Last year, while visiting some missionaries in Japan, I was struck by the homogeneity of Japanese culture. We spent a day at Tokyo Disneyland, and I don’t think I saw more than 25 non-Japanese all day long among the thousands of park visitors. This made for some serious cultural insularity, and I couldn’t help wonder …
The other day, I was at the checkout in a Louisville bookstore when I spied a display of refrigerator magnets with more or less humorous themes. Most were pretty snarky, some scatological, and a few proudly blasphemous. The first one that caught my eye featured an angler in a beautiful wilderness setting leaning over to …
Reza Aslan’s best seller, Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth, is a Procrustean Bed. (You remember the Greek mythological figure who sized people to his bed by either stretching them or lopping off limbs.) He’s willing to do a great deal of editorial and rhetorical violence to the Bible and to Jesus …
We have a new granddaughter on the way, and our daughter has asked us to help brainstorm Bible names. This new grandbaby will join sisters Ruth and Lois, both from the Bible, plus cousins named Josiah, Asher, Judah, Susannah, Adriel, and Alethia (Greek for “truth”). As for my wife Sharon and I, we’re named, respectively, …
A Name for the New Baby? Have You Checked the Bible? Read More »
Though it is risky to guess at the purposes of God, one may reasonably ask why He chose certain men, and only four, to write His New Testament Gospels—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Two were not even apostles, and there were some remarkable apostles, such as Andrew and Philip, who wrote no Scripture at all. …
In the opening verses of Matthew 18, Jesus says that there is no spiritual hope for adults unwilling to humble themselves like children before God and His Word. In that connection, here’s a brief account of exemplary childlike faith, in children themselves: On July 10, 1863, the New York Times editorialized that it was obvious …