.
“Skepticism is defined as having ‘great doubt’ regarding the truthfulness or trustworthiness of a claim….Cynicism, on the other hand, describes situations where we’re ‘contemptuously distrustful’ of someone’s action or motives.” - Daily Citizen
In preaching, teaching and writing, our good intentions are often defeated by an avoidable poor choice of words. Sometimes these inapt wordings gain popularity among Christians and become proverbial. Without thinking, we repeat them for the amens.
One example is the popular habit of speaking of duty and love as though they’re two competing and incompatible dynamics in the Christian life.
“our ignorance shouldn’t make us feel threatened. We can rest in the fact that God understands everything and marvel at his glory while saying, ‘I don’t know.’” - TGC
Written in 2018; read the series.
When Adam sinned, God confronted him. And in a really remarkable display of chutzpah (was the first language Yiddish?), Adam blamed his wife. And then, in the same breath, he blamed God himself: “the woman, whom YOU gave to me … “ (Gen 3.12).
Read the series.
On July 19th, 2018, Michael Drejka confronted a woman in a convenience-store parking lot because her car was parked in a handicapped space. The woman’s boyfriend, Markeis McGlockton, came out of the store, saw Drejka in a hostile confrontation with his girlfriend, and pushed him to the ground. Drejka drew a concealed weapon and shot McGlockton in the chest, killing him.
Discussion