This Ought to Stir You Up

[Stanley Hauerwas, Unleashing the Scripture, pp. 15ff.]
Most North American Christians assume that they have a right, if not an obligation, to read the Bible. I challenge that assumption. No task is more important than for the Church to take the Bible out of the hands of individual Christians in North America. Let [...]

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On Remembering Sermons

I hear it said occasionally that the “really good” sermons are those that we remember, or those from which we retain the main point. Don’t misunderstand: I have indeed heard sermons the main points of which I remember to this day. And I do consider them good, even great, sermons. But is [...]

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Hiatus Over

Good to be back from the land of No Communication. (I noticed we devolved from a rodent to a fish.) I hate moving. We had no phone for two weeks, still don’t have internet, only rabbit ears for a TV. That doesn’t even consider the refrigerator not being cold (which is [...]

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Discipline

After spending a week at Walt Disney World watching parents interact with rowdy children, I wondered how I would deal with such children. I am not a parent yet, so I have no first-hand experience.

Obviously, raising children is not a simple thing, but there have to be some things that good parents keep in [...]

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Communion Fellowship: Thesis IV

“Everyone is obligated to avoid heterodox churches, and if one belongs to one like that, he is obligated to renounce it and leave it” (C.F.W. Walther, “Communion Fellowship” in Essays for the Church: Volume I [St. Louis: Concordia, 1992], 210).

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Thanksgiving Day in America

After celebrating the national holiday last week, I wondered to whom most Americans give thanks? As they sit around the table, pondering their many blessings, whom are they addressing when they say, “We give thanks”? Or, whom do we look to for all good things?
“I will give thanks to your name, O Lord, for it [...]

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Back in Time for This

After a restful vacation at Walt Disney World, I am back for another quarter at the seminary. Before classes begin, however, I was confronted with a somewhat strange ecclesiastical practice.
Check out Cross Theology’s latest post in order to read about that practice.

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The Flight

I am in Orlando, FL, after a pleasant flight. We were in the air as the sun was going down, and the strata of dark red, red, orange, yellow, and blue in the sky proved to be the highlight. Close second: the kids behind us repeatedly asking their mother when we were going to land. [...]

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No Reason to Resign

A Roman Catholic official in Colorado, Peter Howard, resigned, apparently because he said that Catholics should not attend Protestant services. I don’t know about mere attendance, but his reasoning is right on:
Such “active participation” in a Protestant liturgical service, therefore, acts contrary to our faith which professes fundamentally different beliefs in critical ecclesiological and [...]

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How Surreal Can It Get?

Just wait. When clear moral choices become emotional quagmires. Of course, the woman’s moral clarity–if she ever had it–was lost before she came to this decision. The child was already the result of having sex with someone to whom she was not married. Someone said it: ethics is only complicated to [...]

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