Faith Challenges: It Ain't All Comfort

Ervin was with me when I got a call yesterday. He told me he had taken several last week and told them to call back if they wanted to speak with me. The call went pretty much as I expected. Someone was upset by what they had been hearing in the community about the church, and they wanted to straighten me out on what the Bible says. Well, I’ve actually read the Bible. I got the Bible Award at my Christian High School for the highest grades in Bible class in the school’s 25-year history. I took several Bible courses in college. I have a degree from seminary. I’ve read the Bible through multiple times in three languages, translated several books from Greek, worked through many passages in Hebrew, and read at least a dozen commentaries all the way through. I take the Bible seriously. When I was asked by a parishioner a few years back about homosexuality, I gave a very cursory response along with the promise to do a deep dive and get back on it. That took a few weeks, but it was im...

Over the course of some 37 years of church and denominational ministry, I have repeatedly encountered people who have a rather magical perspective on sin. Well, you may understand that better if I were to use the term superstitious. They believe that sin is some kind of nebulously defined legal code that God has only revealed in part, only to a few, or otherwise developed with no guiding principle. Understanding sin is something like a crap shoot at a gambling table, where one tosses a marker only to discover after that fact what the results will be. It’s kind of like giving someone flowers one thinks are pretty, not knowing how the gift will be interpreted, as specific flowers and specific colors may have different meanings within different cultural circles. A chrysanthemum may be seen as a beautiful flower or a symbol of death. How then, can I figure out what meaning it has to God? Just so we are clear, none of my seminary classes focused on how to define what is and is not s...