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The Sword of Jesus and the Fifth commandment
Intro Indian culture has a high value for respect for parents. Adult children generally live with their parents until they are married, and even then either make frequent visits or live in a multi generational home. What this leads to is something of a paradox for the Christian ministering in an Indian context. This high…
Make Christianity Hard Again
I grew up in a very interesting strain of Christianity. Now, I don’t know if this was the explicit teaching of my church or just what I felt, but it seemed like the overall message of a Christian’s duty was, “don’t sin, attend church, read your Bible, and tell others about Jesus.” Now, all of…
Why Cosmology Matters
“Actually, we believe that Christianity started at the creation of the world.” I was going back and forth with one of my friends who was giving his account of why he didn’t believe in any religion. He spoke generally about the age of religions. About how Islam was predated by Christianity which was predated by…
From the Courts to the Streets
For my entire life abortion has been legal in all 50 states. Not only has it been legal, but the states have been prohibited from outlawing by a 1973 Supreme Court case called Roe v. Wade. Now, in what is likely, without hyperbole, the biggest move towards justice since the founding of the country, Roe…
Elijah, some bread, and waiting till the morning
One of the strangest stories in the Old Testament is the story of Elijah running from Jezebel in 1 Kings 19. The reason that it strikes me as odd is that it is such a mix of the natural and the supernatural. Let me set the stage. Elijah had just done some of the most…
My Favorite Books of 2021
I know I’m a little bit behind everyone else on my “top 10 books” list, but we just moved to a new city, and I think I’m finally getting back to my old rhythms. These are the top 10 books that I enjoyed in 2021. 10. Evangelism as Exiles-Elliot ClarkClark is painfully biblical, painful because…
Nobody is really a pluralist, and why that’s okay
It is surprising (and oh so refreshing!) to see crossover between our new urban Asian context and where we used to live in the United States. I don’t know yet if the crossover is because our context is becoming more westernized or if it is because the West, in some ways, is becoming more like…
Letters of Recommendation
We don’t like to admit it, but who you know is sometimes as-if not more-important than how good you are at something. We’ve gone through some hiring in our office recently, and a well-connected 3.5 GPA absolutely beats out a 4.0 that nobody knows. It’s hard to overstate the power of a good recommendation. But…
Drilling and Blasting
I don’t know if I can recommend “Center Church” by Timothy Keller enough. I’m not a big “re-reader,” but I’m going through his book again. And I’m so glad I am, the book is full of ways to engage with culture, one of the most helpful being his analogy of drilling and blasting. Keller expresses…
The Untouched Part
I just finished “The Untouched Part” by Eunice-Pauline Olatunji. I’ll be honest, I have some mixed feelings about this book. Though there are some helpful parts, there are also some things I definitely would have done differently. Review The COVID-19 pandemic shook a lot of our categories. A fast-paced, unreflective world forced to stop traveling,…
Job: a poem
Job is a surprisingly encouraging book when we suffer. Not because it makes our suffering any less, but because it kills the lies that make suffering unbearable. Lies that we didn’t think we believed, but can crop up when we see intense suffering, either in our lives or in the lives of others. Lies like,…
Is it complicated or is it difficult?
I have a Bible reading plan, four different Bible apps on my phone, the capability to listen to the Bible on audio, and around 7 paper Bibles. And I didn’t read my Bible the day before I started writing this post. Therefore, it would seem that the absence of the Bible in my life came…
The 70/20/10 rule
Most good resources are taken from someone else (it’s not stealing if you give credit) and this is no exception. I took this from Coram Deo’s Bob Thune (https://bobthune.com/videos/the-role-of-a-gospel-community/) who in turn admitted to taking it from someone else. Look at the well-drawn picture that is the photo for this post. This road represents the…
Should we pray for persecution?
It doesn’t take a long time in the Sermon on the Mount before you realize that what Jesus says makes someone blessed is different from what most people think being blessed is. For instance, if you ask a cashier how she is doing and she responds, “I’m blessed” it is unlikely that you will in…
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Another Small Stone 