Homeward Bound

  Living in a modern world has its benefits. We can communicate with practically anyone anywhere with just a few taps on a screen. We can access unlimited information by asking Siri. We can share instant updates of our lives with our friends with a simple photo upload to Instagram. But as Uncle Ben once told Peter Parker, "With great power comes great responsibility." Technology indeed gives us great power, what we lack is the responsibility to healthily utilize that power. The average person in the US spends about 3 hours a day on their smart phone. Over the course of a lifetime that 3 hours a day come out to over 10 years spent staring at a screen (and this statistic does not account for other forms of technology such as TV, computer monitors, or Ipads). But time, as precious as it is, is not the only thing that suffers. Sleeping disorders are on the rise globally due to cell phone usage before sleep. Face to face social skills have plummeted in youth,...

I recently read Dr. Stephen Nichols' new and encouraging book A Time for Confidence . In the opening chapter Nichols provides us historic case studies of two early church fathers: Jerome and Augustine. Both were widely successful in their day. Both were incredibly scholarly. Jerome famously translated the Bible into Latin (known as the Latin Vulgate) and Augustine contributed greatly to church theology and Western Civilization alike with works like The Confessions and The City of God . Augustine also famously expunged the Pelagian Heresy in his day that denied the inherent depravity of man. But despite the impressive accolades of these two men, they both had conflicting perspectives on the great calamity of their day: The fall of Rome, the downfall of a city that they both loved. Case Study # 1: Jerome Nichols writes the following: When word of the sack of Rome by the Visigoths reached Jerome, he played Chicken Little. Jerome learned that in the mayhem surro...

My brother-in-law Garrett just got his driver’s permit, which means that he is now legally able to drive in the state of Maryland as long as another licensed adult is in the passenger seat. That licensed adult “privilege” happened to fall on both me and my wife this past weekend: which turned out to be…very interesting. To his credit, Garrett actually did pretty good (he may have been a little too close to the white line), but this experience resonated with an illustration J.I. Packer uses in his book Knowing God where he compares learning to drive a car to living a life of wisdom: “What matters in driving is the speed and appropriateness of your reactions to things and the soundness of your judgment as to what scope a situation gives you. You do not ask yourself why the road should narrow or screw itself into a dogleg wiggle just where it does, nor why the van should be parked where it is, nor why the driver in front should hug the crown of the road so lovingly; you...

I am often astounded by my propensity to fall short. With all I have been given and blessed with I still manage to find ways to stumble and fall. Frequently.  With all the goodness I have experienced I still find myself riddled with anxiety and fear. With all the truth I know I still fail to speak it out when its voice is needed most. I still spend most of my time preoccupied with temporary things instead of things eternal. I still am more fixated with myself than I am with Christ and the cross. Often times that crucial Christian character trait--joy--is just plain missing in me. I am indeed reminded from time to time that I have a long way to go. And as often as I am reminded of my shortcomings, I am also reminded of the amazing character of our God. A God who is exceedingly patient, who is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. And thankfully, my security is not found on the basis of my goodness. My hope is not built on the foundation of my devotion. My j...

Syncretism is defined by google as the “amalgamation of different religions, cultures, or schools of thought.” Generally I think of the word “syncretism” in almost exclusively a religious sense; with one example being certain forms of Roman Catholicism in South America where it is common for people to blend their Catholic religion with the spirit worship tradition common in the area. Because of this amalgamation of two largely opposing creeds we end up seeing holidays such as the “Day of the Dead” or even more distinct forms of animism where people pray or make sacrifices to inanimate objects. Syncretism however is not limited to the South American continent; in fact I am convinced that this tendency to mix worldviews and religions is far more pervasive than we would ever dare to think. Could it be that even you and me, likely professing Christians living in modern societies, are ever under the threat of compromising our precious faith “once delivered to the saints.” Could it ...

Luke 16:1-13 records one of the strangest parables ever recorded. Jesus says: “There was a certain rich man who had a steward, and an accusation was brought to him that this man was wasting his goods.   So he called him and said to him, ‘What is this I hear about you? Give an account of your stewardship, for you can no longer be steward.’ “Then the steward said within himself, ‘What shall I do? For my master is taking the stewardship away from me. I cannot dig; I am ashamed to beg. I have resolved what to do, that when I am put out of the stewardship, they may receive me into their houses.’ “So he called every one of his master’s debtors to him, and said to the first, ‘How much do you owe my master?’ And he said, ‘A hundred measures of oil.’ So he said to him, ‘Take your bill, and sit down quickly and write fifty.’ Then he said to another, ‘And how much do you owe?’ So he said, ‘A hundred measures of wheat.’ And he said to him, ‘Take your bill, and write eighty...

A primary presupposition to Christianity is the understanding that you are a bad person. That I am a bad person. So bad, in fact, that we are each fully deserving of divine punishment through hellfire.   That presupposition has been accepted largely throughout Christian history, even by substantial percentages of the unregenerate. C S Lewis writes, “When the apostles preached they could assume even in their Pagan hearers a real consciousness of deserving the divine anger. The pagan mysteries existed to allay this consciousness, and the Epicurean Philosophy claimed to deliver men from the fear of eternal punishment. It was against this background that the gospel appeared as good news. It brought news of possible healing to men who knew that they were mortally ill.”   Even the Protestant Reformation in the 1500s occurred during a time when people were fixated on the reality of death, and the morbid certainty of an eternal punishment that awaited t...

As a kid I loved to watch shows on the Discovery Channel and Animal Planet. I loved the ones that featured real time video (complete with British commentary) of wild animals living in their natural habitats. Whether it was of reptiles, sharks, or venomous rain forest snakes--I was enthralled by the beauty of diverse parts of creation that I had never seen before. I particularly enjoyed the shows which included carnivores stalking, chasing, and finally...devouring their prey. Those shows would go something like this: The cheetah would crouch in the tall Savannah grass, blending in with its coloring--perfectly enshrouded. It's agile body lines compress like a spring. Like a sprinter loading up into his starting blocks, the cat gets into starting position. And off in the distance, the unaware family of gazelles graze blindly in the scorched African plain. Two fawns prance together in the heat of the evening a bit away from the rest of...

Question: What would you do if you knew for a fact that tonight would be your last night on earth? If it were me I would probably get my family and closest friends together and reminisce about old times. I would want it to be a special gathering that celebrates me and all I had done in my life; a glorified pity party of sorts where people could be sad for me and communicate to me how much they will miss me when I am gone. Surely I would not expect to serve them dinner or wash the dishes. It's my last dinner, not theirs. But when I am look at Jesus's last dinner, I am astounded. In John 13 Jesus knows that He is about to leave the world, and not in a graceful or immediate fashion. He knows that one of his closest friends is about to betray him in a few hours, and he is no doubt feeling the emotional turmoil of the impending crucifixion. A cosmic battle is raging on in the background as Jesus looks to reverse the effects of sin and death for those who are ...

We live in a world divided. A nation divided. A church unfortunately divided. Lines are drawn everywhere separating people on the basis of any quality imaginable: nationality, class, ethnicity, political leanings, religion, income, and local. And behind each line, more lines are drawn splitting each group into smaller subgroups and subdivisions. Each subset of the whole promoting their own self-interest; each biting faction seeing the world through their own self oriented lens, alienating others in the process. There are cops and there are blacks. There are Democrats and there are Republicans. There are urbanites and there are those from rural communities. There are Millennials and there are Baby Boomers. But this is no surprise to us. This is the world we live in. The world we have always lived in. Even if you were to go back to Jesus’ day, you would find the world still ripping itself to shreds of division. There were the oppressive pagan Roman...

There is a common strain in modern Christianity that looks to break away from the archaic institutions and cumbersome structure of Christianity past. I recall reading an  article about a man (proclaiming himself a Christian) who had had it with the church and was leaving. Entitling his blog post "My Emancipation from American Christianity," he no longer needed the divisiveness and the close-mindedness of the Christians. He was done being tied down to old fashioned beliefs and people that have lost relevance to our world. His alternative: It would just be me and God. No more church. It is broken and can't be fixed. What about truth? I can discover that on my own, with my own personal relationship with God. He says it better himself:   "Jesus said that the Spirit moves where it pleases, and with it go those in its glorious grip. In my heart and in the hearts of so many like me, that Spirit is boldly declaring its emancipa...

Obedience is a difficult thing for us humans. It is one thing for us to love someone who is being difficult; it is another to get to a place where we even WANT to love that difficult person in the first place. Some days are just not good days. You know what I am talking about, those days where even the littlest things set us off. Where people bother us, and we don't worry about bothering them back.   For days like these, C S Lewis offers some wise advice.      "The rule for all of us is perfectly simple. Do not waste time bothering whether you 'love' your neighbor; act as if you did. As soon as we do this we find one of the great secrets. When you are behaving as if you loved someone, you will presently come to love him. If you injure someone you dislike, you will find yourself disliking him more. If you do him a good turn, you will find yourself disliking him less." (Lewis, Mere Christianity, 131)   ...