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DOES THE BIBLE HAVE A SENSE OF HUMOR?
Is the Bible ever funny? The question was put to me by an older friend. This friend had two worries about the Christian faith. One was that he would get to heaven and discover that there was no sporting competition there. He lived for his games and his teams. The second was that in heaven…
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JACOB’S LADDER: HOW OUR SPIRITUAL ANCESTOR GOT EVERYTHING WRONG
The Bible is a subversive book. It subverts our assumptions about life, about good and evil, about where God is and where God isn’t; it often subverts even what seems like the obvious meaning of the story it tells. Few passages are as subversive in this last sense as the story of Jacob’s ladder in…
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THE TOWER OF BABEL: THE DIVINE PREFERENCE FOR DIVERSITY
The intriguing, funny, and cutting story of the Tower of Babel (Genesis 11:1-9) is the last in the collection of stories that makes up the preface to the book of Genesis and, therefore, to the Bible itself. We do well to attend to these stories, not as histories, which is to distort them and lose…