Growing In Grace

In preparation for preaching through the Torah, I am reading through Genesis and also using this as an opportunity to practice my Hebrew reading skills. I begin by maladroitly working my way through part of a chapter in Hebrew and then I switch over to English when I see that I am running out of time. The reason I mention this reading routine is that some of the most fascinating things I find in the text come from being so poor at reading the original languages. When you are forced to read a text at the same pace a drunken sloth climbs up to bed you tend to see knots on the tree you had previously passed by with little or no interest. The passage for this morning was Genesis 20. This story comes after the debacle with Lot leaving Sodom and Gomorrah and the unspeakable foolishness of Lot's daughters in Genesis 19 (no doubt that horrific tale holds numerous applications for the necessity of catechizing our children in hopes that they will trust the Lord rather than their own str...

I recently finished reading Dr. Jordan Peterson's 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos . Peterson is an incredibly brilliant man, I learned a great deal and I highly recommend the book for a discerning reader. However, I specify a discerning reader because Peterson has so carefully crafted his ideas that he will be quite convincing to many who have not been trained to think through these sorts of issues. Sadly, those who choose to follow his prescribed antidote for chaos will be set off on a road paved with good intentions, but one which is certainly bound for Hell. While I much prefer reading books my current schedule would not have allowed me to work this book in for a while so I opted for the audio book. Thankfully, Peterson was the reader because there were a number of points in the book where he became audibly emotional even to the point of swallowing tears. Hearing such a strong response regarding the suicide of an old friend or about the suffering his daughter experienc...

While I am no film critic, in my opinion, the 2016 film Arrival was brilliant. The story line was fascinating, it was nominated for an Academy Award for Cinematography, and it won the Award for Best Sound Editing. If you have not seen the movie yet you need to stop reading this and go watch the movie, because there will be spoilers! This past weekend at church I was teaching the first part of an apologetics class on the Problem of Evil. The aim of the first class was to demonstrate how difficult the Problem of Evil is especially when we consider the doctrine of God's providence. (Here are two posts which outline the challenges regarding providence: Part 1 and Part 2 ). In the next class we will look to interact with some of the defenses which Christians have put forward for handling the Problem of Evil. Perhaps the most common defense put forward is that of the Free-Will Defense. C. S. Lewis argued for this approach by stating that if someone is free to be good then they ar...

Many years have passed since the infamous  Screwtape Letters. After Wormwood was able to calm his uncle and avoid being devoured, he slowly advanced up the ranks. Eventually he moved into a different role where he organized mass attacks on Christianity as a whole. In his farewell memo he seeks to pass on the particulars of his most successful strike.  As I am quickly approaching retirement it is my aim to document what is perhaps the most effective campaign I was able to employ against the Enemy's book. Of course there have been many great attacks on the Enemy's book over the years. Anything we can do to weaken their perverse love for that evil text will vastly improve our efforts.  I am reminded of the many we led astray by focusing our attacks on convincing certain "scholars" to deny the reliability of the Enemy's book. We bolstered the platform of men like Bart Ehrman which enabled us to turn many away from even reading the book. Many children who grew ...

On my drive home today while at a stoplight I noticed a bumpersticker on the car in front of me which read: "Just say NO to Negativity."  It made me wonder, when the phrase was first coined did the originator crack a wry smile? Were they able to think past the end of their nose so as to see the irony? Perhaps they were having a bit of fun with those who would glom on to the phrase without thinking it through? I wonder if the driver understood that they were advertising the denial of negativity with the use of a capitalized negation? There are, of course, only two possibilities: either they fully understood the word play and employed it with ironic intentionality, or, perhaps more likely, they merely loved the idea of promoting positivity and so their use of a negative for negating negativity went unrecognized. If the phrase was used in ignorance we could join in with the cry, "Precision of language," a repeated phrase from the great young adults dystopian nov...

In the first installment we considered how the Bible portrays God's providence as governing all his creatures and their actions, which includes both "the Good and the Bad." We saw how both Naomi and Job declare God's providential control even over evil events which they experienced. And we started to ask the question, how do those texts fit with the many declarations of God's holiness and his inability to be tempted by or to tempt anyone to evil.  (See previous post here ) The Ugly Theologians have wrestled with these questions for years and the best explanation, in my opinion, is known as the Two Wills of God. At first glance the idea that God has two wills seems like theologians are accusing God of being bi-polar or something, but let's take a closer look at why this language has been used. Clearly it is God's will that people should not commit murder. This is, after all, one of the 10 Commandments - "You shall not murder" (Ex 20:13). Th...

Recently we preached through Ruth and my love for the literary masterpieces of the Old Testament has been rekindled. Ruth is a book loaded with puns, wordplay, and double entendre which are all woven together to tell a wonderful story. For this post I want to focus on one of the central theological themes woven through Ruth - the doctrine of Providence. The Good  The Westminster Shorter Catechism says, “God’s works of providence are, his most holy, wise, and powerful preserving and governing all his creatures, and all their actions.” This teaching is found in many places throughout the Bible but Proverbs provides some punchy examples: Proverbs 16:1 “The plans of the heart belong to man, but the answer of the tongue is from the Lord.” Proverbs 21:1 “The king’s heart is a stream of water in the hand of the Lord; he turns it wherever he will.  Proverbs 16:33  “The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the Lord.” In all three examples ...