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Hobby Lobby and Shrill Responses
The Supreme Court ruled yesterday that Hobby Lobby and other “Christian owned” for-profit businesses did not have to pay for certain kinds of contraception that violated the owners basic religious belief that those were “potential abortifacients due to the way they can prevent implantation of a fertilized egg in a mother’s womb.” There are shrill responses. We’re now headed back…
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The need to teach THINKING
We are a culture given to extremes. Rather than living in the balances of feasting and fasting, we go to the extremes of obesity and anorexia. That is not just concerning food. And we highlight the extremes in our culture, wildly cheering one side or wildly despairing over the other extreme. We don’t like the center. We need a discernment…
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The small things we do
If we could possibly move away from doing things that we only think are good enough to post on Facebook, think of all the things we actually DO that bless people in the name of the Kingdom. When you think about all of us as believers simply living out the Kingdom in some small way… it is a huge payoff.…
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The need of the Church
The need of the Church is not some cleansing to make sure we have some very strict doctrinal stance memorized perfectly. Doctrine is important. Teaching is vital. Memorizing something to sound absolutely correct and then demanding that precision accuracy of everyone else is not healthy. The need of the Church is not beating our one issue social concern drums. Either…
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The call really is to live differently
I am working my way through Leviticus… intentionally… Leviticus 18-20 and 1 Peter 1 offer similar exhortations: Where you are headed and how you succeed depends on the relationship you have with God. Live differently. You do NOT have to live like the people in that land. What 1 Peter reminds us in a very sober way is that although we haven’t…
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Parenting and discsipleship
The internet has been around the entirety of raising three boys in our family, but I can’t imagine raising young kids in today’s environment. It’s entirely possible, of course! But the challenges! It is incredibly difficult to “train up a child” as a family, and then add in all the other sources of input flying at a kid every day.…
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Too much of Egypt
You must have no other gods before me. (Ex. 20:3) The call of God to Israel was to not only be free of the outward slavery of Egypt, but to have their hearts set free as well. 400 plus years of slavery didn’t just effect their physical and mental status. It enslaved their hearts as well. The plagues on Egypt…
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God changing the world — through us
When God wants to change the world, he doesn’t send in the tanks. He sends in the meek, the mourners, those who are hungry and thirsty for God’s justice, the peacemakers, and so on… It is because of this that the world has been changed by people like William Wilberforce, campaigning tirelessly to abolish slavery, by Desmond Tutu, working and…
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In this world we are like Jesus
This is how love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment: In this world we are like Jesus. (I Jn. 4:17) I know I could sure do a better job of THAT! We need to rise to this challenge as the body of Christ. Now, more than ever. There is nothing to fear in…
Category: Culture
