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Sorrow Like My Sorrow – Lamentations 1:12
Can we really understand the suffering of another person or they ours?
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What Is Biblical Literacy?
We complain about it, write about it, claim it’s important or even critical, design programs to create it, but what is it? I don’t mean that none of us know what we mean when we say “biblically literate” or “biblically illiterate,” but do we all mean the same thing? I don’t think we do, and…
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Fences: Mending or Rending
The following is a sermon I presented at the Unitarian-Universalist Church of Pensacola on September 11,2005 and originally posted here on September 13, 2005. I’m reposting it because when I went to look for it, I found that the original post had somehow been truncated, and also because there is a one word at a…
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Experiencing the (Baptism of the) Holy Spirit
This is a topic where I tend to make just about everyone uncomfortable. Long time readers may recall a previous discussion of speaking in tongues, and my own experience of it. Those who expect me to be intellectually oriented and rational are uncomfortable with mystical experiences, and many who are comfortable with the mystical experiences…
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New Monday Night Bible Study
My wife Jody and I will be leading a Monday night Bible study via Google Hangouts. Everyone is invited. Jody already posted about it, and her post includes the initial question and the scriptures for tonight. We thought about many approaches to choosing our texts, and we finally settled on using the current readings from…
More Editing Work – a Link
My wife Jody also edits. She’s posted something from an upcoming release: From My Editing Desk: The Unbroken Road by Katy Isaacs. Enjoy!
From My Editing Work: Personal Salvation vs the Social Gospel
From Seven Marks of a New Testament Church by David Alan Black, p. 6: In the fourth place, evangelism in the New Testament was always characterized by genuine concern for the social needs of the lost. When I was in seminary, a good deal of distrust existed between those who emphasized personal salvation in evangelism…
The Problem with Church Debates
It hit me on Sunday as I was listening to a fine sermon for Pentecost at my home church, First United Methodist Church of Pensacola. Rev. Bob Sweet was enumerating a number of things the Holy Spirit might do for us, changes we should all make. A number of his points elicited laughter, because we…
What Am I Doing?
What’s that picture? I’m glad you asked. That’s my computer with layout work for the forthcoming Spanish translation of Dave Black’s Greek grammar. It’s an interesting bit of work. I was thinking yesterday that it doesn’t get much tougher than this, but then I recall working in graduate school on translating Akkadian into English using…
In the Confessions of Category
We didn’t plan it this way, but my friend and Energion author Dave Black now has a book with a subtitle that begins with “Confessions of …” So what do I mean “not planned” and why is this significant? Well, I wrote a book several years ago, and the subtitle began with “Confessions of …”…
Meditations on According to John
Anyone who has made a serious effort to teach from the Gospel of John has likely experienced the difficulty of giving people a clear picture of the connections between various parts of the book, not to mention the frequent allusions to passages in the Hebrew scriptures. One can easily run out of fingers to “hold…
In the UMC Debate, Keep This in Mind
… from Joel Watts on Maxie Dunnam.
In Which I Question My #UMC Membership Vows
There’s been a great deal of talk about schism in the United Methodist Church (#UMC) over the last couple of days. It hasn’t disturbed me in the way it has disturbed many of my friends, but it has made me ask this question: Why? No, not why might we have schism. Why don’t I care…
A Muslim Comment on the Mariam Yahya Ibrahim Ishag Case
From time to time I hear the question regarding some act of terrorism, or by some act of a Muslim government: Where is the Muslim outrage? I first want to note that I find measuring online outrage to be a somewhat hopeless task. I am outraged at many things that I never manage to mention…
From My Editing Work: Greater Works
From my reading in Meditations on According to John (forthcoming next week) by Herold Weiss, pp. 91, 92: … Jesus’ work was consummated when he was lifted up, on the third day, on the cross. It is, therefore, somewhat disconcerting to read the promise Jesus makes to those who believe in him: “He who believes…
To a Generation yet to Be Born
This is my mother, who will be 96 at the end of May. She’s looking over a book titled Seeing the Psalter. She spent a good hour with it, commenting on methodology and various translations. How can she do this? Well, after years as a missionary nurse, she decided to take Hebrew and completed two…
Remembering Becky Lynn Black
As I’m sitting here on the porch at Dave Black’s place ther is one disappointment. I didnt come here earlier so that I could have met Becky Lynn. I feel like I know her from correspondence and from her book. She had an enormous impact on so many lives over the years. Might I commend…
Pericope Adulterae Conference
I have already been asked for my reaction a couple of times, and this conference was a great experience, so I definitely think it is worthwhile to reflect on it here a bit. For pictures, see posts by Dave Black and Thomas Hudgins. First why did I attend the conference? This was recreation for me….
At Bethel Hill Baptist Church
I enjoyed sharing my testimony and Psalm 78:1-7, which is the theme text for my monistry, at Bethel Hill Baptist Church today. I want to thank Brother Jason Evans for allowing me some time in the service there. I was reminded of the importance of the body of Christ and the fellowship that we experience…
The 5-Minute-a-Day Bible Reading Plan vs. My Dad’s Bible
Some time ago I was invited to answer questions from a group of wonderful young people. They were invited to ask me any question they wanted. On about the third question, as they were discussing the background between them, I had my finger in a place in my Bible where I was going to start…
On Ecclesiastes and Disagreeing with Authors
No, not the authors of the biblical text, though that’s an interesting topic. I’m talking about disagreeing with a study guide author, in this case a study guide author I chose both to publish and then to use in my Sunday School class. One class member was surprised—not shocked, annoyed, or disturbed, but just surprised—that…
The Authority of the Longer Ending of Mark
Here’s an interesting post on the longer ending of Mark and snake handling. (HT: Dave Black Online, Why Four Gospels?) There’s obviously a serious question about hermeneutics lurking in the discussion, but what I would like to see discussed is just what text of Mark is authoritative. We tend to assume that what we want…
Trajectories, Hermeneutics, Sexual Ethics, and Ecclesiology
Reading Chris Seitz on the Biblical Crisis in the Homosexuality Debates (by Alastair Roberts) reminded me of three things I already believed: It is very dangerous to try to develop hermeneutics while wrapped up in a debate on a particular topic. The best test of one’s hermeneutics is to change the subject. Does it still…
Link: Roger Olson – The Most Pernicious Heresy in American Christianity
This is very much worth reading.
Ecclesiastes Lesson 1
I thought I’d write just a few reflections on our class today. In general the class was less interested in authorship than either I or the author of the study guide were. We had folks using the Wesley study Bible and the CEB Study Bible, both of which brush past the authorship issue. While I…
Ecclesiastes and Inspiration
How does the book of Ecclesiastes impact your view of inspiration? I’ll be asking folks to think about this in my Sunday School class at First UMC of Pensacola as we study Ecclesiastes. What do you think?
Starting Ecclesiastes in Sunday School
While I was off teaching Revelation elsewhere, my Sunday School class at First United Methodist Church of Pensacola studied from Harvey Brown’s new book Forgiveness: Finding Freedom from Your Past. Harvey’s book is just 40 pages (it’s in our Topical Line Drives series, and that’s the limit), and we discovered just how many questions can…
The Biggest Divide in Christianity
… according to me, of course! I’m sitting here doing page layout on My Life Story by Becky Lynn Black. As I was doing that, I read small portions. I don’t read much while I’m doing page layout. What the text says is less important than how it will look, so my brain is in…