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Are You a Church Misfit?
Romain Guy via Compfight
Here’s a lovely reflection from Rachel Held Evans on the experience of finding that your questions are unwelcome in church. Evans is bumping up against this material as she reads Barbara Kingsolver’s Flight Behavior. I suspect this kind of experience is much more common that we’d like to admit. Can you relate?
Related Reading
What is the significance of Jeremiah 26:19?
“Did [Hezekiah] not fear the Lord and entreat the favor of the Lord, and did not the Lord change his mind about the disaster that he had pronounced against [Israel]?” As in 2 Kings 20:1–6 and Isaiah 38:1–5, if the future is exhaustive settled, it seems God could not have been forthright when he told…
How do you respond to Bart Ehrman’s book, “Misquoting Jesus”?
Question: I just read Bart Ehrman’s book Misquoting Jesus and it’s sort of rocked my world. How can we believe the Bible is God’s inerrant Word when we don’t even know what the original Bible said? Answer: I actually went to graduate school with Bart Ehrman (at Princeton). We used to smoke pipes together up…
A Jesus Kind of Church
The church can only be the conduit of God’s love if it stops judging others (See yesterday’s post). This means that it will stop being concerned about its reputation in the eyes of those who practice this religious judgment. The only reputation we need be concerned with is to have the one Jesus had. He…
How do you respond to 2 Timothy 1:9–10?
“…this grace was given to us in Christ Jesus before the ages began, but it has now been revealed through the appearing of our Savior Christ Jesus…” Those who hold that the future is eternally settled and that God knows it as such sometimes argue that God had to foreknow who would believe in order…
How can I feel secure in my salvation?
Question: I constant worry about whether I’m saved or not. Do I lose my salvation every time I sin? How can I feel secure that I’m saved? Answer: It seems to me you’re framing your “salvation” within a legal paradigm rather than a relational paradigm. It’s like God is an angry judge and your a…
What is the significance of 2 Kings 13:3–5?
The Lord judged the Israelites by allowing them to be oppressed by King Hazael of Aram (vs. 3). “But Jehoahaz entreated the Lord, and the Lord heeded him; for he saw the oppression of Israel, how the king of Aram oppressed them. Therefore the Lord gave Israel a savior, so that they escaped from the…