Reading Time: 2 minutes A bit ago, my friend Wendy Nichols made a post about how our mutual, Christian heritage sometimes labels other Christians as “not Christian” based on whether or not they sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs (Eph 5, Col 3) with, say, someone also playing the piano. Of note, it can be demonstrated that “psalms,” and to a degree hymns, were often accompanied, but not necessarily 100% of the time. The…
Reading Time: 3 minutes How sinful are instruments? You’re about to find out! You’re driving down a highway in your home country, which is a nice, tropical island nation. The speed-limit sign says, “TRAVEL 80KPH,” and you’re doing a solid 75. Suddenly your rear window is suffering from over illumination. Cripes, it’s the cops! You pull over, and the cop walks up to your window and asks if you know why you were stopped….
Reading Time: 2 minutes Thanks to a study with Rhys N Thomas and his wife Sharon for helping me consider the following things, which I am sure can use refinement, so feel free to chime in. Christians have a lot of freedom, as we’re given far more principles than we are hard-and-fast rules. In his letter to the Galatians, Paul notes that there are those “who slipped in to spy out our freedom that we have…
Reading Time: 4 minutes In a post-lapsarian world which is increasingly dark, with headlines such as, “Transgender Man Gives Birth to Non-binary Partner’s Baby with Female Sperm Donor,” it can be surprising to find out what really bugs some folks—and I mean this sincerely, as in, ‘haunts the consciences of some’—in various Christian environments. This post is about something that truly does hurt and anger some Christians, and as a person who has felt…
Reading Time: < 1 minute My heritage has a history of viewing a certain hour-or-so per week as the hour in which one really “lives for God.” Instead of viewing worship as something which occurs from full-moon to full-moon (Isaiah 66) as the result of a spiritual prostration (John 4), some of the early Restoration leaders viewed it as something to be done only intermittently, and with great asceticism. That is, they viewed it as…