A Fresh Perspective

When I was a kid I loved to fish. Then life happened. I became preoccupied with many other things. By becoming consumed in church work I thought I was doing God’s work and didn’t have time for such trivial matters like fishing. Last year I came to a point where my passion for things “religious” had fizzled and I was all dried up. Then a church member took me bass fishing and I fell in love with a first love all over again. It has given me new life. The night before I’m headed to the lake I’m like a little kid on Christmas Eve. I am doing something I love to do just for the love of doing it. I have never been more alive. When I’m making the hour and fifteen minute drive to the beautiful lake where I kayak fish for largemouth bass, I am thanking God much of the way for simply having the opportunity to do something I truly love to do. I believe it is making me a better person. I recently posted this on  my Facebook  page: I am KISSING PARTISAN POLITICAL POSTS GOODBYE. ...

Have you read any of the books by Robert Fulghum? If you haven’t you should. Some of his stories are hilarious, but he also makes one think. In his first book, All I Really Needed to Know I learned in Kindergarten, he reflects on an experience at the San Diego Zoo. A little girl was standing beside him, both of them were looking at the giraffe. She asked her mommy, “What’s it for?” Mommy didn’t know. Does a giraffe know what’s its for? Fulghum writes,  “Besides the giraffe, I saw a wombat, a duck-billed platypus, and an orangutan. Unreal. The orangutan looked like my uncle Woody. Uncle Woody is pretty unreal too. He belongs in a zoo. That’s what his wife says. And that makes me wonder what it would be like if samples of people were also in zoos. I was thinking about that last notion while watching the lions. A gentleman lion and six lady lions. Looks like a real nice life being in a zoo. The lions are so prolific that the zoo had to place IUDs in each of the lionesses. S...

How do you imagine the Spirit? The creeds speak of God in three persons, and the Spirit is often referenced as such. Some scholars note that the creeds meant something different than what we mean when we use the word “person.” Perhaps, but it was a terrible choice. The reason it’s not helpful to identify God or Spirit as a person is because it’s too reductionistic — too narrow and confining. God is so much more. A human person is a unique combination of body and soul, flesh and spirit, material substance and immaterial reality, brain and mind/consciousness that is confined to a particular point in time and space. The divine Spirit is not. Identifying the Spirit as a person is extremely limiting. On the other hand, it gets no better by thinking of the Spirit like the force in Star Wars, which can be manipulated for good or evil, a kind of non-living, non-personal power that is a part of everything. God is a part of everything, but God relates to us personally. So thinking of the Sp...

As many of you know, my first two degrees were from conservative, evangelical institutions. In those days I was immersed in evangelical theology and very much committed to evangelizing. The two approaches I was trained to use were called “The Roman Road” and “The Four Spiritual Laws.” The Roman Road is a way of explaining the evangelical version of salvation using verses from Paul’s letter to the Romans. The first verse referenced is Romans 3:23: “all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.” The second verse says: “The wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom. 6:23). So the presentation begins with sin and death. The Four Spiritual Laws does a little better. The first law says: “God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life.” That is good news, but it is followed by the terrible theology of the second law: “Humanity is tainted by sin and is therefore separated from God. As a result, we cannot know God’s wonderful...

The reason biblical inerrancy simply makes no sense is this:  It’s simply not true to human and universal reality. Conservative Christians generally believe in a literal creation and fall, and because of the fall we are all sinners. Progressive Christians generally believe in some form of theistic evolution — that human beings and all forms of life have evolved, but God has been and continues to be engaged in the process in some way. Both camps offer myriads of variations and explanations to go with these two basic positions, but no one denies that human beings are flawed. We do not, of course, agree on how we became flawed, but we all readily admit that all life is flawed. Conservatives emphasize original sin; progressives emphasize original blessing (which, by the way, is reason enough to compel anyone to be a progressive). But either way human beings are imperfect and flawed. The earthly creation is flawed. The universe is flawed. Jesus himself never claimed to be flawless....

No Christian conversion is exactly alike; each one is unique. This is certainly true of Saul’s conversion depicted by Luke in Acts 9. There are, however, some common elements. Read post at Baptist News Global

A good number of evangelical Christians self-identify as Bible believers. It’s a peculiar way for a Christian to self-identify when you think about it. A Christian is someone who has some kind of relationship to Christ. After all Christ is part of the word  Christian . And yet for a good number of evangelical Christians Bible believer is the term of choice. It’s not accurate though, because no self-identified Bible believer actually believes the whole Bible — at least not in the way they claim to. Read post at Baptist News Global .