Lincoln, Luther, and King

God is calling every one of us out of darkness and into his wonderful light.  We understand that Jesus has commanded us not to blithely blend into this world's darkness, but to be different so we can shine a li ght into the darkness. It's easier said than done. We need to be reminded of our calling often, because it's a lifetime endeavor, and we all wrestle with what it really means to get out of darkness. The Apostle Peter reminds us: "...you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who  called you out of darkness into his wonderful light ." (1 Peter 2:9) Should we as Christ-followers celebrate Halloween? The question bears asking. Let me start by saying my purpose here is not to call anyone out on the carpet, or to judge your Halloween practices. The purpose of this examination is to ask ourselves the question of whether the celebration of Halloween is truly innocent fun? I don...

The world’s most misapplied and ripped-out-of-context snippet of scripture may very well be Jeremiah 29: 11. Believers love to quote this verse as if it applied unequivocally to their lives without condition or qualification. The verse famously says,  “For I know the plans  I have for you,” declares the  Lord , “plans to prosper  you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” (Jeremiah 29:11)   One should understand from the very first word, “for” that this is not a stand-alone statement! But how many people who quote this verse even know what went before? How many know who God was giving his promise to? Or what it truly implies, given its context?  Funny. How come believers never quote Jeremiah 18:11, indiscriminately assuming that it applies to them too? “This is what the Lord says: Look! I am preparing a disaster for you and devising a plan against you.” (Jeremiah 18:11) It appears that believers assume they will be the rec...

Every radiometric dating method assumes (and therefore asserts) that God did not create the material being dated. Very few people ever ask the cross-examining question, “If this material was created supernaturally by God in the beginning, what would its radiometric ratios be?” Truth, is, that question is just as unanswerable as the question, “How old did Adam appear to be in the first moments after his creation?”

One of the things I regret seeing in the Christian tradition is the dumbing down of children’s/youth groups, reducing them to mere entertainment instead of focusing on making disciples of Christ. Though we can certainly use an entertaining approach at times, we have turned it into a mandatory approach that supplants all else.  If we were to superimpose such an approach on any of the scenarios described in the Bible, they would seem ludicrous. Can you imagine Jesus looking up at Zacchaeus in the tree and belting out a stand-up one liner about short people to make everyone laugh? Or Paul and Silas chained up in jail with their whipped backs bleeding and singing “Jesus is the rock and he rolls my blues away, bop-shoo-bop-shoo-bop, wow”?   I remember many times in junior high or high school where our youth groups did silly things that had no tie-in whatsoever to spiritual matters. I remember singing “Whose side are you zodding on? Zodding on the Lord’s side. Izod Izo...

If we are to err, we should err on the side of mercy and forgiveness. On the one hand, Jesus thought it was important to publicly rebuke the corrupt religious leaders of his day. And so I have done in earlier posts. But since God is able to rescue any local church held in the jaws of ungodly district church leadership; since God is able to build his kingdom out of the ashes of the destruction caused by evil men; since God will one day right all wrongs and correct all injustices... ...today I am removing prior posts that document the gross abuses of the Assemblies of God Michigan District against the churches that God entrusted to it. Undeserved mercy. Undeserved forgiveness. Because there may be a slim chance that they don't realize what they did, just as Jesus prayed for those who crucified him because they didn't know what they were doing. Even though it is extremely unlikely that after 7 years they still don't realize the evil of their actions, maybe there is still a sav...

In my opinion, only if Genesis is literal. In that case, a created being made with a free-will must be able to obtain the consequences of its decisions. God did everything he could to prevent the wrong decision: He clearly explained the choice to his creation. He clearly explained the consequences that would occur from making the wrong choice (“On the day you eat of it, dying you shall die”.) And he clearly gave enough other choices so that idle curiosity or boredom weren’t a factor (“You may eat of ANY tree of the garden except one”). The Genesis account is clear that Eve did not take the forbidden fruit out of curiosity or boredom. She was presented with a challenge (which her pristine, fully-engaged mind would readily have recognized), and that challenge clearly would have led her to the logical conclusion, “either this snake is lying to me, or God is lying to me.” So who did she choose to distrust? God or the snake? The temptation was fair, in that it purely tested her faith in G...

Just when human arrogance has reached its height, and mankind's darkness of mind (the belief in evolution as our creator) has all but erased away any acknowledgment of the ingenious works of Jesus the true creator, science produces a new empirical observation that shocks us out of our drunken stupor with such intensity that we must again wrestle with the undeniable fact that we live in a world that was designed. In this case, it's an octopus. An octopus whose eyes are color-blind. An octopus whose eyesight isn't very sharp, even though its eyes are not "backwards" like the eyes of you reading this blog (Hmmm if you can read this blog, then "backwards" eyes must be a pretty good design, right? I'm a mechanical engineer, and my definition of a good design is a design that is functional.) But somehow, this feeble-eyed, color-blind octopus possesses a technology that the U.S. Military would pay billions to have: The ability to change shape, textu...