November 2019 – CLIMBING THE WALLS

November 19, 2019November 20, 2019

In Search of a Story

Don’t Go There

A basic fact of human nature is that we are meaning-seeking creatures. Amid the confusion and uncertainty of everyday life, human beings require an overarching story, a narrative, that grounds us in reality and helps us make sense of life as well as death.

In his critically acclaimed book from 2017, The Strange Death of Europe, Douglas Murray, British journalist and author, explains how Europe and, by inference, the rest of the Western world lost touch with its defining story, the Judeo-Christian story, which both birthed the West and gave it meaning.

Now in its disquieting absence is revealed a malaise, an “existential tiredness.”

November 8, 2019November 12, 2019

I Win, You Lose

One of the things I discovered during my years of ordained ministry is that the average person in the pews possesses enormous wisdom. I also discovered that many of my colleagues think the opposite.

Almost without exception, my experience is that if you are open with people and give them the facts, they almost always make the right decision.

So why do so many of my colleagues seem to disagree with this simple premise? Perhaps it’s because so many, flush with the latest speculative theories advanced by their seminary professors, patronizingly assume the average person in the pews lacks the requisite sophistication to judge rightly.

November 2, 2019November 16, 2019

Playing with Fire

I was amazed, though probably shouldn’t have been, upon learning that a candidate for ordination in one of the major historic mainline churches today is required to answer the following question: “What is your understanding of racism and Euro-American privilege”?

What this has to do with the gospel is not immediately apparent. Neither racism nor Euro-American privilege fit into biblical or Christian categories. In fact, as I hope to establish, they’re alien to the gospel. The reason is that they come mostly from secular academia and are intended for purposes incompatible with the Christian witness.

One can see this incompatibility in the implicit rejection of at least two of Judeo-Christian tradition’s most foundational tenets: the belief in heaven and the doctrine of Original Sin.