A Fresh Perspective

How would you chart the movement and direction of your spiritual life? How would you describe your spiritual maturity or immaturity? The criteria that so many Western Christians use for spiritual measurement and evaluation, I believe, are non-issues with God. Many Christians in the West measure their level of spiritual maturity by looking at two components: All the religious, church-related activities they are engaged in, or the beliefs they have adopted. Neither component concerns God all that much. Beliefs are important to the extent that they determine attitudes and lifestyle. Spiritually healthy beliefs are important for a healthy, transformative spirituality, but in- and-of themselves beliefs are not the measurement of spirituality. Religious activities can be a mixed bag. They can be instrumental and vital in nurturing spiritual growth, or they can be stifling and spiritually diminishing. The prophets railed against the people of God and their religious leaders when they be...

Three times in the book of Acts, Paul’s experience of his encounter with the living Christ is told. In Acts 9, Luke reports the story. In Acts 22, Luke has Paul recount his experience to an unruly temple crowd. And in Acts 26, Paul retells his experience to Festus and King Agrippa. Paul’s own brief account of his encounter with Christ is found in Galatians 1:13–17. Paul explains this experience as a revelation— “God was pleased . . . to reveal his Son to me”—and as a calling through grace “to proclaim Christ among the Gentiles.” Paul says that after this encounter he did not “confer with any human being,” nor did he go up to Jerusalem to get the endorsement of the Twelve (“those who were already apostles before me”), but went, at once, to Arabia, and then afterward to Damascus where he began proclaiming that Jesus was the Messiah. We don’t know how long he stayed in solitude in Arabia, where he was apparently sorting things out. Paul underwent a major transformation as a result of ...

In a recent interview by Kim Lawton of PBS Religion and Ethics , author and columnist Lisa Miller, Pastor Rob Bell, author of Love Wins , and Mary Vanden Berg, Assistant Professor of Christian Theology at Calvin Theological Seminary, raise some important issues about where Rob Bell stands in relation to evangelical Christianity. Miller notes that what upset people most about Rob Bell was that he calls himself a conservative evangelical Christian. If he called himself an Episcopalian, she observes, nobody would have batted an eye. Miller, of course, is right. This is what sent Bell’s book, Love Wins , ringing throughout the land (pun intended). As Miller comments, Bell’s position on heaven, hell, and the possible salvation of every person, “is a radical upheaval of that entire worldview.” This is why popular conservative pastor, John Piper, tweeted, “So long Bell,” when he first heard of Bell’s position (even before he read the book). He was talking about Bell’s departure from t...

It takes spiritual eyes to read the Bible in a healthy, transformative way. The Bible can be (and has been) employed as an instrument of oppression and evil, as well as an instrument of change and transformation. All Christians who debate public and faith issues among each other or in a public forum use Scripture to support their arguments. Whether the issues relate to sexual orientation, women pastors or deacons, the role of government, the right to wage war, the role of the military, divorce, the nature of Jesus, or the nature of judgment and salvation, Scripture is quoted and interpreted by all Christians engaged in the debate. The critical question concerns how we use Scripture, how we interpret the Bible, what framework and guiding principles we use to make sense of Scripture and apply it to our lives and communities. Some years ago, I, along with three other pastors, tried to change the policy regarding women’s participation in an Eastern Kentucky Baptist Association of the Sou...