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Voting in 2024 (Pt. 2)

This article is the second installment. Here is the first. Recap: Living in a democracy during an election means that all of us play some part in election process—even if we vote third party—all of us cast a vote, which means all of us must be prepared to make compromises. How do we know which compromises to make? We must heed our consciences, even as we seek to shape our conscience with God’s…

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Voting in 2024

Casting Votes You may hate that we have a two-party system in America. You may despise the two candidates—most Americans do. But the reality is that come November, either the Republican candidate (Trump) or the Democratic candidate (Harris) will be made president. George Washington is the only president who became (and remained) president with no party affiliation. Third-party candidates, apart…

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What's Your Problem?

Sometimes, when we read the Bible or study theology, we are left confused. I’ve found that being able to categorize the specific type of problem helps bring some clarity on the best way to approach it, and to triage its level of importance. Exegetical Problems Think of a part of the Bible that is hard to understand. Let’s take Paul’s comment in 1 Corinthians 11:10, “That is why a wife ought to…

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You Aren't Your Feelings

In Jerry Sittser’s painful memoir, A Grace Disguised, he recounts how suffering can grow your soul. And his words carry a certain heft because he writes from overwhelming firsthand experience. A drunk-driver killed his wife, his mother, and his four-year-old daughter in one tragic accident. The book is an expansive meditation on his own grief, and how he persevered in his own faith despite it…

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12 Brief Thoughts on Church Buildings

The church is not a building but a people—but the church is a people who must gather. Thus, for a church to exist, it must have a location to gather in. And since meeting outdoors limits the gathering (weather, sound, distractions, etc.), this usually means some kind of building. More pragmatically, as many young church plants can testify, often the wider community won’t take you very seriously…

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Are You a Victim or Villain?

When I lived in Kentucky, our next door neighbor was a woman in her eighties who had raised her children, raised her grandchildren, and was now in the process of raising her great-grandchildren, two scrappy boys; eight and ten-years-old. Their faces were often covered with Cheetos dust; her’s were lined with decades of care and woes. The rope of her family had frayed through the successive…

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Holy Hatred

For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven…a time to love, and a time to hate. – Ecclesiastes 3:1, 8 When I sat down to speak with a young, confused teenage girl about following Christ, she opened up a veritable fountain of questions, statements, and beliefs that all veered hither and thither. Some people, while speaking with a pastor about spiritual things, are…

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An Unusual Response to the Problem of Evil

Again I saw all the oppressions that are done under the sun. And behold, the tears of the oppressed, and they had no one to comfort them! On the side of their oppressors there was power, and there was no one to comfort them. And I thought the dead who are already dead more fortunate than the living who are still alive. But better than both is he who has not yet been and has not seen the evil…

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Leo Tolstoy: A Modern Ecclesiastes

A traveller walking through the desert suddenly finds himself encountering a raging beast. In a panic, the traveller leaps into a nearby dried-up well to hide. He hangs onto a small bush that grows out of the crevice till the coast is clear. He is safe, for now. But, to his horror, the man hears a snort and the snapping of jaws coming from below him. A dragon sits at the bottom of this well,…

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Self-Destruction (1 Cor 10:1-14)

Sometimes experience is the best teacher. How many times did our parents tell us, “If you do X life will be so hard for you.” And yet, when X presents itself, our parents’ words no longer hold any weight. So, good parents–when your child is young—discipline them with consequences to teach them, to give them a little taste of what the pain of disobedience so they learn early on and are spared from…

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Can Christians Commit Suicide?

Note: This article is not intended to provide the kind of counsel needed for those contemplating suicide. This is intended to consider the issue theologically and biblically. If you or someone you love is contemplating suicide, please seek out a trusted friend, counselor, or pastor to speak to. When Rome was sacked by the Goths in 410 AD, it left many Christians wondering: Where is God? The…

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A Servant to All (1 Cor 9:19-27)

In Angela Duckworth’s book, Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance, the professor of psychology and MacArthur Fellow argues that hard work and doggedness, in contrast with raw talent, plays a vastly more important role in being successful in life. We tend to assume that successful people are born with innate abilities that average people lack—which is sometimes true. But less true than we…

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A Model of Maturity (1 Cor 9:1-23)

True maturity is revealed in the presence of immaturity. If dad sees his child beginning to throw a temper tantrum because she is losing the board game, he condescends to her level, explains how the board game works, reminds her of what good sportsmanship looks like, and encourages her. He probably will hold himself back from scoring all the points he could score, lest he discourage her too much.…

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Love Builds Up (1 Cor 8:1-13)

1 Now concerning food offered to idols: we know that “all of us possess knowledge.” This “knowledge” puffs up, but love builds up. 2 If anyone imagines that he knows something, he does not yet know as he ought to know. 3 But if anyone loves God, he is known by God. 4 Therefore, as to the eating of food offered to idols, we know that “an idol has no real existence,” and that “there is no God but…

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Lonely, Angry Politics

David Brooks’ most recent book, How to Know a Person, is a kind of manual for how to connect with others. The book feels so needed because we live in a time of disconnect, distrust, and ever-increasing loneliness. And there are real consequences to this in our society, particularly in how it manifests itself in our politics. After sharing reams of statistics on America’s spiraling epidemic of…

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A Tale of Two Worlds

In Carl Trueman’s book, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, he interacts heavily with the philosopher Charles Taylor’s concept of mimesis and poiesis. Poiesis comes from the Greek word for “creation” and has to do with the emergence or formation of something that did not previously exist. Mimesis, on the other hand, comes from the Greek word for “imitation” and has to do with corresponding…

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The Purpose of Education

I recently spoke at a fundraiser for a classical Christian school, Coram Deo Academy. Here is what I said: Here we are at an auction to raise money for a school. You were invited here and are being asked to purchase things at a price higher than what you would normally pay—you were not invited here to be a bargain shopper, but to be excellent in generosity. But money is hard earned, and there…