Archive

2020

November 2020

• Psalm 125: On earth as it is in heaven? (11/21/2020). Longing for the incarnation in our world of biblical Wisdom.
• The self-mutilating apostasy of White American Evangelicalism (11/21/2020). Noticing who the national leaders of Christotrumpism are (and are not) clues us in that Christotrumpism is evangelicalism separated from the head and heart of evangelicalism.
• ReMEMbering Psalm 119:97–104 (11/12/2020). Sometimes praying the psalms can help us because we find it impossible to find ourselves in their words.
• Trump as mirror and shadow (11/6/2020). What we need is not to annihilate or even deny our Trumpish side but to understand it and integrate it into a healthy whole. This will not be easy.
• Are you calling Trump a fascist? (11/4/2020). Why we all need to read Justin Stanley’s How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them.

October 2020

• Speaking of Hitler (October 30, 2020). A friend asks, “Are you comparing Trump to Hitler?” Well, no, and yes.
• The dark turn of Psalm 106 (October 27, 2020). What do we do with a recital not of the mighty acts of God but of the perfidious response of his people?
• Psalm 104: Introduction (10/21/2020). We read a poem like Psalm 104 as a gracious and beautiful revelation of the truth of the world around us.
• Psalm 95 and discipleship failure: An invitation and a warning (10/19/2020). I was thinking about discipleship failure when I happened to read Psalm 95.
• Psalm 40 and the Normal Christian Life (10/8/2020). What if we try reading Psalm 40 as a boilerplate description of the life of the follower of the Lord?
• WSJ Down the Rabbit Hole (10/2/2020). Rebutting a ridiculous opinion column in the Wall Street Journal regarding the first Trump-Biden debate.
• Dumpster Fire (10/1/2020). I remember my elementary school janitors and reflect on literal and figurative dumpster fires.

September 2020

• The tragedy of fractional-issue politics (9/24/2020). And the devil, taking her up into a high mountain, showed her one more Supreme Court justice. . . . (Thoughts on an interview with an anti-abortion activist.)
• Prayers for an election season (part 2 of 7) (9/14/2020). Life under a cloud: the passive and active negativities. Psalm 32.
• Prayers for an election season (part 1 of 7) (9/13/2020). A roadside sign: “try prayer.” The Penitential Psalms. Prayer from a season of grave illness. Psalm 6.
• A note of appreciation to Heather Cox Richardson (9/7/2020). Her Letters from an American will stand as a record of these days, regardless of how our political mess turns out. Yesterday’s letter struck me as taking an ominous turn.
• “Trust in the Lord” as a political slogan (9/6/2020). Yes, by all means: trust in the Lord! Here are my thoughts on what that does and does not mean.
• Naming racists and racism (9/5/2020). We should not call a person whose soul is tainted by racism (which includes all of us) a racist—no more than we call a person who has a physical disability a cripple—unless we have given up on them and want them to give up on themselves.
• The wicked, God, and me (Psalm 5, day 1) (9/3/2020). Psalm 5 encourages us to focus first on God but not to ignore or condone the wicked deeds of wicked people.
• Persuasion does not work; love anyway (9/3/2020). What to do with
• The tragic irony (possibly?) of white American evangelical Christianity (9/2/2020). White Christian nationalists in America have simultaneously fixated and ignored Jesus’s warnings of mass apostasy.

August 2020

• How to love our atheist (in a sense) neighbors? (8/22/2020). Christians who follow a lying tyrant in believing the worst about a world that God loves have become practical atheists.
• Scriptures for the day (8/21/2020) . Recalling some scripture passages that seemed appropriate to the day.
• My American reflections on the news from Belarus (8/20/2020). It’s good to listen to news from abroad because foreign places and peoples matter. But it’s also good to let news from abroad jolt us into seeing our own domestic situation more clearly.
• Faith, Fanaticism, and Trumpism (8/18/2020). Either I don’t know the difference between faith and fanaticism or some of my friends don’t.
• How not to evangelize (usually) (8/16/2020). The “Romans Road” and other canned evangelism methods fail to communicate.
• At the lowest point: hope (8/15/2020). Beautiful words about “hoping against hope” from a seventeenth-century English preacher.
• How to think and pray about wicked rulers (Psalm 58) (8/11/2020). The Psalmist tells us it’s OK to denounce these godlings and call down divine judgment on them. But with some caveats . . .
• Editor James Ernest (Eerdmans): The Editors behind the Great Books in New Testament Studies (Crux Sola) (8/10/2020). Repost of an interview posted at Crux Sola on August 4: my life in editing and my thoughts on books, authors, books proposals, and biblical-studies publishing in general.
• Striking a pose: Psalm 18 and positional righteousness (8/8/2020). What has gone wrong with certain American Christian traditions that what we believe and do diverges so starkly from the ways of the one we claim to follow?
• Our crisis of truth in society and church (8/7/2020).
• I love you, Lord? (8/4/2020). Or is it “I dedicate myself?” Or is it something more outrageous?
• Psalm 1 again: verses 1 through 3 (8/1/2020). How to make like a tree and leave.

July 2020

• What the Lord does (7/30/2020). What does Psalm 145 tell us about Christians who spend most of their time on social-political issues?
• Our national Sankofa journey (7/28/2020).
• How to read the Bible (7/27/2020). Revelation 1:3 tells us how to read the Bible as Scripture.
• From generation to generation: Comments on Mary Trump’s story of how the Trump family produced Donald (7/26/2020). Mary Trump, Edwin Friedman, and the transmission of dysfunction.
• Think on these things (7/22/2020). A beautiful afternoon with wonderful people in a lovely place. And a contrast, and a question.
• What you can do with an English major; or, How to be a pro bono counterintelligence operative (7/21/2020). Hey, y’all! I’m pretty sure I sniffed out one of those Russian fake blogger accounts!
• What to do about disagreements between Christians? (7/20/2020). Trusting God and each other could move us from anxiety and anger to joy and freedom in our relationships with other Christians with whom we have disagreements.
• The stable genius who harnessed the power of nuclear fission (7/18/2020). We are no crazier than we ever were, but with Trump something is different.
• John McWhorter’s hatchet job on Robin DiAngelo’s White Fragility (7/17/2020). How to recognize disingenuous, deliberately distorting, partisan prose (a.k.a. bullshit).
• Ngram Viewer and the human condition (7/16/2020). Does common usage make it right? “It” being spelling, word choice, grammar. And how does language relate to morals?
• Two pathologies of loyalty (7/15/2020). Excessive or distorted loyalty to a principle is curable. Not so sure about excessive loyalty to an undeserving person.
• Psalm 55:6: Wings like a—pigeon? (7/14/2020). Longing to fly away and be at peace. Whose psalm is this anyway?
• Fauci, Trump, and the possibility of progress in knowledge and in morals (7/12/2020). If you think you’re always right, and have nothing to repent of and nothing to learn, you’re probably never going to get any more intelligent than you already are (not).
• Who is the fool who has said in his heart, there is no God? (7/11/2020). Don’t be so sure that “the fool” is someone else. Practical atheism and professed atheism can be two different things.
• Mask Politics (7/11/2020). The discomfort we feel about masks is just one more symptom of our sick misunderstanding of the meaning of politics.
• It’s not always about John Calvin; or, What’s God got to do, got to do with it? (7/9/2020). Commitment to the sovereignty of God may more about how you pray than how rigid you are about doctrine.
• America, be what you are! (7/8/2020). How the Apostle Paul teaches us that to be a patriot you don’t have to pretend that America is and always has been nothing but wonderful.
• God gets refractory, haughty brought down (7/8/2020). Does God show himself to be refractory or make himself seem tortuous? (And does that mean I don’t always have to talk nice about major a**h****s?)
• The year of f/u (7/7/2020). Do we want to be brought together, or do we prefer to be driven further apart? Do we aspire to speak truth in love? Or do we prefer the way of f/u?
• Our wonderful president’s inspiringly patriotic Independence Day speech (7/6/2020). He isn’t and it wasn’t. This may have been the most anti-American speech an American president has ever given.
• A day of freedom (7/4/2020). To my friends on our national holiday.

June 2020

• Knowing oneself, knowing others (Psalm 139) (6/30/2020). A residual “grievous” way in David’s prayer of confession.
• In Memoriam: James D. G. Dunn (6/29/2020). An EerdWord post marking the death of a great author and friend of the press.
• I have a friend who loves making the Bible strange (6/27/2020). The good exegete lays down his community’s comfortable interpretations to find lost sheep.
• Psalm 119 now! (6/27/2020). The light on the path is good for one more step.
• Hey, Psalm 119! (6/26/2020). How can two people look at the same thing and see completely different things. What are we doing when we think we are knowing?
• Praying Psalm 118: Who is the cornerstone? (6/24/2020). To pray the Psalms is to be knit ever more tightly into union with Israel, with Christ.
• Going to heaven? Why the heck not? (6/22/2020). I can’t fathom why some people out there seem so urgently compelled to spread the good news that nobody is going to heaven.
• Procopius of–Gaza!? (6/20/2020). The places where Christian life and learning thrive in one moment can become desolate in another.
• On eating Aunt Jemima syrup sacrificed to idols (6/19/2020). Paul was willing to give up meat for the rest of his life to avoid causing offense to a brother or sister, and you can’t give up the denatured black mammy on your syrup bottle?
• On respecting and submitting to the governing authorities (6/18/2020). The American president is not Caesar, and American Christians are not directly addressed in Romans 13.
• Jesus hates rioters (6/10/2020). No wait, white Christian Republicans hate most black people and all white Democrats. Or . . . hang on . . .
• To dominate or not to dominate? That is the question (6/6/2020). What kind of leader says “You have to dominate”?
• The police problem (6/6/2020). They are asked to do too much. And sometimes they dress up like Darth Vader’s imperial stormtroopers.

May 2020

• On electing a president not a pastor (5/30/2020). Biblically formed people are never going to want a leader who is not a good shepherd.
• Peace, peace: Nice prophets and slight healing (5/26/2020). Sassey Christian leaders who offer lame platitudes to the people instead of firm rebukes to sick leaders get no support from Jeremiah–or Jesus.
• Romans 13 in the USA: Questions for thought and discussion (5/24/2020). You think the Bible says we should suck up to a corrupt fool of a president? Let’s take a closer look.
• STEM and the humanities (5/23/2020). People who know math, science, and technology can really suck at reading texts and detecting moral charlatans.
• Masking the image of God (5/22/2020). What dishonors the image of God? Covering the face with personal protective gear or filling the air with insults, slanders, and lies?
• How to love other Christians in the Age of Trump (5/21/2020). Why we should be prodding each other into paroxysms of good works.

March 2020

• In memoriam: Vinson Synan (3/18/2020). An EerdWord post marking the death of an Eerdmans author who once served a church in my home town.

Older

• Truthfulness and the Word (Christmas 2018) (12/24/2018). To honor the incarnation of the Word that was in the beginning is to align our words and deeds with him in truthful speech that is congruent with grace-filled action.
• On publishing books in a world in turmoil (8/20/2018). When the foundations are shaken, what can a religious book publisher do?
• Can I trust you? (Greg Sterling) (5/21/2018). Psalm 15 gives a divinity school dean a basis upon which to charge graduates to uncompromising integrity and truthfulness in a society where both are scarce.
• In memorian: Gabe Fackre (2/9/2018). An EerdWord post marking the death of an Eerdmans author who was also one of my teachers.
• Politics, sabotage, and the meaning of government (7/30/2017). Ideological disparagement of government is not a political philosophy, it is political sabotage.
• International leadership and national self-awareness (6/2/2017). On the difference between humbling yourself and humiliating yourself (and your country).
• Streets and statues, truth and reconciliation (5/21/2017). New Orleans mayor Mitch Landrieu’s exemplary speech on Confederate statues prompts me to reflect on growing up in territory soaked in Civil War memories.
• Faithful stewardship? (3/4/2017) How Christians can support trashing the environment and gutting environmental protection is beyond me.
• On the impossibility of failing to condemn anti-Semitism (2/18/2017). President Trump’s rude rebuff of a question from a Jewish reporter about increasing threats of anti-Semitic violence is absolutely inexcusable.
• Rebuke-slogans that I will not use, and what I think we must say instead (1/21/2017). “Not my president!” “Get over it!” Or how about some “We shall overcome”? We must overcome.
• Politics in church? (1/14/2017) A Christian who wants to keep God out of politics is probably about as thoroughly converted as a Christian who want to keep God out of his wallet.
• Politics and hope: Thoughts from Charles Mathewes (1/2/2017). How to be thoughtful and hopeful in the face of political challenges and adversity.
• Tu quoque, yer mom!, and the way forward (12/30/2016). We are going to have to get a lot less stupid with regard to how we argue if we are ever to dig our way out of this mess.
• Hard questions, correct answers, and pastoral wisdom (12/28/2016). Pastors who give rote doctrinal answers when pastoral wisdom is needed, and parishioners who demand that they do just that, do not serve the gospel well.
• My strangely unedifying Facebook posts (12/16/2020). On building up and tearing down: my apologia for denouncing Trump as a necessary, godly, and biblical thing for a Christian pastor, teacher, or disciple to do.
• God bless America? (6/25/2016). In what sense a Christian should and should not say “God Bless America.”
• A response to Swaim’s “Stott Bowdlerized” (4/19/2016). An EerdWord post responding to an unfair review of an Eerdmans edition of a John Stott book.
• A leaf from the journal of a theological publisher (10/10/2015). Meditating on the applicability of Psalm 1 to the mission of a religious publishing company.
• Uncertainty about the book (9/4/2012) Drawing on Doron Mendels’s description of the “media revolution” launched by Eusebius of Caesarea to reflect on the potential of Christian publishing today.
• Jesus comes down the mountain (2/7/2010) Jesus walks down off the mountain of lawgiving to offer forgiveness and healing. What are we to make of that?