A Fresh Perspective

The late Ken Chafin, who was a Baptist minister and professor and something of a statesman, tells about a friend in college who use to preach a lot in some of the small country churches not far from campus. Chafin would get a card from his friend saying something like: 35 saved in rival at the Mossy Bottom Baptist Church. Chafin thought that was pretty good since they only had about 25 members. This pricked his curiosity a little bit, so one evening he drove out to hear him preach. It was a Friday night and his friend’s sermon that evening was on the Great White Throne Judgment. His text came out of the book of Revelation. The preacher was in a white suit, white tie, white shirt, white belt, and even white shoes. He thundered from the pulpit that if you didn’t become white as snow through the blood of the lamb you would find yourself literally in one hell of a predicament, a hell of fire and brimstone. Chafin said that he didn’t think he was going to get home that night until the pre...

The last two weeks in my Sunday School class we reflected on Jesus’ death in general and his cry of forsakenness on the cross in particular. No one in my class thought that God had actually forsaken Jesus, but we all concurred that Jesus felt forsaken and was expressing his sense or feeling of God’s absence in echoing the cry of the Psalmist, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” When I asked, “Why do you believe that God did not actually forsake Jesus,” someone said, “Because God raised him up.” And that response, I think, gets to the heart of what the resurrection is about. Actually, you wouldn’t need a resurrection to believe in an afterlife. I used to treat the resurrection of Jesus as if it was the great proof that there is life after death. But that is not really what it is. It may indeed be a sign, a foretaste of what is to come, but we don’t need the resurrection of Jesus to believe in an afterlife. There are non-Christian traditions that believe in immortality. The ...

One of the five principles necessary for Christian belief according to the Conference of Conservative Protestants that met in Niagara Falls in 1896 was the physical, bodily return of Jesus (the other four being biblical inerrancy, the virgin birth, the divinity of Jesus, and substitutionary atonement). These five beliefs have become central to Christian evangelicalism. Many Christians today, even more progressive types, anticipate some kind of divine intervention to close human history as we know it and to begin something that looks very different than life on planet earth looks like now. Many of the early Christians connected the climax of this present age with the revelation of the resurrected Christ from heaven, which would result in the resurrection of all humanity. Paul called this Christ’s “coming” (see 1 Cor. 15:21-24, 1 Thess. 4:12-18). Of course, these early Christians just as confidently believed that this “coming” (Greek, parousia ) would happen soon. For example, P...

Luke interprets Jesus’ parable of the widow and the unjust judge (Luke 18:2-8) as a call to persistent prayer (18:1). But it’s not just any kind of prayer is it? Surely the prayer Luke has in mind is prayer for justice. “Grant me justice,” cries the widow. The reason it is a widow being treated unjustly is because in that culture widows were extremely vulnerable. They could not inherit their husband’s property, there were no social welfare programs in place, and for the most part there were no opportunities for independent employment. This is why some widows turned to prostitution—to survive. This is a story about justice. By justice, I do not mean, “getting what one deserves.” Unfortunately, that’s how some Christians understand it. If justice means getting what one deserves, then none of us should pray for justice; we should pray for grace. But that is not what is meant when the prophets and when Jesus talk about justice. The biblical term “justice” is equivalent to and ...