Using the Bible Online

The Bible can be difficult to understand. Books have been written about how to study the Bible. Invariably they say that you should start by trying to understand what a passage meant to its original audience, to understand their culture, their history. There are literary questions to ask: what kind of...

Abandoning Left/Right Thinking

Everybody should know their place and keep their place. Including God. Right? One of the unfortunate effects of the Enlightenment worldview is that God was kicked upstairs (to borrow N.T. Wright’s wonderful phrase) and we don’t know how to handle it when he comes down and tries to enter into the...

Savoring Scripture

A few years ago author Eugene Peterson (The Message translation, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction) gave an interview in which he discussed how he learned to read Scripture contemplatively. “In high school I was very much involved in poetry.  You cannot read a poem quickly.  There’s too...

“Why Is Esther in the Bible?”

“Why is Esther in the Bible?” I teach a Bible study for young adults in my church. Someone had asked me what it means to say that the Bible is inspired, and before I could reply another student chimed in with that question. It kind of saved me, because how do you even begin to answer a question on...

There’s No “ME” in “Scripture”

Do you read the Bible egocentrically? You probably do, but in many ways it’s not your fault. Most of us were taught to read it that way. By egocentric I don’t mean conceited, arrogant, narcissistic, or selfish. I mean it in the purest sense of the word, that we regard the I and the me as central to the...

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