Reflections on the loving kindness of the Triune God
I was asked to speak about encouragement. Given the topic I guessed that at least some of the retreat participants already knew about its negative alternatives, of discouragement and its lurking big brother, depression. The assignment turned out to be more challenging than I expected. I first considered what the option of simple volition might …
Read More Gaining CourageBritish Professor Colin Gunton caught my attention when he said, “I prefer not to speak of God’s attributes but of his perfections.” He pressed the point by noting that the language of attribution centers on the perceiver rather than on the one perceived. So any attributes suggest our human capacity to assign labels to God …
Read More God’s AttributesAs I travel with Barnabas International I need to be rescued from time to time by guest contributors. Let me introduce Steve Mitchell with this posting: he’s a close friend and gifted writer. The subject this week is, to my mind, the central question of faith and ethics. Steve’s reflections are very strong and important. …
Read More Competing LovesGod is one and only one. He is the only true God, and not one among many. He created the world and he rules it as his own. This is what I believe and affirm along with many others. But I know not all will agree with us. Why not? Because the world of religion …
Read More God’s HeartPicture a man coming home a day early from a trip, pleased and ready to surprise his dearly loved wife. As he nears his home in the early evening he sees an SUV parked across the street. It belongs to a man in their church home community. Puzzled, the husband also notices that the living …
Read More A proper and powerful jealousyHelmut Thielicke (1908-86), a German pastor and educator who remained faithful even under Hitler’s regime in WWII, wrote that the real competition in theology is not between modernists (or “liberals”) and conservatives but consists in a more basic—and unnoticed—conflict between Cartesians and non-Cartesians. As I’ll share below, I agree with him, but first let me …
Read More A Corollary to Thielicke’s AxiomChildren grow. Their bodies get bigger, stronger, faster, and more coordinated in a steady march to physical maturity. Appetites are satisfied by food and applied through exercise. But growth is never so certain in our inner makeup. Educators, for instance, have identified stages of cognitive growth: how we grow in our thinking skills. They point to …
Read More GrowthToday I preached a sermon on hell. A friend and pastor, who was interrupted in a sermon series on heaven by a surgery, had scheduled the sermon for today to address hell as the obverse of heaven. As I agreed to cover for him it was a chance to visit an important but rarely visited …
Read More HellIs it proper to treat God as our heavenly Genie-in-a-bottle? As in, “Lord, I ask you to . . . .” Or, “Please, dear God, we need you to . . . .” Always asking, always seeking, always knocking. We all do it. When we pray we commonly ask for benefits or we tell God …
Read More “I am not a commodity”The Bible presents readers with some sharp oppositions. One instance, in James, pits the wisdom from below against the wisdom from above. Another is the truth of God’s word set against the serpent’s ultimate lie in Eden. Let me take up yet another for today’s reflection: the opposition of the love of power versus the …
Read More Two Loves