Since this is an election year, I thought it be would pertinent to address issues that are of concern when deliberating which candidates for whom to vote. In the next ten weeks I hope to take a biblical look at issues such as religious and political freedom, stewardship of earthly resources, war, and personal and social sin to name a few. In these posts I will not endorse any candidate or political party, I am...
As 2012 continues, so does the grind of the election year, and certainly no one is more excited for November 6th than the candidates themselves. I can’t imagine the drain and the grueling stress this brings for the candidates). This atmosphere, combined with the patriotism associated with Memorial Day this weekend, had me pondering the sort of questions that I believe many of my generation begin to think about: what does the 21st century manifestation of obedience...
“Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind.” –Albert Einstein Anders Behring Breivik looks almost ghostly. In every picture that I see of him, he appears serious and menacing and totally unrepentant. This repentance he lacks should be for the murder of seventy-seven people last year when he both detonated a bomb in Oslo – killing eight – and arrived at a Labor Party Youth Camp in Utøya shortly after, killing sixty-nine...
There is a town in Northern Uganda named Gulu. To get there from Kampala—Uganda’s capital—our bus traveled about 200 km, cutting through lush tropical jungles and eventually emerging into the dryer terrain surrounding Gulu. After nearly two weeks in Kampala, I thought I knew a lot about Uganda (a very arrogant assumption to begin with), but just a few minutes in Gulu proved me wrong. The city, its people, and its struggles were different. The...
Since the beginning of time this world has been dealing with sin and its consequences. Adam and Eve’s fall in the garden leads to many consequences – setting us up for a lifetime of relationship struggles that was not in God’s original plan. As life plays out we watch and see disastrous things start to happen – murder, theft, idolatry, and promiscuity with sexual behavior. God leads His people: in the Exodus movement, and finally...
CNN interacts with Mark Driscoll’s new book, Real Marriage: The Truth About Sex, Friendship, and Life Together, co-written with his wife. Read CNN’s article here. In light of the recent Iowa Caucuses to determine the future GOP candidate and the upcoming primaries in New Hampshire, South Carolina, Florida, and so on, Kevin DeYoung gives us 7 anthropological principles for politics. Matthew Lee Anderson discusses predictions for the New Evangelicals in 2012. Michael Horton discusses the...
Good thinking necessarily requires pulling various strands of thought into something of a poetic amalgamation. Though it is doubtful that my writing could be described as poetic (I’ll leave that to other authors on this blog), I would at least like to take a stab at the amalgamation part. For those new to the two-kingdoms theological grid, the discussion of natural law and the two-kingdoms may seem incongruent. What do these two stands of thought...
We have all heard the mantra by now. Week after week, in pulpit after pulpit, Christians are being called to renew the world that they live in. Called to “renew” or “redeem” everything from governmental structures to the very way we play sports. Leaving aside the fact that this call is often times very confusing from a purely pragmatic standpoint, we ought to consider how massive the theological presuppositions are behind such statements. Yes, this...
A few weeks ago, I introduced an idea that natural law was meant to be the source from which all civil laws flowed. Thus, rather than appealing to biblical texts in order to erect judicial code, one must look to natural law. This post is my effort to establish natural law as the normative seat for the creation of civil law. While this may seem foreign to many, it was in fact the “orthodox” Reformed...
“…historic Reformed doctrines affirm a sharp distinction between the church as the non-violent kingdom of Christ and the sword bearing, coercive state. Hence, the state is not and cannot be the kingdom of Christ and… the demise of Christendom can be celebrated rather than mourned.” This quote from David VanDrunen in his book Natural Law and the Two Kingdoms will strike much of contemporary evangelicalism as nothing short of appalling. How can any real Christian...
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