Between the Trees

I’m sorry for the dearth of posting, but seminary is crazy right now. That said, I had to make a quick comment.
There is a video game called Guitar Praise, which for those not in the know is Guitar Hero for church kids. One of the reviews on the site starts “We are not conformed to [...]

Has anyone else noticed the twinge of pride and triumph you get from finally getting through all the unread mail in your e-mail inbox? Or sorting through and ignoring all of the group and event invitations you allowed to pile up on facebook?
My first impulse is to think that perhaps it signals just how much [...]

If Christian politics should defend the fact that “MARRIAGE: 1 Man + 1 Woman = 4 Ever” (as the friendly bumper stickers I see tell me), it’s strange that we only concern ourselves with the first half of the equation. If we want to defend the biblical definition of marriage with the constitution, shouldn’t we [...]

Here’s a thought I want to open up for discussion:
If we believe that ordination means something, and that we should respect those others have appointed as elders, this should apply even when we wouldn’t ordain them in our church. We all recognize this when it comes to some issues, like our doctrines of the church [...]

If you dedicate the entire back of your SUV to an oversized “hang up and drive” bumper sticker, it kind of looks bad when you almost swerve into me while talking on your cell phone.

“In the New Testament the art of life itself is an art of imitation: can we, believing this, believe that literature, which must derive from real life, is to aim at being ‘creative’, ‘original’ and ’spontaneous’? ‘Originality’ in the New Testament is quite plainly the prerogative of God alone…The duty and happiness of every other [...]

Fun fact: if you look up “Christian” on dictionary.com, the fifth definion is this:
5. decent; respectable
Does this make anyone else uncomfortable? Are we really supposed to be the people with a “decent” gospel and “respectable” lives? What happened to 1 Corinthians 1:19-29? And when definition #6 could easily be rephrased as “nice”, I don’t see [...]

If Jesus has justified me… why is my first reaction when I sin to try to justify myself?

For any given text in Scripture, it might be saying something different than someone thinks. It might be saying something different than an entire theological tradition thinks. It might even be saying something different than anyone in the recorded history of the church thinks…
But it’s saying something, and if your interpretation rests on what others [...]