Posts

Why are Christians so disagreeable?

Image
Why are Christians so disagreeable when they have disagreements? When I have a disagreement at work, we are usually civil and respectful and polite with each another. When I have a disagreement at church, it often turns into an all-out holy war, complete with pillaging, ransacking, and slaughter. Here’s an example. Me : Something needs to change with our worship service. Most people don’t really worship during the service, and most of our songs are not really worship songs. Him : I think our worship is fine! And if you don’t think it’s fine, then there’s something wrong with YOU! Who are you to judge if other people are truly worshiping? Me : No, I don’t mean to judge anyone. I’m just saying that I notice people texting, talking, and looking around during worship. It seems that their focus is not really on the Lord. And our songs are not worship songs. We sing songs about Christian living, heaven, evangelism, and so on, but we don’t sing songs that praise God. Him : Yo
2 comments
Read more

Revival 2023

Image
Visiting Asbury Annette and I drove to Asbury University last Saturday, about 5 hours from our house. The last few miles of the trip were through beautiful countryside and Kentucky’s famous horse farms. As we crested the last hill before the small town of Wilmore, we caught sight of the university chapel with thousands of people in line and on the lawn. We turned and stared at each other, unprepared for what we had just seen. We stayed in town until about 3:00 PM on Sunday. As we were leaving Sunday afternoon, we saw cars lined up for miles on the two-lane road that led to the university. The crowd size had doubled since we had arrived 24 hours earlier. This photo from currentpub.com shows the amazing growth of the revival in just 10 days. How did it start? Wednesday, February 8 began as a normal day at Asbury University in Wilmore, a town of 6,000 people in central Kentucky. The students went to the mandatory chapel service where they sat through an unremarkable, forgettab
4 comments
Read more

The Problem with the Old Testament

Image
  The problem is not really with the Old Testament – the problem is with the church’s understanding of the Old Testament. Here are a couple examples of what I mean. ·          The Bible class was about Israel’s conquest of the land of Canaan. God commanded Israel to wipe out the Canaanites because they were so evil. “Christians sometimes overemphasize God’s love,” the teacher said. “Everyone wants to talk about love, love, love – but we have to remember that he’s a God of judgement too, and he hates his enemies.” ·          The sermon was about Elisha cursing 42 boys so that two bears came out of the woods and mauled them. “We have to respect God’s spokesmen,” the preacher said. “Even though they were only boys, they deserved death because they mocked God’s messenger.” This is the type of faulty reasoning that I see all the time, and it comes from an over-reliance on the Old Testament as a source of knowledge. The Old Testament is the word of God, but it provides us with only
6 comments
Read more