This is not a site about me
A “meme” that has been going around the Internet for a few years can be summed up as “Don’t judge me because I sin differently than you do.” The idea being, presumably, that if we call a particular behavior a sin we are being hypocritical because we ourselves are sinners. After all, Jesus warned against hypocritical judgment when he told us to take the plank out of our eye before we try to take the splinter out of our brother’s eye. Read more
As you know, if you’ve read much of what I’ve written over the last couple of years, I claim that I am a Christian. Not just any kind of Christian either. I believe that a man or woman is saved from sin and eternal damnation by the grace of God alone, through faith in Christ Jesus alone, according to the word of God alone, and for his glory alone. Read more
There are many different groups that claim the name of Christianity in the world today. Indeed, there are many people who claim to be Christians. In this post, I intend to examine what it means to be a Christian, and to hold Progressive Christianity up to the light to see whether their claim is true.
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Some very earnest young men have come visiting me recently. They come to my door in twos and threes wearing ties on white shirts and black dress slacks. They wear name tags declaring that they are “elder this” or “elder that”. They are, perhaps, old (or is it young) enough to be my children.
Not so long ago I wrote about themes that disturb me in “super-hero” movies. One of the things I mentioned was that these movies have a warped theology. Super-heroes aren’t gods yet in some cases they seem to make the claim. One of the less obvious claims made by a “super-hero” was made by the Vision in the movie Avengers: Age Of Ultron.
Vision: I am not Ultron. I am not J.A.R.V.I.S. I am… I am.
By “less obvious”, I mean that many people would simply take this statement as merely saying that the Vision exists. However there’s one who already claims “I am” as his name. And, to borrow a phrase from Steve Rogers, “I’m pretty sure he doesn’t dress like that.”
He who believes in the Son has eternal life, but he who does not obey the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him. – John 3:36
Here we see belief and obedience together being required. He who believes has eternal life. He who does not obey will not see life. Together these statements support the notion that true faith is equivalent to “trusting obedience”. In other words belief requires obedience or it isn’t truly belief.
Not so long ago I deactivated my Facebook account. I’ve already explained my reason for that, and I ‘m not going to revisit that now. I deactivated my account, but I didn’t delete it. At some point I may reactivate the account, but right now I’m not planning on it.
Deactivating a social media account is a big break. Sometimes people notice. But, once you’ve done it, how can you ever know unless they have another way to reach out to you? Well, one of my best friends has my phone number and she sent me a text message to make sure I’m OK.
You have fallen of[f] the face of the earth again. I trust you are OK and just either bored with Facebook or frustrated with people in general. I miss your comments.
The conversation grew from there, but since I was at work I really couldn’t give it the attention she deserves. I promised I would explain myself here, and we could use the comments thread to continue it.