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Ahab and the God of Mercy
For my third sermon, I began my practice of preaching on what I was studying at the time. Thankfully, this meant a return to narrative, which I thoroughly enjoyed. Unfortunately, the audio was lost, so you will have to content yourself with a manuscript. Delivered at First Baptist Church, Mount Pleasant, MI. On October 12, 2014. Introduction Our passage this morning is found in the book of 1 Kings, chapter 21, so please turn with me there. For the next two weeks, I want to examine with you the end of the life of King Ahab. He’s one of the most famous kings of the Northern Kingdom of Israel, and…
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The Sin of Sodom
The other day I saw an old debate come back around: how should we think about the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah in the Bible? It’s common in conservative circles to think destruction came about because of rampant homosexual activity. For them, the sin of Sodom was quite simply sodomy. The “other side” then quotes a passage from Ezekiel, which says the sin was actually failing to take care of widows and orphans. For both sides, there is a tendency to think “it’s right there in the Bible! How could you get this so wrong?!” For conflicts that seem so obvious, it is perhaps all the more important to take…
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In Praise of Uselessness
I’ve created a new space on this site that was really what this page was originally about: a place to write anything. I’m calling it the “wanderlog.” This ultimately is a category to protect me from me, to give me permission to write anything without purpose, without apology. Of course, I very much hope that it’s not useless, but I’m giving myself permission to be useless. And really, that’s an important value to protect. Usefulness is good, but the world pushes you to make it ultimate. I may have shared this before (maybe I should give myself permission to be repetitive, too!) but I really connected with something I heard…
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Something True, Revisited
I have two blogs and rarely contribute to either one. Why is that? It’s because I’m a writer. That’s what I do when I have time to myself. It’s what I do because I have no other choice. It’s how I see myself and how I want to be seen. Of course, I want to be seen as more than that. I don’t want to be mistaken for some caricature. So I have a YouTube space so I can share educational videos, and I have a SoundCloud account so I can share music and sermons, and I have an Instagram account so I can share pictures. I enjoy these things.…
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ETS ’21 Annual Meeting Review
Greetings! I am thrilled to be taking part in one of the few traditions I have on this site: my review of the annual meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society. What follows is not exactly hard-hitting journalism so much as reflections in gratitude on what I learned, largely for the sake of those who couldn’t be there. This year’s meeting was in Ft. Worth, Texas, and I couldn’t resist the chance to drive down and explore my old hometown of DFW. This made for a long solo drive, but I enjoyed decent weather and beautiful fall colors the whole way down. (As for the way back, well…what a difference a…