Believe it or not, my greatest crisis of faith came thirty years ago while I was immersed in discussions and study related to God and the Bible at Southern Seminary in Louisville, KY. One day, as I wandered the nearby campus of Westminster Presbyterian Seminary, a solitary PCUSA school with several attractive stone buildings, I even seriously questioned the existence … Read More
Pursue God’s Perfect Heart, Not Moral Flawlessness
There are certain brands of fundamentalism that encourage men and women to be morally flawless based on a literal and surface reading of Matt. 5:48: “You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” (ESV) As I said last week, I think verses like this—especially in red letters—are one of the reasons passages like Eccl.7:16 are not taken … Read More
Reaching Those Who’ve Been Hurt by the Church, Part 1 of 3
***Friends, this is an article I just prepared for Care Net’s network. I broke it down into three parts for the purposes of this blog. Spirituality wrongly understood or pursued is a major source of human misery and rebellion against God.[1] —Dallas Willard Last year, God gave me the fire to complete a book — and a handbook for discipleship … Read More
Dangers of Growing Up in a Christian Home: Why You Need to Know Them
The… painted perversity of this room had the effect of making him aware, as he had never been aware before, of this room’s opposite. As the desert first teaches men to love water, or as absence reveals affection, there rose up against this background of the sour and the crooked some kind of vision of the sweet and sound. The … Read More
Why I Believe in a Loving Creator
Let the godly sing for joy to the LORD;it is fitting for the pure to praise him…The LORD merely spoke,and the heavens were created.He breathed the word,and all the stars were born.He assigned the sea its boundariesand locked the oceans in vast reservoirs.Let the whole world fear the LORD,and let everyone stand in awe of him.For when he spoke, the world … Read More