This page will feature lighter and shorter pieces on a variety of topics
A WORD FOR THOSE WHO CANNOT BELIEVE: FAITH AS ENCOUNTER
In the Bible “faith” rarely means “belief”—at least, not in the sense that “belief” has come to have in popular Christianity: what I will call “belief about.” We are not saved by belief. This is not what the Bible teaches. But if my experience is at all representative, this is what many in church think…
A CHRISTMAS MEDITATION
Christmas is never the New Testament’s first thought. The stories of the birth of Jesus are found in only two of the gospels, Matthew and Luke. Our Christmas celebrations and songs are narrower still, mostly from Luke. Matthew’s account we slip in and around the Luke story as best we can, putting camels in our…
WHAT HAVE WE LOST? THE CHRISTIAN REFORMED CHURCH POST -SYNOD 2022 (Part 1)
In the larger scheme of things, the dissolution of the Christian Reformed Church (CRC), should it eventually happen, is ecclesiastical small potatoes: one more immigrant denomination absorbed into the morass of American evangelicalism. But it makes me sad if for no other reason that for many years, in the old prizefight metaphor, the CRC hit…