Our Treatment of Outsiders Can Put Us in Some Strange Company

“Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt,” the Israelites were enjoined. “Therefore the LORD your God commanded you to keep the sabbath day.” (Deuteronomy 5:15) Thus Moses instructed the people of Israel. Remember. Remember what it was like to be a slave. Remember when every day was the...

Free to be Your Best Self

I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. There are passages in the Bible that are hard to understand. We puzzle over them, read Bible commentaries, listen to Christian leaders we trust talk about them, and still we end up scratching our heads. This is...

From Biblical Family to Modern Family

Photo by © Can Stock Photo Inc. / goldenKB 1st in the series, “Modern Family?” Ephesians 5:21-6:9 Larry L. Eubanks, First Baptist Church, Frederick, Maryland, April 3, 2016 This morning we begin a series on the family, and we’ve given it the title of “Modern Family?” but with a question mark. What we are...

Racism’s Persistent Presence

Note: I wrote this article just before the Charleston shootings but waited to post it until after it was due to be printed in my church’s bulletin this past Sunday. I considered revising it in the wake of the shootings but decided to print it as written. There have always been signs telling us that the...

What The Bible Really Says About Slavery

Though Christians today almost universally accept that slavery is an intolerable evil, it is also almost universally accepted that the Bible stops short of outright condemnation of slavery and can even be considered to be somewhat accepting of it. Christian slaveholders in the U.S. pointed out that Paul...