gospel

Yes You Are Black

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You may have seen a video that’s been floating around Facebook for a few years. It starts out with the tantalizing phrase “I am not black.” Here’s a link to the video on YouTube , and here’s a link to the artist’s (Prince EA) webpage . It’s a compelling little video, definitely worth watching, but with both eyes open! It is a huge mix of great and horrible. There is truth in it, and there are massive and dangerous lies in it. I figured as an exercise for myself, as well as for instruction, I would deconstruct this video and … [Read more]

Abortion Isn’t Legal

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I decided to sit down and actually read the Roe v Wade decision. I suggest doing it yourself. Here’s a link to it if you’re so inclined. Many people are unfamiliar with what it actually argues and why. If they know anything about it, they know “Roe v. Wade made abortion legal in all 50 states.” They are wrong in that assessment. Let me summarize the argument that the court actually made in very plain English: We think a mother has a constitutional right to an abortion (in some situations), under the “right of privacy” primarily “found” in the ninth … [Read more]

Legality is Not Morality

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In my Sunday afternoon group (homegroup) we’ve been going over various Christian ethics questions and trying to discern the Biblical worldview. I noticed a few times through the course of the lessons a dangerous and unquestioned assumption: if it’s legal, it must be good, or at the very least, not bad. For Christians, this is one of the most pernicious and harmful assumptions we can make in our time, so I’d like to flesh out this basic distinction a bit. We’ll start with defining the two terms, legality and morality, and then we’ll compare and contrast them. Finally, we’ll talk … [Read more]

A Dinosaur at Twenty-four

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A Class this Summer This summer I took a class at Seminary called “Cultural Dynamics in Ministry.” Essentially, it was a cross-cultural missions class. It was a one-week intensive, which means you go 5 days in a row from 8-5 and do all the lectures for the three-credit-hour course in one week. To top it off, we had a first-time visiting professor from Asbury Seminary. He is a fairly well-known Christian Anthropologist (emphasis on the anthropologist part) who has quite a bit of experience in foreign missions. However, he’s very much NOT a theologian, which created conflict in class. He … [Read more]

Retraction and Reaction: My Words and Andy Stanley’s

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This is a retraction (or adjustment) of a previous post, and a critique of Andy Stanley’s philosophy and most recent sermons. Introduction In light of the recent controversy over the Rob-Bell-esque, postmodern slip (or nose-dive) that Andy Stanley has taken toward emergent church heresy, I’ve been thinking a lot about a post I wrote in January of this year called “The Bible’s Not Essential to Christianity.” In it, I used some careless language and made a few factual errors and so I’d like to clarify and correct my own words, and also offer a critique of Andy Stanley’s philosophy that … [Read more]