Inside Repentance

If you think about it, Jesus could be horribly inconsistent in the way that he treated people. On the one hand, he could treat people with such grace and kindness that it almost seemed as if he was cavalier about their sin, enjoying dinner fellowship with cheating, traitorous tax collectors and letting...

Let God Be God

In the story of the Garden of Eden in Genesis 3, Adam and Eve committed the original sin—“original” not in the sense that it was The-First-Sin-Ever but rather that it’s the first sin that any of us take that leads to all the rest—when they ate of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. In other words,...

Jesus Ain’t No Snake-on-a-Stick

Talk about biting the hand that feeds you. In Numbers 21 God has just helped the Israelites defeat a Canaanite king. They are heading to the Promised Land, and they start complaining about the food. “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water,...

The Importance of Failure in Discipleship

William Cumpiano is a Massachusetts luthier, which is a general term for a maker of stringed instruments; someone who makes violins or dulcimers is a luthier. Cumpiano builds guitars. He is co-author of Guitarmaking: Tradition and Technology, considered to be the Bible of guitarmaking. His guitars, if...

“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...

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