No one simply stumbles onto Jesus. There are always signposts to Jesus. There is always someone (or something) pointing the way to Jesus. We see this in the birth narrative of Jesus. For the Maggi, it’s the star. Even the cosmos point the way...
This is a warning that this post is a bit more academic. Read at your own risk! Living in Haiti has forced me to develop a deeper theology of suffering. Suffering has been at the center of my thinking for the past number of years and has become the...
He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, “Lord, do you wash my feet?” Jesus answered him, “What I am doing you do not understand now, but afterward you will understand.” (The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton: Standard Bible Society...
Freedom is a theme that runs through Christianity. But what is freedom for the Christian? The strongest teaching of freedom that we find in the Bible is freedom from the shame and guilt of sin. Christianity espouses that every human being is born in...
The beatitudes in the Sermon on the Mount have always intrigued me. For one, when I first read them they seem so simple, but the more I reflect on them at a greater depth, more complex contours begin to appear. Blessed are the poor in spirit Why...
I love the story of when Jesus heals the paralytic in Mark 2:1–12. In this story, Jesus’ popularity has grown to the point where there are so many people coming to see him that the paralytic and his friends cannot get to him. The crowds are...
In times of difficulty, confusion, trial, or darkness the best thing to do, without fail, is focus on Jesus. I cannot count the number of times that I’ve said that salvation and Christianity are all about a personal relationship with Jesus. More...
I’m a huge advocate of corporate worship and communal Christianity. My personal MO is shaped by the fact that salvation is for a people through a people. I make it a habit of pointing out that too often in contemporary mainstream Christianity we...
Jesus used a number of pedagogical methods for teaching his disciples (and the crowds). At times, he went into theological discourse (John 3, with Nicodemus), other times he used parables. There were even times still he taught using “act...
It’s risky business to talk about the cross in ways that mainstream protestant-evangelicals aren’t used to. Fortunately (or unfortunately), I do this quite often. There are several dimensions of the cross and salvation (soteriology and...