I didn’t pay much attention to this topic until just a couple of years ago, when a friend I was mentoring asked me about it; he was divorced and wanted to know whether he could remarry. That set me on a journey, and I felt a great deal of responsibility: here was a guy who had approached me to disciple him, and we had spent quite a bit of time together. He was a member of the small group my wife and I led, so when he asked me this, I really did feel a pastoral concern for him. I also felt somewhat embarrassed, actually, that I didn’t have a response! I really didn’t know all the Bible had to say on the subject, nor the wide variety of opinions which Bible students and teachers have had over the years. But boy, was I to find out.
Continue reading “Divorce and Remarriage in the Bible, Part 0”Category: church
The Message of the Wise Men
A lot has been made of the wise men who visited Jesus very early in his life, and it seems that most folks are interested in knowing who they are or where they came from, why they brought gifts, what the star they followed actually was, etc. These are all interesting questions, but I want to look at something else. (By the way, fast facts on the wise men: we don’t know how many, we don’t know from where, and there’s nothing which says they were kings.)
I want to focus on the fact that they were not Israelites. What in the world were they doing there? Why did Matthew include them in his gospel? Most of Jesus’ interactions in this gospel were with other Jews, so it seems important when these foreigners are mentioned so prominently.
Continue reading “The Message of the Wise Men”Divorce and Remarriage in the Bible
Here’s a lengthy essay I wrote on this topic: link.
For the tl;dr crowd, here’s the conclusion: both the Old and New Testaments provide certain grounds for a valid divorce, which includes the option of remarriage. Divorce outside of these grounds is forbidden to Christians, and Christians are always encouraged to maintain the marriage.
I welcome comments! Corrections, agreements, disagreements, what-about-this observations, etc.
Testing Prophets
Dr. Michael Brown has issued a call to test contemporary prophets, saying that recent prophecies about the COVID-19 pandemic form a perfect test case. Dr. Brown suggests that we can wait until mid-April and see if what two particular prophets predict comes to pass, and then we’ll know whether they (and prophecy in general) are legitimate.
Ordinarily I would agree with Dr. Brown that this is an interesting test case, but why wait? Why not test the prophets with what they’ve said already? Here is a sampling of items I found on the subject of this pandemic. The following is not an exhaustive list; there’s a lot of content out there on this subject, so material is not lacking.
Church and church
On Sunday morning, Brenda told four-year-old Nellie that we’re going to church today. Nellie asked, “Is that Reeve’s place, or the place where they turn the lights off?”
Now, I thought that was funny. Reeve is the one-year-old son of the leaders of our small group, and we meet at the leaders’ house — Reeve’s house! The place “where they turn the lights off” is the building where we have our Sunday meetings, and yes, the vibe involves very dim lighting.
I like it, though, that she thinks of each of these meetings as “church”. To her, church isn’t a building you go to, it’s a group of people you meet with. That’s pretty good ecclesiology; the four-year-old can teach this forty-six-year-old a thing or two.