restless reformer

My favorite hymn is “The Church’s One Foundation.” If it came up for a vote, I’d vote to add it to biblical canon. I’m almost serious.
There’s one verse in that hymn that came to memory tonight as I sat with fellow believers and talked about the church, her flaws, her failures, and her […]

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I wrote some time ago about the unpredictable God, wrestling with the concept of a God who doesn’t work according to transactions, who decides not to answer prayer, who allows and creates disaster, entirely messing up my own comfort.  Some better reflections on the theme come from two places:
First, iMonk writes about hitting a wall, […]

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Tomorrow, April 25, is a Day of Silence. I’m just learning about this, and in conjunction with it, I’m learning about the Christian protest. I learned about the Christian protest while I was preparing dinner. I was using a knife. I was angry, and it’s a wonder I didn’t cut myself.
I […]

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I know the seventh ecumenical council would have something to say about this, but I like C.S. Lewis on this point. From A Grief Observed:
Images, I must suppose, have their use or they would not have been so popular. (It makes little difference whether they are pictures or statues outside the mind or imaginative […]

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I remember watching those early rounds of American Idol last season, when a young girl sang terribly, and the judges did what they do - they told her she sang terribly. Her response?
“You don’t even know me. Who are you to judge me?”
Um…what? What does knowing someone have to do with their […]

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The rising sun had made everything look so different - all colors and shadows were changed - that for a moment they didn’t see the important thing. Then they did. The Stone Table was broken into two pieces by a great crack that ran down it from end to end. and there […]

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…Susan and Lucy crept out onto the open hilltop.  The moon was getting low and thin clouds were passing across her, but still they could see the shape of the Lion lying dead in his bonds.  And down they both knelt in the wet grassed and kissed his cold face and stroked his beautiful fur […]

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At last she drew near.  She stood by Aslan’s head.  Her face was working and twitching with passion, but his looked up at the sky, still quiet, neither angry nor afraid, but a little sad.  Then, just before she gave the blow, she stooped down and said in a quivering voice,
“And now, who has won?  […]

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There are few better songs to remember what happened on that Thursday night during Holy Week than Michael Cards, “The Basin and the Towel.”

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“To snatch saved souls away to a disembodied heaven would destroy the whole point. God is to become king of the whole world at last. And he will not do this by declaring that the inner dynamic of creation (that it be ruled by humans) was a mistake, nor by declaring that the […]

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Mark 1:14 Now after John was arrested, Jesus came into Galilee, proclaiming the gospel of God, 15and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel.”
Some observations:

Jesus states that the time is fulfilled, not that it will be.
Jesus preached the gospel itself; this runs […]

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Mark 13, treated by most folks who are not dispensationalists (which point of view I feel no need to write against), is most often understood as Jesus sort of bopping back and forth between two different subjects: the destruction of the temple, and the end of history. The problem I and many others have […]

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According to a new Pew Research Center study:
If change in affiliation from one type of Protestantism to another is included, roughly 44% of adults have either switched religious affiliation, moved from being unaffiliated with any religion to being affiliated with a particular faith, or dropped any connection to a specific religious tradition altogether.
My initial response […]

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“Now before I became a Christian I was under the impression that the first thing Christians had to believe was one particular theory as to what the point of [Jesus’] dying was. According to that theory God wanted to punish men for having deserted and joined the Great Rebel, but Christ volunteered to be punished […]

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