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Laying Low
I began 2018 with the desire to “tell myself something true in public every day.” I was pretty solid for a month, but with a new baby in the home, little disruptions can turn into a big deal. While a lot of my friends are dealing with influenza, it only took a common cold to derail my plans. Then throw a few birthdays and holidays into the mix, and it’s “blog? What blog?” But I haven’t forgotten. In fact, I’ve been eager to get back. Even though it’s a sacrifice to set aside the time, I did find that the discipline improved my thinking. And my writing. (You may quibble…
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This is Your Conscience (part 6)
In my last entry on this series, I talked about something Paul calls the defiled conscience, or the conscience of a person who can’t help but see good things in an evil light. These are false teachers who claim that you can’t come to God unless first you’ve renounced everything that defiles you—when in reality the sin is in the way that you use it, in your intentions and actions, and not in the thing itself. Today I’d like to talk about another category of conscience, one that is very similar but with one crucial difference: these are not false teachers but faithful Christians. It’s a familiar category: the weak…
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Father Abraham
When my son was just an infant, I would hum the song “Father Abraham” to him. It’s a good song (even if I didn’t understand it as a kid—or what it had to do with my right arm, left arm, right foot, left foot). I often make up songs around the house, especially when I sing to my kids and “Father Abraham” lends itself to this, too, because all of my children have three-syllable names. Just like Abraham. The syllable thing was planned, but the Abraham portion was an added benefit. I do like singing that particular song over them because my most earnest prayer for all of my children…
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Seeing is Not Believing
Today in my men’s Bible study I was reminded of the scene in the Old Testament where God speaks to the people of Israel from Mount Sinai. I had never noticed it before, but it appears as though the Ten Commandments as originally delivered may have been spoken to the whole nation, not just to Moses. There a few small clues, but most prominently at a glance is Exodus 20:22: And the LORD said to Moses, “Thus you shall say to the people of Israel: ‘You have seen for yourselves that I have talked with you from heaven.'” And again I was reminded about the intimate relationship God had with…
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This is Your Conscience (part 5)
We’ve been talking about the conscience, and last time we focused on the idea that your conscience is like an instrument that can be tuned. It’s supposed to tell us right from wrong, but it’s not perfect. We can pursue actions that bring it into alignment with reality, or we can pursue actions that draw it further out of tune. Besides the “seared” conscience that we mentioned last time, there is another category of conscience referenced in Scripture. It’s called the “defiled” conscience. And it’s probably not what you think. The seared conscience has become dead to sin, insensitive to evil. But the defiled conscience actually has the other problem:…