“Love Your Enemies”: Does God Do It?

A few years ago my parents became friends with a young man from their church who was studying to be a doctor in the Navy. He had finished medical school and was entering residency. He told them once that one of the things he did to prepare himself for residency was to intubate himself. I don’t know if it...

The Image of God as Male and Female

This is an article I wrote for the blog Missio Alliance which appeared on their site last week. I repost it here for those of my readers who might have missed it. I encourage you all to check out Missio Alliance. They are a very cool organization and the writers on their blog our outstanding. God is spirit...

Do We Really Want to See God?

“Purity of heart,” Søren Kiekegaard once said, “is to will one thing.” That’s an interesting idea, isn’t it, since purity of heart is generally thought of as something approaching sinlessness, and to will one thing—and only one thing—seems, well, a bit obsessive. I mean, aren’t we all striving for balance...

A Relationship With God is Not Enough

When we think and talk about God, we do so in human terms. We envision God as human-like. We really have no other categories in which to talk about God or gods. Even the ancient religions who envisioned their gods as animals saw them as human-like animals. It’s called anthropomorphism, which is one of those...

“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...