What does God want our attitude toward money to be? Well, in Scripture the apostle Paul teaches that “the love of money is the root of all evil” (I Timothy 6:10). That’s important, but it must always be stressed that it is the love of money, not money itself, that is condemned. So there are … [Read more…]
I’ve divided this post into two parts: a list of ten general rules, and then some specific applications. Ten Rules Here are ten rules for interpreting Biblical texts, especially difficult ones: There’s a strong presumption in favor of all Scripture being true (if we can freely ignore any passage in Scripture that we find difficult, … [Read more…]
This post will address a fundamental question: How do you persuade someone that Jesus was divine, was the Son of God? This is important, and I think framing this issue properly is a little more complicated than it first appears. Caveats. Consider: You can persuade someone to believe that God exists without persuading him that … [Read more…]
Here are three published letters to the editor relevant to this blogsite. 1. From the July 18, 2011, Los Angeles Times (link here): Re “Imagine no religion,” Opinion, July 18 The fact that we have a hardwired moral sense can just as easily be viewed as evidence that God exists, as C.S. Lewis said. More … [Read more…]
Introductory Note The idea of this post is to list the Bible verses — or, more accurately, Bible passages — that are the most significant. The notion came to me because I find myself often going back time and again to particular passages, especially when arguing some point or wrestling with hard questions. A few … [Read more…]
You’re in a morally fraught predicament. What would Jesus do? Not a bad question to ask, of course, not at all. And in this post I’ll ask it in a more general rather than in a specific context: What habits did Jesus have in His daily life? Because, if they were His habits, they should … [Read more…]
If you consider a psalm a prayer, then these are the two most-prayed prayers in the Bible. It’s interesting to compare them. Although each is brief and elegantly but tightly constructed, the Psalm is almost twice as long as the Prayer. Each begins with an address to God, unsurprisingly, and each ends appropriately enough with … [Read more…]
It seems to me that this is a particularly important and reassuring passage for us, since it shows that even Jesus could be frightened about the future and unhappy with a course that God the Father has mapped out to follow. *** Here is the description of this event from each of the three Synoptic … [Read more…]
I was drawing up a list today of the most important passages in the Bible, and wondering whether anything from Revelation should be included. My first reaction was, no, because the outcome of the End Times is so unsurprising. Indeed, when you think about it, the outcome of Revelation, while vivid and important, is as … [Read more…]
Praying is talking with God, and there is no one-size-fits-all approach. Jesus of course gave us His template in the Lord’s Prayer, but He did not simply repeat this prayer each time He prayed: He departed from that text in His prayer in Gethsemane, in His prayers on the cross, and so forth (you can … [Read more…]