I don’t know about you, but I’ve heard a lot about “playing the victim” or “having a victim mentality”. This is condemned as bad and unhelpful. A friend of mine pointed out that, if not balanced, this could be used to shame and blame honest victims. It’s true that the way some people talk, it’s
Jesus the (Only) Way?
One point of contention among people is how most religions claim they are exclusively correct. Of course there are many people out there who disagree and hold that there are numerous paths and that all religions are basically the same. And I agree with this—in part. I believe there are many paths to spirituality. (Many
Do You Know What is Biblical?
Evangelicals talk about being biblical a lot. Do you know what is and isn’t biblical? I find that many Christians don’t actually know the Bible that well. Too often when a Christian talks about biblical, what they actually have in mind is something which they heard a speaker or author say is biblical. On top
Questions: God’s Love?
Dale Fincher recently shared a short video in which a pair of prominent theologians speak. He used this as a launching point for discussing God’s love. This video sparked a number of questions in my mind. Watch the video and consider the following: What do you think? Is it dangerous to share God’s love? Does
Quotes From “Life After Art”
Select quotes from “Life After Art” by Matt Appling. (As a young child) “Creating just made you incredibly, unabashedly happy, fulfilled, and satisfied… That moment in time so long ago was the freest you have ever been in your entire life.” (p. 23) “Somewhere along the way children learn that failure is something to be
Worrying About Giving the Appearance of Sin Is Not Biblical
I’ve addressed this before but it has come up again. I think it’s worth revisiting. The idea that Christians should avoid appearing like they might be sinning is (in my impression) a widely held belief among conservative evangelicals. Since this is my background, I was surprised to discover not too long ago that this idea
Questions: Relationships
Do you believe that God should be the one to fulfill all our needs? Does the fact that God said it wasn’t good for Adam to be alone (Genesis 2:18) conflict with this idea? In saying it wasn’t good for Adam to be alone, did God mean that it wasn’t good for Adam to be
Book Review: Through My Windows
The rap artist known as Soup the Chemist a.k.a. Super C (probably best known for his project S.F.C.) recently released a book titled “Through My Windows”. The subtitle of the book, “The History Behind Holy Hip Hop”, is a bit misleading. In reality, this is Soup’s autobiography. He was one of the earliest “holy hip
What Does It Mean To Be Loved?
It’s one thing to define love, but what does it mean to be loved? I believe many people are familiar with the “love languages“. Understanding these can be very helpful to marriage. However, I think it’s unfortunate that they’ve often only been applied to marriage or dating relationships. This is because—as I’ve said before—our love
“Heaven”—A Beatiful Horizon
It’s been brought to my attention more than once how the common vision of heaven is far from the picture we get from careful study of the Bible. The popular ideas of heaven have us floating on clouds like we imagine angels do (which also aren’t very biblical in many cases). Or if not this