Those maps showing a shrinking Palestine are widely disputed by Zionism supporters, but there are some major problems with those counter claims. But there’s a better way than political or military solutions.
Some kinds of testimony probably do more harm than good. Too often, a story about ourselves comes across as an accusation about the other, and actually harms our witness. We can do better.
Did God stop speaking at the end of the first century AD? Did He tell us literally everything we need to know in the Bible? I’ve been thinking about the various basic approaches to reading and understanding the Bible. It seems to me that there are at least two related methods of Bible interpretation, and their interaction results in some rather different outcomes depending on your assumptions.
Our testimony isn’t just for unbelievers. Sometimes it needs to be for our fellow Christians, inviting them to see a different perspective, expanding their existing awareness. And a gentle invitation is so much more effective than a demanding assault on what we see as error.
It’s taken a couple years, but I realized this week that I’m completely done with being called an Evangelical and a Republican. I simply cannot abide the toxicity inherent in both labels. Here’s some thoughts about why.
What’s more important? Evangelicalism, or Christianity? Lately I’ve seen a lot of people defending the former at the expense of what I believe is Jesus’ example of how we should live as a community of faith.
Jesus said we’d know a tree by its fruit, and perhaps we can also know a doctrine the same way. I grew up with an end-times doctrine that is widespread in the church, but which I now recognize is bearing a lot of bad fruit. Maybe it’s time to recognize the harm.
Too many Christians seem obsessed with power and control. But being oppressed was the very thing that helped the early church grow explosively. Are we pursing the wrong thing?
The point of the gospel is not to get the work done. The point is accurately represent the Father. Jesus’ charge in Matt 28:19-20 wasn’t colonial; it was to be ambassadors in the fullest sense of the word – to personally BE an extension of the Kingdom and to fully embody Jesus to those around us. That looks a lot different than many approaches to the gospel.
Jonah was so opposed to the people of Nineveh that he couldn’t abide God’s forgiveness of them. There are parallels with evangelical Christians’ insistence that God punish people in a fiery hell for all eternity. Is that insistence righteous?
