Psalm 119:166 – Hope
This verse has hope and action in the proper order. Action follows from trust and hope, not the reverse.
Psalm 119:45 – Speaking Before Kings
I will speak of your testimonies before Kingsand will not be ashamed. Do you speak of your faith to other people? For many, this is a question specifically about making religious statements. Can you attempt to “bring someone to Christ?” Can you make a new disciple? What I wonder is whether we can talk about…
Look to Jesus (Hebrews 12:2)
The other day I was just waking up and realizing that I faced a challenging day. I decided to do a little scripture reading before even getting up. I chose to read a language I read only very slowly and with difficulty (Syriac), because that usually gives me more time to meditate. I have a…
A Robust Theodicy?
As I conduct interviews on theodicy with various authors, I’d like to suggest this: We need a theodicy (and in fact a full theology) that is as comfortable in Job as in Deuteronomy. This would be the expression of a faith that isn’t forgotten in good times or repudiated in bad. Here again is the…
Fear and …
Perfect love, we know, casteth out fear [1 John 4:18]. But so do several other things — ignorance, alcohol, passion, presumption, and stupidity. C. S. Lewis, “The World’s Last Night” Lewis took this in another direction, but I like the words to point out that, in certain circumstances fear can be a very good thing,…
Grace and the Book of Hebrews
In my experience, Hebrews has provided a wealth of texts for sermons that call for works and human effort. Pride of place, perhaps, should be held by the Wesleyan doctrine of Christian perfection, for which one of the central texts is Hebrews 6:1. No matter how many times Wesley affirmed Christian perfection as a gift…
Serious about Whose Faith
I was mentioned by Ed Brayton (blogs at Dispatches from the Culture Wars) in a comment to a post on Facebook, and made a couple of comments myself. Here’s the Facebook post: There are two things here that interest me. First is the claim that moderates and liberals don’t take their faith seriously. This is…
Fear, Beliefs, and Questioning
I’ve often said that I think people who become angry when their beliefs questioned are actually less confident of those beliefs, rather than more so. But that’s a pretty broad and inadequate statement, I think. I was discussing this with my wife recently, and we were wondering why neither of us get annoyed with people…
I Believe Some Bizarre Things
The Sunday School class I currently attend uses a random selection process for the questions we’ll discuss. Class members put questions in a container, and we draw a question for each week. Last week the question was: Why am I such a doubting Thomas? As we were discussing how much we doubted, what we doubted,…
On Faith Preceding Works
Some time ago I wrote an essay titled A Fruitful Faith, in which I maintained that there is a pattern of grace before law that is consistent throughout scripture, both Old Testament and New. One can also express this idea as call before response, or, as I’ve been thinking today especially, faith before works. Frequently faith…