What does the Bible say about speaking in tongues?

Dennis Moles
Basics Of Faith, Bible, Christianitychurch, spiritual gifts, theology, tongues

The Scriptures only mention the miraculous gift of tongues-speaking in a handful of places — six, to be exact. But from these six passages, three in the book of Acts and three in the book of 1 Corinthians, it seems clear that tongues-speaking was a regular and important practice in the life of the early church.

In the first century, speaking in tongues often accompanied the initial giving of the Holy Spirit to a particular people group. We see this in Acts 2, where people from all over the world had come to Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover feast. This diverse and multilingual group was amazed when the apostles, all uneducated men from Galilee, began preaching the good news of Jesus. Instead of hearing the message in Aramaic (the common trade language of the day), each listener heard the gospel in their native language. The gift of tongues is also seen as confirmation that the Gentile (non-Jewish) believers in Caesarea[1] and the disciples of John the baptizer in Ephesus[2] had received the Holy Spirit.

In addition to these descriptive passages in Acts, we also know that the church in Corinth practiced speaking in tongues well into the last half of the first century.[3]

The passages in Acts are descriptive. They tell us what happened. The passages in 1 Corinthians are prescriptive — telling us how the gift should be practiced.

Here are just a few of the instructions the apostle Paul gives to the church at Corinth about the gift of tongues and its use:

The gift of tongues is one gift among many and not everyone will receive it.[4]
If the gift of tongues, or any other spiritual gift, is practiced apart from love it is worthless.[5]
It, along with the gifts of prophecy and knowledge, will eventually pass away.[6]
Possessing the gift of tongues should be a cause for humility, not pride.[7]
It should not be forbidden, but practiced in a way that draws the hearers toward Christ.[8]
There must be an interpreter present if the gift is used publicly; if not, then the speaker should remain quiet and speak to themselves and God.[9]
It must be practiced in an orderly and decent manner.[10]

Many things are unclear regarding the spiritual gift of tongues, and there is a great deal of disagreement among Christians regarding it as a legitimate practice for our day. But what seems abundantly clear from the Scriptures is that when God gave this good gift on the day of Pentecost, he gave it for a good purpose—to expand the gospel. It demonstrated his power to restore what was confused at Babel[11] and foreshadow the final restoration of all things.

After this I saw a vast crowd, too great to count, from every nation and tribe and people and language, standing in front of the throne and before the Lamb. They were clothed in white robes and held palm branches in their hands. And they were shouting with a great roar, “Salvation comes from our God who sits on the throne and from the Lamb!”[12] (emphasis added)

[1] Acts 10:46

[2] Acts 19:1–6

[3] 1 Corinthians 12:1–14:40

[4] 1 Corinthians 12:10, 28 & 30

[5] 1 Corinthians 13:1 & 8; 14:1

[6] 1 Corinthians 13:8

[7] 1 Corinthians 14:1–5

[8] 1 Corinthians 14:6–25 & 39

[9] 1 Corinthians 14:26–28

[10] 1 Corinthians 14:40

[11] Genesis 11:1–9

[12] Revelation 7:9–10

What Does the Bible Say About Witchcraft?

Dan Vander Lugt
Paranormal, World Religionsdemonic, drugs, preternatural, psychoactive, sorcery, supernatural, witchcraft

The Scriptures condemn all sorcery as opposed to a proper sense of dependence upon God. In Galatians 5:20, witchcraft is listed as being one of the acts of the sinful nature. The book of Revelation contains several passages that condemn sorcery in the strongest terms ( Revelation 9:21; 18:23; 21:8; 22:15 ).

The Bible asserts that only God has the right to understand the realm of the supernatural ( Genesis 40:8 ). Under Old Testament law, intrusion into the realm of the occult made one worthy of death ( Exodus 22:18 ). ¹

Interestingly, several Greek words in the New Testament that are translated “witchcraft” and “sorcery” have the root pharm, from which our words pharmacy and pharmaceuticals are derived. This root refers to “drugs, potions, and poisons.” Those who are familiar with the practice of sorcery, both among primitive tribespeople and modern occultists, know that psychoactive drugs are often used by shamans and sorcerers ² to induce dramatically altered states of consciousness that provide supernatural knowledge or contact with spirits.

1. Also see Leviticus 19:31 ; 2 Kings 21:6; 23:24 ; 1 Chronicles 10:13-14 ; Isaiah 8:19; 19:3 . Back To Article

2. Although the use of drugs as “potions” is common in sorcery and witchcraft, not all modern witches advocate the magical use of drugs. Ritual, meditation, and other magical techniques are often used in their place to produce similar effects. Back To Article

What Does the Bible Teach About Predestination?

Dan Vander Lugt
Bible, Christianityelection, heaven, Hell, predestination

It is true that verses like John 6:44-45 , Acts 13:48 , and Ephesians 1:4-5 teach that we cannot come to God unless He first draws us to Himself. Such passages make it clear that those who choose Christ are people destined beforehand to be the eternal children of God. Other passages teach that the human will is so fallen and captured by sin that only the Spirit of God can give a person a desire to know God and be freed by Him.

This is a difficult claim, and not only for people of faith. The principle of determinism is one side of a greater paradox that has defied explanation not only by Christian theologians but by atheistic philosophers as well. Both sides have struggled with two seemingly irreconcilable aspects of human experience: freedom and determinism.

The Bible holds both sides in tension without trying to resolve the problem for us. While teaching that God is in control of His universe, the Scriptures make it equally clear that He offers salvation to all and holds all accountable for the real choice of accepting or rejecting His genuine offer.

This is good, and pleases God our Savior, who wants all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth (1 Timothy 2:3-4).

For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through Him (John 3:16-17).

He . . . is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the whole world (1 John 2:2).

The Bible isn’t fatalistic. From beginning to end it is a book of hope. God has given everyone the ability of choice. Yet in the midst of our choices is this truth: We do not rule God; He rules us. We are not sovereign; He is. We are responsible to choose Him, but we are so fallen in our own sin that when we do choose Him we sense that He has mercifully enabled us to do so.

Wise King Solomon wrote about this paradox when he penned:

In his heart a man plans his course, but the Lord determines his steps (Proverbs 16:9).

A man’s steps are directed by the Lord. How then can anyone understand his own way? (Proverbs 20:24).

Only the eternal, infinite Creator is capable of reconciling both sides of this mystery. As Paul wrote in his letter to the Romans:

Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable His judgments, and His paths beyond tracing out! “Who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been His counselor?” “Who has ever given to God, that God should repay him?” For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be the glory for ever! Amen (Romans 11:33-36).

What Does the Second Commandment Teach?

Dan Vander Lugt
Bible, Ethicsgraven image, icon, image, portrait

The early Christians used images such as a fish, a lamb, and a dove as symbols to decorate their places of meeting and to mark their places of burial.

The second commandment in Exodus 20:4-6 teaches that no representation of God or anything that He has made should be an object of worship:

“You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments” (NIV).

The command “you shall not bow down to them or worship them” is the key expression in this commandment. Israel was guilty of breaking this commandment because the golden calf was made with the express intent of being an object of worship.

When the people saw that Moses was so long in coming down from the mountain, they gathered round Aaron and said, “Come, make us gods who will go before us. As for this fellow Moses who brought us up out of Egypt, we don’t know what has happened to him.”

Aaron answered them, “Take off the gold earrings that your wives, your sons and your daughters are wearing, and bring them to me.” So all the people took off their earrings and brought them to Aaron. He took what they handed him and made it into an idol cast in the shape of a calf, fashioning it with a tool. Then they said, “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt” (Exodus 32:1-4).

On the other hand, the Israelites were instructed to make two cherubim of gold for the mercy seat in the tabernacle (Exodus 25:18-22). They were to have cherubim woven into the curtains that covered the tabernacle (Exodus 26:1) and in the veil that separated the Holy Place from the Holy of Holies (v.31). God also commanded Moses to make a “bronze snake.” In order to be healed, the people of Israel were to look at it if bitten by a venomous snake (see Numbers 21:5-9; John 3:14-15). These examples imply that the second commandment does not forbid making images that depict spiritual realities—as long as such visual representations are not worshiped.

The issue of images has been a great source of controversy within the Christian church. Some church fathers, including Tertullian, Eusebius, and Augustine, condemned the artistic representation of sacred persons. Many Protestant churches do not display pictures or statues of Christ, the Virgin Mary, or other Bible characters in prominent locations in their churches.

However, some denominations continue to use images. They insist that they do not worship the images but only venerate them as the symbolic representations of essential truths. They also believe that using physical images to represent spiritual truths is patterned after the mystery in which God Himself took physical human form.

Protestants question the veneration of images because of the practical difficulty of distinguishing between the worship of God by means of the veneration of an image and the actual worship of, or “magical” use of, the image. Many Protestants also believe that attempts to realistically portray Jesus Christ detract from His reality and glory.

Jesus told the woman of Samaria, “God is Spirit, and His worshipers must worship in spirit and truth” (John 4:24). Nearly all Christians today use some symbols and images in worship. Virtually none of them believe that the realistic portrayal of natural things is a violation of the second commandment. It is important that we are faithful to our own conscience and respectfully acknowledge our differences in the spirit of Christian liberty.

What Happens to Infants and Young Children Who Die?

Dan Vander Lugt
Bible, Christianityage of accountability, baptism, conscious sin, innocence, original sin, salvation, sinful nature

Although the concept of “the age of accountability” had its beginnings early in the history of the Christian church, the Scriptures do not use this terminology. Neither does the Bible contain substantial allusions to the eternal state of babies or young children who die before they are old enough to make a conscious decision for or against Christ.

People have always been concerned about the salvation of children who die before they are old enough to clearly understand the gospel. Unfortunately, the conclusion reached by many in the early church was that infants who die without the sacrament of baptism are destined for hell—or limbo. This belief was based upon a mistaken view of baptism.

This view persisted into the Reformation. Catholics, Lutherans, and others continued to believe that infants who weren’t baptized would be condemned to hell. ¹This is a tragic distortion of biblical teaching. It is a credit to the clear thinking of John Calvin that he found such a doctrine reprehensible:

“I do not doubt that the infants whom the Lord gathers together from this life are regenerated by a secret operation of the Holy Spirit.” (Amsterdam edition of Calvin’s works, 8:522).

“I everywhere teach that no one can be justly condemned and perish except on account of actual sin; and to say that the countless mortals taken from life while yet infants are precipitated from their mothers’ arms into eternal death is a blasphemy to be universally detested.” (Institutes, Book 4, p.335).

Although infants are not capable of conscious sin in the same way as someone older ( Isaiah 7:15-16; Matthew 18:3-4 ), they have inherited natures that are contaminated by sin and in need of transformation and salvation ( Psalm 51:5; Ephesians 2:3 ). Yet, because of their dependency, trust, and innocence, Jesus not only offers young children as models for the manner in which adult sinners need to be converted, He views them in a unique way:

“Take heed that you do not despise one of these little ones, for I say to you that in heaven their angels always see the face of My Father who is in heaven.”( Matthew 18:10 ).

“Even so it is not the will of your Father who is in heaven that one of these little ones should perish.”( Matthew 18:14 ).

Further, the Scriptures clearly indicate that God does not punish children for the offenses of their fathers ( Deuteronomy 24:16; Ezekiel 18:20 ).

Therefore, we believe that those who die as infants or young children are given the gift of salvation. They aren’t given this gift because they are without sin; they, too, have inherited Adam’s curse. They are given salvation based solely on God’s grace, through the sacrificial atonement of Christ on their behalf.

“Therefore, as through one man’s offense judgment came to all men, resulting in condemnation, even so through one Man’s righteous act the free gift came to all men, resulting in justification of life. For as by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so also by one Man’s obedience many will be made righteous.” ( Romans 5:18-19 ).

Infants had nothing to do with the fact that they were heirs of Adam’s sinful nature. Therefore, it stands to reason that they can be given the gift of salvation without having consciously accepted it. Only rejection of Christ’s love on their behalf—something that cannot occur until they reach the age that conscious sin is possible—can result in their loss of Christ’s gift.

Norman Fox, The Unfolding of Baptist Doctrine, 24 “Not only the Roman Catholics believed in the damnation of infants. The Lutherans, in the Augsburg Confession, condemn the Baptists for affirming that children are saved without baptism; damnant Anabaptistas qui . . . affirmant pueros sine baptismo salvos fieri” [“they damn the Anabaptists who . . . affirm that children are saved without baptism”] and the favorite poet of Presbyterian Scotland [Robert Burns], in his Tam O Shanter, names among objects from hell, Twa spanlang, wee, unchristened bairns. The Westminster Confession, in declaring that elect infants dying in infancy are saved, implies that non elect infants dying in infancy are lost. This was certainly taught by some of the framers of that creed. (Christian Theology, Augustus Strong) Back To Article

What If I Don’t Feel Love for My Stepchildren?

Allison Stevens
Relationshipsblended, children, love for, relationships, step families, stepfamilies, youth

Many stepparents confess that they don’t have deep feelings for their stepchildren. Some assume that the love they feel for their new spouse will automatically create loving feelings for their spouse’s children. As many stepparents find out, however, feelings of love for stepchildren are usually not so easy or natural. As a result, some stepparents feel guilty for not “loving” their stepchildren as much as they think they should.

¹ They try harder, but often it’s met with more disappointment and guilt.

It’s comforting — even freeing — to know that stepparents aren’t obligated to feel strong attachment to their stepchildren. While affectionate feelings are ideal in relationships, they are not necessary to cultivating healthy relationships with stepchildren.

Our actions of love and service on behalf of another family member are more important than our feelings. Stepparents can make choices to love their stepchildren in tangible ways, even if they are not experiencing the warm feelings they wish they had. What matters most in a family are the acts of love demonstrated through serving one another, not the feelings of love ( 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 ; 1 John 3:16-18 ).

It’s also important to treat stepchildren with grace. That includes those who are distant, angry, and difficult to live with. Extending grace doesn’t mean that we overlook problems. Instead, we treat our stepchildren the way we want to be treated, with respect and kindness ( Matthew 7:12 ; Philippians 2:3-4 ). We give them the discipline and guidance they need, remembering that we, too, were once their age. Even during the difficult times, stepparents should do what is right and fair for their stepchildren ( Proverbs 1:3, 21:3 ; 2 Thessalonians 3:13 ). An attitude of truth with grace fosters a healthy relationship between you and your stepchildren.

Relationships are complex and for a range of reasons, some stepparents and stepchildren don’t grow close. Even so, you can be the kind of stepparent who loves his or her stepchildren through acts of service with an attitude of grace. Your loving actions, with or without the loving feelings, honor your stepchildren, encourage warmhearted rapport and model the tender heart of Jesus Christ.

To be expected, many stepchildren don’t instinctively have warm feelings of love for their stepparents. Because of strong loyalty ties to their biological parents, feelings of loss, a lack of history together, as well as other reasons, feelings of love for their stepparents don’t come automatically for many stepchildren. Back To Article

What Is a Godly Response to Domestic Abuse for an Abused Wife?

Jeff Olson
Personal Struggles, Relationshipsconsequences, divorce, fear, marriage, relationships, safety, separation, sexual abuse, suffering, support network, tough love

Domestic abuse is a one-sided relationship where a spouse regularly seeks to control and punish his or her partner. The most common sort of spousal abuse is that of the husband toward the wife. The abuse can take many forms: verbal, physical, psychological, sexual, and financial. These are the primary methods a man uses to dominate his spouse.

Regardless of the form of abuse, there are no easy answers for a wife whose husband regularly abuses her. Financial concerns, intimidating threats, personal doubts, and a husband’s ability to hide the abuse or make her feel responsibile (when she most certainly is not) are just some of the factors that leave hurting and scared wives feeling cornered with few, if any, options.

As trapped as a wife may feel, she is always free to choose the option of love. Sadly, however, too many have been taught that showing love means that a wife should passively tolerate her husband’s abuse. Love is misunderstood as getting along and not upsetting one’s husband. But a weak, fearful, compliant response usually enables her husband in his abusive patterns. Meek compliance on her part is not best for either of them. Nor does it serve the larger good of a godly marriage. Therefore, it’s not loving.

The Bible says that showing genuine love is to “Hate what is evil; cling to what is good” ( Romans 12:9 NIV). In other words, a loving reaction is both compassionate and strong. Although her husband may not see it this way, an abused wife can show that she cares for her husband by sending the strong and consistent message that she will give him consequences for his abusive words and behavior.

A consequence is something that a wife decides to do. It’s not something that she tries to make her husband do. Consequences vary depending on the seriousness of the situation. For instance, a verbally abusive episode (although still serious) often calls for her to simply end the conversation after informing her husband that she won’t continue to talk with him as long as he remains controlling or disrespectful. Situations involving physical abuse may require calling the police and pressing charges. In other cases where there is a longstanding and oppressive pattern of emotional/verbal abuse, legal separation and even divorce are legitimate options to consider, but only as a last resort.

An abused wife shouldn’t expect the situation to turn around quickly. Many abusive husbands apologize and act remorseful, but a wife shouldn’t be misled. An abusive husband’s quick remorse is often just another ploy to regain control. Other men don’t apologize at all and resist admitting the harm they are causing. They continue to minimize their sin and put the blame on others. It frequently requires an abusive husband to undergo an extended time of his own personal suffering before he will come to his senses and begin the long and difficult process of understanding and owning the damage he’s caused. Therefore, a wife committed to loving her husband should be prepared to stand her ground for a long period of time while her husband learns necessary lessons from the consequences he is suffering for his sinful behavior.

An abused wife shouldn’t try to give consequences without help. Confronting her husband without a plan or physical protection can be a grave mistake. It will likely cause her husband to feel threatened. He is used to being in control and giving him negative consequences takes that control away. Therefore, a wife should prepare for the possibility that her husband could resort to physical intimidation and violence to regain control. She needs a plan that would help ensure her safety For example, having several friends present at a point of confrontation, having an escape plan or an alternate place for her and her children to go stay, notifying the police, obtaining a restraining order.

A wife has no assurances that his suffering the consequences will wake up her husband, end the abuse, or resolve their marital problems. She can, however, begin to love as Christ loved as she gradually begins to rest in the fact that God desires what is best for her. It may take a fairly long time to really believe this, but God is there to empower her to show love, to comfort her with love, and enliven her with a purpose for her own life no matter what happens ( Psalm 23:4 ). Her heart can begin to gain a growing confidence and peace that says, “I’m not totally powerless. I’m free to love. And although it may not work out between my husband and me, I am confident that it will work out between God and me.”

What Is Buddhism?

Dan Vander Lugt
Contemporary Issues, World Religionsagnosticism, Buddha, Buddhism, Hindu, meditation, nirvana, noble eight-fold path, rebirth, reincarnation

What does Buddhism teach, and how does it differ from Christianity?

Legend tells us that Buddha was a powerful young prince who gave up his earthly position and possessions in order to seek enlightenment and salvation. Buddha lived in India approximately 600 years before Christ. He was concerned with the terrible things that were being done within the Hindu tradition, so he developed his own religious system.

Buddha taught that the question of God’s existence is meaningless. His conception of salvation is radically different than that taught by Christianity.

Buddha believed in reincarnation. He taught that every evil thing we do ties us more tightly to the cycle of rebirth. Buddha taught that a person can escape the cycle of reincarnation and enter nirvana only by following the “Noble Eight-fold Path,” a strict ethical system.

Buddhist teachings include dedication to meditation. Meditation involves emptying one’s mind of all content and learning to drift away from a consciousness of this world. Thus, it is part of the process by which a Buddhist frees himself from his attachments to this world and the cycle of reincarnation.

We should not confuse nirvana with heaven, however. For the Buddhist, nirvana is simply an escape from the world of suffering. It is like a candle that had been burning with a hot flame (representing our suffering in the cycle of reincarnation) being suddenly extinguished. Once a flame is out, there is no point in questioning where it went. To the classical Buddhist, to attain nirvana is simply to be out of existence.

Buddhism is clearly a very different religion from Christianity. It offers no personal salvation. It stands against sin and immorality, but it ignores the issue of God’s existence and our need for redemption. At its root, Buddhism is a form of agnosticism or at least practical atheism. It provides no answers about the ultimate meaning of existence. By denying the ultimate meaningfulness of life, Buddhism provides its followers with little motivation to conquer evil or to work for justice. Jesus Christ, in contrast, confronts us with the need to become right with God and to introduce a new order into the world, an order He called “the kingdom of God.”

What Is Calvinism?

Dan Vander Lugt
Christianity, World Religionschurch history, doctrine, election, John Calvin, predestination, Protestantism, Reformation

Calvinism is the main branch of the historic Reformed movement. The Reformed movement had numerous leaders, including Ulrich Zwingli (1484–1531), Martin Bucer (1491–1551), and Heinrich Bullinger (1504–1575). The name Calvinism is derived from John Calvin (1509–1564), the theological giant whose thought came to dominate the Reformed movement, both through his writing and the influence of his adopted home town, Geneva, as an international hub of Reformed education and evangelism.

The Reformed movement held three foundational theological principles in common with other Protestants: Sola Scriptura (Scripture is the primary authority for the Christian), Sola Fide/Gratia (justification is entirely by faith, through grace), and the priesthood of the believer.

Each branch of the Protestant Reformation viewed Scripture through a distinctive philosophical and interpretative grid. Martin Luther’s influence made the primary focus of Lutheranism the justification of the believer by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. Anabaptists were especially concerned with freedom of conscience, personal commitment to discipleship, and the essentially non-Christian nature of secular society. Calvinism’s organizing principle was the sovereignty and glory of God: Soli Deo Gloria.

Like many of the other Reformers, Calvin was deeply influenced by Augustine’s philosophical approach to the interpretation of Scripture. Calvin was one of the most systematic in developing the implications of predestination in the terms of the philosophy of his era. He also followed Augustine’s example in aspiring to develop a comprehensive Christian worldview that encompassed church and government within one rational system. At the young age of 28, he attempted to set up a government in Geneva involving unprecedented supervision of the private lives of its citizens. Although there was resistance at first, he eventually established a Reformed government that offered a civic example for Reformed leaders all over Europe.

Calvinists didn’t call for radical separation from the world and nonparticipation in government. Nor did they establish a spiritual hierarchy like that in Roman Catholicism. Unlike Lutherans, Calvinists were reluctant to cede princes and other secular rulers power over church officials. They placed a great priority on theological, intellectual, and moral training, and their church leaders tended to be the best educated and equipped of their membership. Calvin’s view of vocation and the sanctity of secular occupations was profoundly democratic, resisting the tendency to view clergy on a higher spiritual plane than those in secular roles. In addition, the Reformed movement had little tolerance for elaborate ceremony in worship and abhorred the use of images.

All Protestant denominations, as well as the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches, acknowledge human depravity, divine predestination, the need for prevenient grace, and the mysterious interaction of divine authority and human freedom. Calvinism places a radical emphasis on predestination and attempts to work out its implications to a much greater extent than other Christian groups consider biblically appropriate or justifiable.

The principles of Calvinism were officially established at the Synod of Dort in 1618–1619 in response to the Remonstrants, a group that followed the Dutch Reformed theologian Jacob Arminius. The basic principles of Calvinism have since become associated with the acronym TULIP:

Total Depravity: Humans are spiritually dead to the extent that they must be supernaturally regenerated through the sovereign work of the Holy Spirit before they can accept God’s gracious gift of salvation.

Unconditional election: In eternity past, God chose a distinct group of human individuals to be saved and consigned the rest to be objects of His wrath. His choices were not in any way based on His foreknowledge of human actions.

Limited atonement: Christ died only for the elect, not for those God has selected for condemnation.

Irresistible grace: Those God has chosen cannot reject the gospel or resist the Holy Spirit’s supernatural work of regeneration and sanctification.

Perseverance of the saints: Because the elect are chosen by God and their faith is irresistibly enabled, they cannot depart from the faith and lose their salvation.

Not everyone agrees that the “Five Points of Calvinism” can be reconciled with Scripture. Many Christians believe that by normal rules of biblical interpretation, the “Five Points” can’t be reconciled with many passages that affirm human freedom (Isaiah 6:8; Isaiah 53:5-6; Matthew 23:37; John 3:16; John 21:17;1 Timothy 2:1-6; 1 Timothy 4:9-10; Hebrews 12:14-15; 1 Peter 5:8; 2 Peter 1:10; 2 Peter 2:1; 2 Peter 3:9; 1 John 2:2; etc.).

From its original home in Switzerland and France, Calvinist (Reformed) theology spread throughout Europe, taking root in such disparate places as England, Scotland, The Netherlands, Germany (especially the Palatinate), Bohemia, Hungary, and Transylvania. Puritans and other English groups transported Calvinism to North America. Calvinism has profoundly influenced European and American cultural development.

Today, many influential denominations hold Calvinist doctrinal positions, including the Presbyterian, the Reformed, and the United Church of Christ. Other denominations, including Anglicans and Baptists, have been strongly influenced by Calvinist thought.

What is Religion?

Dan Vander Lugt
World Religionsfaith, ideology, religion, sacred

When asked this question, most people think of traditional faith systems like Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Confucianism, and Shinto.

The answer is more complicated.

Traditional faith systems have less in common than one would think. Some are atheistic or indifferent to the possibility of God’s existence. Some are unconcerned with personal immortality. What they do have in common is concern with ultimate values, connection with a system of ritual, and the power to command reverence, admiration, and personal commitment. These characteristics set them apart as “sacred.”

Defining “religion” is complicated by the fact that newer faith systems with no direct relationship to traditional faith systems have the same “sacred” characteristics. Secular humanism, free-market capitalism, Marxism, nationalism,¹ and ethnic “tribalism” are just as religious in their practical effects as traditional faith systems. Millions of people look to nationalism, political ideology, or tribal loyalty for their spiritual values, and a large percentage are willing to die for them.

This is why it is unrealistic to apply the term “religion” only to traditional faith systems. Any institution or belief system that has “sacred” characteristics should be considered a religion.

Scholars have shown how all of the “secular” institutions and belief systems in this list function as religions, but this quotation on nationalism provides a good example: “Scholars have long noted the way that nationalism has supplanted Christianity as the predominant public religion of the West. Hayes’s 1926 essay, ‘Nationalism as a Religion,’ puts forth this idea, which in 1960 he developed into a book entitled Nationalism: A Religion. For Hayes, humans are naturally endowed with a ‘religious sense,’ a faith in a power higher than humanity that requires a sense of reverence, usually expressed in external ceremony. Hayes argues that the decline in public Christianity with the advent of the modern state left a vacuum for the religious sense that was filled by the sacralization of the nation, the ‘enthronement of the national state—la Patrie—as the central object of worship.’ According to Hayes, political religion enjoyed the double advantage of being more tangible than supernatural religion and having the physical means of violence necessary to enforce mandatory worship. Benedict Anderson similarly argues that the nation has replaced the church in its role as the primary cultural institution that deals with death. According to Anderson, Christianity’s decline in the West necessitated another way of dealing with the arbitrariness of death. Nations provide a new kind of salvation; my death is not in vain if it is for the nation, which lives on into a limitless future” (William T. Cavanaugh, The Myth of Religious Violence [Oxford Press, 2009], 114) Back To Article

What Is the Meaning of Jesus’ Teaching About Judging?

Dan Vander Lugt
Relationshipsconfrontation, discernment, discrimination, judging, judgmental, tolerance, vindictive

When Jesus said, “Do not judge, and you will not be judged,” was He implying that we should regard everyone’s viewpoint equally?

Based on Jesus’ own actions, we can be sure He didn’t mean we should ignore and tolerate evil. Jesus wasn’t passively tolerant toward people who were doing evil things and promoting evil values. He often made judgments regarding their actions and confronted them ( Matthew 21:13; 23:13-36 ; John 6:70-71; 8:39-47 ).

Jesus taught in the tradition of the Old Testament prophets who consistently confronted evil—even at the risk of their lives ¹ ( 2 Samuel 12:1-12 ; 1 Kings 18:18 ). Like the prophets, Jesus illustrated that love is sometimes expressed through confrontation. If we love our neighbors as ourselves, we must at times be as willing to compassionately confront evil and self-destructiveness in their character as we are in our own. A father who gives his children anything they want spoils them. Likewise, our heavenly Father would ruin us if He set no limits for us and indulged our every whim. Love for our neighbor involves the same principle. There are occasions when God requires us to confront serious error and sin.

When we confront sin in the right spirit, we are acting in love, not judging in the sense of Jesus’ words in this verse. When motivated by love, we won’t be self-righteous and feel that we are better in the eyes of God. A loving heart is humble, knowing that before a holy God all people are equal ( Romans 3:9,23 ;Galatians 3:22 ; 1 John 1:8 ).

Judging, as Jesus condemned it in these verses, is unforgiving condemnation—a hypercritical, self-righteous, vindictive spirit that continually seeks to uncover the faults of others while overlooking one’s own sins.²

Jesus’ warning against this kind of judging emphasizes that any measure we use to judge other people will be used against us. He said, “For with the same measure that you use, it will be measured back to you” ( Luke 6:38 ). Jesus teachings elsewhere ( Matthew 6:14-15; 18:23-35 ) made it clear that self-righteous, unforgiving people will not be forgiven by God. Their rigid, unforgiving hearts demonstrate that they aren’t the children of God ( 1 John 3:14-15 ). Their refusal to forgive others demonstrates that they have never experienced the purifying power of the Holy Spirit in their own life.

Personal experience illustrates the truth of Jesus’ words. When we judge other people self-righteously and vindictively, they will respond to us in the same way. In contrast, if we are patient and compassionate, the people in our lives tend to overlook our minor failures and flaws.

More subtle, but no less damaging, is the internal effect of an unforgiving, judgmental spirit. Since we naturally project our own attitude upon others, judgmental people usually assume that other people are as vindictive and judgmental as they. This puts them under the crushing pressure of living up to their own harsh, unforgiving expectations.

Jesus’ words in this verse don’t require us to be passive in the face of evil. They require us to confront it in the spirit of compassion, humility, and love.

In fact, Jesus specifically identified Himself with the Old Testament prophets and told His enemies that they hated Him for the same reason that their fathers hated and killed the prophets ( Matthew 23:29-37 ).Back To Article
Jesus made this clear a few verses later when He said, “And why do you look at the speck in your brother’s eye, but do not perceive the plank in your own eye” Or how can you say to your brother, “Brother, let me remove the speck that is in your eye,” when you yourself do not see the plank that is in your own eye? Hypocrite! First remove the plank from your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck that is in your brother’s eye ( Luke 6:41-42 ). Back To Article

What Is the Rapture?

Dan Vander Lugt
Bible, Christianitycatching up, future events, prophecy, rapture

From the earliest days of the church, Christians have anticipated a day in which Jesus will return for all those who believe in Him. This hope is rooted in many Scripture passages, all of which make it clear that the issue is not whether Jesus will return but when.

The term rapture is derived from 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18 . Like other texts referring to Christ’s return, this passage speaks of Jesus returning in power and glory to resurrect the dead. But more clearly than any other passage, it tells of His “catching up” of believers.

The Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And thus we shall always be with the Lord. Therefore comfort one another with these words (1 Thessalonians 4:16-18).

The term rapture itself is taken from Jerome’s 4th century Latin translation, the Vulgate. He translated the Greek term for “caught up” with the Latin term that had the same meaning — rapiemur. Rapiemur is from rapto, the word from which rapture has been derived.

Not all Christians use the term rapture, but for many Christians this term aptly represents the glorious moment when Jesus will appear in the sky to “catch up” His church before returning to rescue a remnant of Israel and set up His kingdom on earth.

What Is the Underlying Cause of Violence?

Dan Vander Lugt
Contemporary Issues, Personal Strugglesenvy, hatred, resentment, scapegoating, violence

The human race didn’t create itself, nor can it find fulfillment in itself. Human life is meaningful only in relationship to God (Deuteronomy 8:3; John 4:13-14; 6:32-35, 49-50). Originally, Adam and Eve enjoyed a relationship with God in the Garden of Eden. When they chose the path of distrust and disobedience, they fell headlong into fear, loneliness, meaninglessness, and despair. They were exiled into a dangerous world where living became a struggle (Genesis 3:16-19, 22-24). Cain took his parents’ distrust and disobedience a step further by hating and killing the brother who sought to restore something of his parents’ lost relationship with God.

Bearing a mark ensuring that anyone who killed him would suffer vengeance seven times over, Cain founded the first city (Genesis 4:17) along with a social order that could be preserved only through fear of vengeance and retribution. It wasn’t long before Cain’s great-great-great grandson Lamech defiantly boasted that while God might avenge Cain’s murder seven times, he could personally avenge himself seventy-seven times (Genesis 4:23-24).¹ Soon civilization was so corrupt and violent that God destroyed it in a flood, sparing only one just man and his family (Genesis 6:9-13)

But human violence didn’t end with the flood. The offspring of the patriarchs through whom God intended to establish His kingdom (Genesis 12:1-3) took possession of the Promised Land and established a city at Mount Zion. Although the bearers of the promise, they soon filled their own city with such violence that God brought judgment against them by means of even more violent nations (Ezekiel 7:23-27; Matthew 23:34-24:2).

Like Cain, the people of Noah’s day, and the Israelites, people of every generation are alienated from God. Without a connection of love and trust with the Creator, they are also alienated from each other and themselves. Yet rather than turning to God for affirmation and meaning, they seek it in social convention. Further, just as Cain hated Abel, people hate genuine prophets and honest men and choose leaders willing to nurture their illusions. The more their leaders flatter and mislead them, the more the people admire and honor them (1 Samuel 8:6-9).

Founded on falsehood, culture is deeply flawed, doomed to fail (Lamentations 2:14; Micah 3:11; Luke 6:39; Isaiah 30:10; Isaiah 56:10; Jeremiah 5:31), and satanic at its core (Ephesians 6:12). When consensus crumbles, disillusionment brings fear, isolation, suspicion, and rage. Just like Adam and Eve, we dread exposure of our “nakedness”—our pretense to purpose when we have no purpose, our pretense to strength when we have no strength, our pretense to peace when we have no peace, our pretense to love when we have no love. When the social contract fails, the violence of our hearts is unleashed in a desperate search for a scapegoat to blame.

Perhaps the scapegoat will be a politician or political party that was once viewed with adulation. Perhaps it will be an ethnic or religious minority. Perhaps it will be an “enemy” nation or alliance of nations.

Unwilling to accept responsibility and unwilling to turn to God, we unleash chaos. At this point, the dehumanizing, demoniacal madness of Saul (1 Samuel 18:10-11; 19:9-10; 20:33) and the dweller of the Gadarene tombs (Mark 5:1-5) becomes manifest. We objectify and kill fellow human beings like insects and vermin. Our “enemies” respond in kind.

Yet our greatest rage, like the rage of Cain, is roused when someone like Abel exposes our need for redemption.

In Matthew 18:21-22, Jesus apparently has Lamech’s boast in mind. In sharp contrast with a social order founded on vengeance and hatred, Jesus said that his disciples should forgive those who sin against them “seventy times seven.” Back To Article

What Is the Unpardonable Sin?

Dan Vander Lugt
Bible, Christianityhardening one's heart, rejection of Jesus Christ, sin against the Holy Spirit, unpardonable sin

There are thousands of people who are terrified that they may have committed the unpardonable sin. This is a shame, considering the fact that their very repentance (or desire to repent) is evidence that the Holy Spirit is still working in their lives. If God had given up on them,they would have no desire for a right relationship with Him.

It is important that we have an understanding of the historical context in which Christ spoke of the sin that could not be forgiven. In Matthew 12:32 , Jesus said that speaking against the Son of Man can be forgiven but speaking against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven. Jesus was referring to the sin of those Pharisees who stood at the crossroads of redemptive history and saw the evidence of Christ’s goodness, but still accused Him of being under the influence of an evil spirit. They saw the Messiah perform miracles of goodness and love,and they called it the work of Satan. They did nothing less than attribute the work of the Holy Spirit to satanic power!

These Pharisees stood in a unique place. While claiming to be God’s representatives to Israel, they deliberately and willfully attributed Jesus’ power to Satan. They did this in the face of direct evidence that Jesus was in fact the sinless Son of God. It was a shocking act of wickedness.

People living today aren’t in the position to personally reject Jesus Christ in the same way the Pharisees did. If there is an unforgivable sin today, it would be the sin of consistently and continually denying the truth of the gospel throughout one’s life, gradually hardening one’s heart against God and His revelation of Himself in Christ.

Remember this important point: No one has committed the unpardonable sin (the sin against the Holy Spirit) if he or she is concerned about having committed it. A person who sins against the Holy Spirit has no love for God or any desire to be reconciled to Him.

What Is Witchcraft?

Dan Vander Lugt
Paranormal, World Religionsarchetypal, magic, malevolent intent, occult, preternatural power, sorcery, warlock, witch craze, witchcraft, wizard

The Encyclopedia Britannica defines witchcraft as:

The human exercise of alleged supernatural powers for antisocial, evil purposes (so-called black magic). A female held to have such powers may be called a witch or sorceress, the male counterpart being named wizard, sorcerer, or warlock. Belief in witchcraft survives in modern technologically developed cultures and remains a potent factor in most nonliterate societies.

Webster’s Third New International Dictionary defines witchcraft in the following way:

a. an act or instance of employing sorcery especially with malevolent intent: a magical rite or technique; b. the exercise of supernatural powers: alleged intercourse with the devil or with a familiar.

and the Colliers Encyclopedia states:

Witchcraft may be defined for general purposes as the use of supposed supernatural power for antisocial ends. In primitive societies where magic is an accepted part of religious ritual, the witch is the unauthorized, and especially the malevolent, practitioner.

Notice that these works refer to witchcraft as the use of sorcery and supernatural power for malevolent intent. Witchcraft of this type exists in nearly every cultural setting. This judgment isn’t merely the conclusion of “Christian culture.” Historian Jeffrey B. Russell, who is not at all hostile toward modern Neopaganism, states:

Folk tales, like dreams, express the concerns of the unconscious in symbols; the meaning of the figure of the witch, like the meaning of any symbol, varies with the story. Usually, however, she represents an elemental natural force possessing enormous and unexpected powers against which a natural person is unable to prepare or defend himself, a force not necessarily evil, but so alien and remote from the world of mankind as to constitute a threat to the social ethical, and even physical order of the cosmos. This manner of portraying the witch is very ancient and probably archetypal. This witch is neither a simple sorceress, nor a demonolater, nor a pagan. She is a hostile presence from another world. The gut terror inspired by this archetypal witch helps to explain the excesses of hatred and fear that welled up during the witch craze.

What Kind of Relationships Will We Have in Heaven?

Dan Vander Lugt
Bible, Relationshipsfuture life, heaven, intimacy, recognition

Not many details about recognition and relationships in heaven are given in Scripture. There are, however, several inferences which show that we will recognize one another in heaven and that we will remember our former relationships.

The rich man recognized Lazarus in “Abraham’s bosom,” even though he was in a different place and separated by a great gulf ( Luke 16:19-31 ). In addition, the disciples recognized Moses and Elijah at the transfiguration, even though these two men had lived many centuries before ( Matthew 17:1-5 ).

The apostle Paul said that we will have more knowledge in heaven than we have now. This may indicate that we will know and recognize more people in heaven than here on earth ( 1 Corinthians 13:12 ). He also said that for him it was “far better” to depart and to be with Christ than to remain in his body on earth ( 2 Corinthians 5:6-8 ; Philippians 1:22-23 ).

In all of these Scriptures, heaven is depicted as a place of greater experience than we now know on earth and with more knowledge and understanding, joy and delight. It will be a place of celebration of the interconnectedness between God, us, and one another. Part of the joy of heaven will probably be the unfolding of the tapestry of life and viewing how God has masterfully interwoven our lives together.

What about our marriage relationships? While the Bible teaches that the marriage relationship will change after the resurrection ( Matthew 22:23-33 ), it is safe to assume that because of the very nature of heaven, the quality of the relationship between a man and a woman will be better in heaven than it was on earth — even if they are no longer husband and wife. Certainly the joys of heaven will far exceed the pleasures of marital intimacy.

What Should I Think of what I Experience in Dreams?

Dan Vander Lugt
Bible, Paranormal, Personal Strugglesdreams, fantasies, guilt, lucid dreams, nightmares, subconscious

Scientific evidence is accumulating that dreams have vital physiological and psychological functions. Our dreams apparently play an important role in creativity and problem solving.

¹ This and other scientific discoveries about the important physiological role of dreaming show that the mysterious activity of dreaming is “hardwired” into us by God’s design, for our benefit. For that reason, we shouldn’t fear dreaming.

The Bible illustrates how highly the Hebrews and other ancient people esteemed dreams and those who could interpret them (Genesis 41; Daniel 2), and that they viewed dreams at times as natural (Ecclesiastes 5:3), as evil (Deuteronomy 13:1-2; Jeremiah 29:8), or as divine revelation (Genesis 28:12-13; Genesis 37:5,9). ( See the ATQ article Is it possible that some dreams contain important symbolic meaning—or even a message from God?)

Like the daydreams and thoughts that drift into our minds in our conscious state, dream fantasies generally seem spontaneous. Sexual activity, rage, and violence often occur abruptly and uncontrollably in dreams. In dreams, all of us do things we certainly would never do if we were awake. We also have nightmares that seem to express our deepest fear and insecurity.

Many people describe having had “lucid dreams.” In lucid dreams, we are aware that we are dreaming and are sometimes able to choose our actions. Some early Christian ascetic monks actually believed that we are responsible not only for what we do in our waking state, but for what we do in our dreams. These monks withdrew from society and dedicated themselves to an isolated life of grueling hardship. Their solitary focus on subjective experience may have made them aware of some things that most of us don’t experience.

Occultists in many cultures have been interested in lucid dreams and have sometimes sought to cultivate lucid dreams and increase control over their fantasies. Such efforts to use occult technique to gain control over one’s dreams are sinister. At the very least, they focus attention away from the real world into a fantasy. At the worst, it may open one’s mind to overtly demonic or subconsciously destructive influences. (See the ATQ articles Why Is It Dangerous for Subconscious Images to Penetrate Our Waking Consciousness? and Why Are Channeling and Mediumship Dangerous?)

To the degree we are aware that we are dreaming and to the extent that our dreams are under our control—that is, lucid—we may be responsible for our actions and shaping our character by our choices.

However, the vast majority of dreams aren’t lucid. Most dreams are fantasies created by our sleeping brain from random memories. In certain ways we feel especially vulnerable when we are sleeping. But God never sleeps. He is always guarding and protecting us (Psalm 121:1-3).

Scripture nowhere indicates that God holds us responsible for what happens in our dreams. But our dreams should serve as a vivid reminder of how dependent we are on His love and grace.

See the papers, “Sleep Inspires insight” in Nature magazine, January 2004 (Wagner, Gais, Haider, Verleger, and Born, from research at the University of Luebeck) and “REM, not incubation, improves creativity by priming associative networks” (Cai, Mednick, Harrison, Kanady, and Mednick). (The Mednick paper is at http://www.saramednick.com/htmls/pdfs/Cai_PNAS_2009) Back To Article

What Should the Church do with a Christian Swindler?

Dan Vander Lugt
Christian life, Christianitychurch discipline, forgiveness, retribution, swindling

Earthly restitution isn’t always possible. King David could never undo the consequences of his sin with Bathsheba because his arranged murder of Uriah was irrevocable. On the other hand, when Zacchaeus became a follower of Christ, he expressed a willingness to make more than a full restitution to those he had abused in his office as a Roman tax collector. The basic question is therefore not whether we can make restitution, but whether we are willing to do so if it is within our ability.

In Matthew 5:23-24, Jesus placed the emphasis on reconciliation:

Therefore if you bring your gift to the altar, and there remember that your
brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the
altar, and go your way. First be reconciled to your brother, and then
come and offer your gift (NKJV).

William Barclay gives some important background for understanding Jesus’ words:

But two most important things have to be noted. First, it was never held that sacrifice could atone for deliberate sin, for what the Jews called “the sins of a high hand.” If a man committed a sin unawares, if he was swept into sin in a moment of passion when self-control broke, then sacrifice was effective; but if a man deliberately, defiantly, callously and open-eyed committed sin, then sacrifice was powerless to atone. Second, to be effective, sacrifice had to include confession of sin and true penitence; and true penitence involved the attempt to rectify any consequences sin might have had. The great Day of Atonement was held to make atonement for the sins of the whole nation, but the Jews were quite clear that not even the sacrifices of the Day of Atonement could avail for a man unless he was first reconciled to his neighbour. The breach between man and God could not be healed until the breach between man and man was healed. If a man was making a sin-offering for instance, to atone for a theft, the offering was held to be completely unavailing until the thing stolen had been restored; and, if it was discovered that the thing had not been restored, then the sacrifice had to be destroyed as unclean and burned outside the Temple. The Jews were quite clear that a man had to do his utmost to put things right himself before he could be right with God (The Gospel of Matthew, pp. 139-40, emphasis mine).

An intelligent white-collar criminal who knows how to evade significant punishment and continue to live more affluently than people he has
exploited demonstrates no repentance or desire for reconciliation. If such an individual is able to make significant restitution but is unwilling, a church that neglects to hold him accountable enables his sin.

What View Did Early Christians Have of Involvement in the Military?

Dan Vander Lugt
Christian life, Contemporary IssuesChrist, Christians And Military Service, ethics, military, war

At the time of Christ, Roman power had neared its peak. Roman troops controlled a vast area stretching from England to the Black Sea and from the Rhine River to the deserts of North Africa. Though it was the most powerful government in the world, the Republic had fallen and been replaced by military dictators. Rome was notorious for its decadence and corruption. In spite of Roman corruption, the apostle Paul clearly set forth the principle that secular government is God’s agent to maintain the rule of law on earth (Romans 13:1-7). Because Paul addressed this principle to the Christian community in Rome, it is clear that the fact of governmental corruption doesn’t overrule the need for governmental authority. Human nature as it is, it’s hard to imagine civilized life without the influence of governmental power through police, courts, and legislatures. In fact, it was Roman justice, as flawed as it was, that protected Paul from certain death at the hands of his fellow Jews (Acts 23).

It is interesting that in spite of Rome’s corruption, her centurions were widely respected as men of competence and integrity. Polybius wrote that centurions “were chosen by merit, and so were men remarkable not so much for their daring courage as for their deliberation, constancy, and strength of mind.” All of the centurions mentioned in the New Testament are praised as Christians, God-fearers, or men of good character (Matthew 8:5,8,13;27:54; Mark 15:39,44-45; Luke 7:2,6;23:47; Acts 10:1,22;21:32;22:25-26;23:17,23;24:23;27:1,6,11,31,43;28:16).

Although honorable men of a pagan background served as officers in the Roman army, the early church was opposed to Christians in the military. Kenneth Scott Latourette wrote:

For the first three centuries, no Christian writing which has survived to our time condoned Christian participation in war. Some Christians held that for them all bloodshed, whether as soldiers or as executioners, was unlawful. At one stage in its history the influential Church of Alexandria seems to have looked askance upon receiving soldiers into its membership and to have permitted enlistment in the legions only in exceptional circumstances (A History of Christianity, pp. 242-243).

Adolf von Harnack summarized the reasons for Christian opposition to involvement in the military:

The shedding of blood on the battlefield, the use of torture in the law-courts, the passing of death-sentences by officers and the execution of them by common soldiers, the unconditional military oath, the all-pervading worship of the Emperor, the sacrifices in which all were expected in some way to participate, the average behaviour of soldiers in peace-time, and other idolatrous and offensive customs—all these would constitute in combination an exceedingly powerful deterrent against any Christian joining the army on his own initiative.

The early church, having a realistic view of the necessity for governmental authority but no illusions about its primary loyalty to Christ, didn’t approve Christian military involvement. Only after Constantine’s conversion made Christianity the favored religion in the empire did a destructive process begin that merged the religious authority of the church with the political and judicial power of the state. Soon Christians could no longer easily distinguish between the authority of Christ and of Caesar–usually with tragic consequences

What Was Paul’s “Thorn”?

Dan Vander Lugt
Bible, Christianitysickness, suffering, thorn, weakness

What was the “thorn” that Paul referred to in 2 Corinthians 12:7?

We do not know exactly what the affliction was that Paul called his “thorn in the flesh.” It probably was a physical malady. There is some evidence in Scripture that Paul had an eye problem. He spoke of the large letters he used in writing to the Galatians (Galatians 6:11). He also declared that the Galatians would have plucked out their own eyes and given them to him (Galatians 4:13-15). Some have suggested that this may have been a chronic eye disease or an injury suffered when he was stoned in Lystra (Acts 14:19,20).

Paul also referred to his “thorn” as “a messenger of Satan.” We know that the devil afflicted Job with a physical malady (Job 2:7) and caused physical deformity to a woman (Luke 13:16). We therefore have scriptural support for the idea that the “messenger of Satan” can be something physical.

Those who believe that the thorn was something other than a physical affliction point out that it was sent to “buffet” Paul (2 Corinthians 12:7), that is to prick the apostle’s arrogance which may have lingered on after he had been converted from Pharisaism. Some scholars prefer this interpretation and think Paul referred to Alexander the coppersmith (2 Timothy 4:14), Hymenaeus, and Philetus (2 Timothy 2:17), as the “thorns” who were adversaries of the work and therefore doing Satan’s business.

Those who hold to this view also refer to Numbers 33:55, where Moses warned the children of Israel as they were about to enter Canaan, “But if you do not drive out the inhabitants of the land from before you, then it shall be that those whom you let remain shall be irritants in your eyes and thorns in your sides, and they shall harass you in the land where you dwell.”

Another example of such a “thorn” would be Elymas, the sorcerer mentioned in Acts 13, who tried to turn the proconsul, Sergius Paulus, away from the faith (v.8) and was addressed by Paul as “you son of the devil” (v.10). And in 1 Thessalonians 2:18, Satan is said to have prevented Paul more than once from visiting the Thessalonians.

The fact of the matter is that the Bible doesn’t identify Paul’s thorn. God must have had a good reason for not giving this information. He probably left it this way so that people with various kinds of physical and spiritual problems might identify with Paul and experience the grace that God has promised (2 Corinthians 12:9).

What Was the Purpose of Animal Sacrifices?

Dan Vander Lugt
Bible, World Religionsatonement, covenant, repentance, sacrifice, sins

According to Scripture, sacrifice was instituted and approved by God. But when worship of the true God was abandoned, blood sacrifice was transformed into a way to magically appease, manipulate, and avert the anger of imaginary gods. The apostle Paul wrote:

Because, although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened. Professing to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man and birds and four-footed animals and creeping things. Therefore God also gave them up to uncleanness, in the lusts of their hearts, to dishonor their bodies among themselves, who exchanged the truth of God for the lie, and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen (Romans 1:21-25).

And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a debased mind, to do those things which are not fitting (Romans 1:28).

(See the ATQ article, Why Did Ancient Pagans Practice Blood Sacrifices?)

Faithful sacrifice in worship of the true God was reinstated at the time of the Flood (Genesis 8:20-21) and confirmed when God established a special covenant with a man of faith named Abraham.

Now the Lord had said to Abram: “Get out of your country, from your family and from your father’s house, to a land that I will show you. I will make you a great nation; I will bless you and make your name great; and you shall be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and I will curse him who curses you; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (Genesis 12:1-3).

Faith in God’s goodness and grace became the bridge between sinful creatures and a holy God ( Hebrews 11:6-19 ). Abraham demonstrated his genuine faith by his radical obedience. He was willing to offer his long-awaited, precious son, Isaac, as a sacrifice to God (Genesis 22:1-3). God didn’t dispute or deny human unworthiness, or imply that death wasn’t the necessary price for atonement. It was necessary, after all, for Abraham to be willing to bring Isaac as a sacrifice. But God didn’t require Isaac to die. God Himself provided a sacrifice—a ram (Genesis 22:12-13)—to die in his place.

On the mountain top in Moriah (traditionally identified as the temple mount in Jerusalem), God revealed His grace and mercy in a way that—for Abraham and his descendants—clearly ended the practice of human sacrifice. In the Old Testament law, God clearly forbad that man shed human blood in sacrifice (Deuteronomy 18:9-12).

Since God was now known as both holy and merciful, sacrifice was no longer to be motivated by superstitious fear. It was to be the expression of conscious acknowledgment of guilt, ¹ of belonging to God, and of desiring to be restored to fellowship with Him. ²

The Old Testament law ( Leviticus 16 ) introduced the ritual of atonement, in which the life of a goat was accepted by God as a symbolic substitution for the lives of a corrupt people who were individually and corporately worthy of death. But Old Testament sacrifices were not in themselves sufficient to atone for sin. They were sufficient only to point forward to the coming of the Messiah who would die in atonement for the sins of the world. Hebrews 10:4 declares,

It is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.

Further, Hebrews 10:10-14 tells us that “by one offering He (Christ) has perfected for all time those who are sanctified.”

One of the main purposes of Old Testament law was to make the people of Israel conscious of the great gap between their own weakness and corruption and the expectations of a Holy God ( Romans 5:12-20 ). Old Testament sacrifices accustomed the Jews to acknowledge their guilt and their need for divine grace and forgiveness. But it was only through Christ’s perfect life and death that actual and permanent atonement was made for the sins of an evil world. By entering His own created universe and assuming the penalty for its sin, His infinite suffering has atoned for the natural and moral evils that resulted from His creatures’ freedom to sin (Luke 22:20 ; John 6:53 ; Romans 3:25 ; 1 Corinthians 10:16 ; Ephesians 2:13 ;Hebrews 9:14 ; 1 Peter 1:18-19 ). Jesus Christ was a human sacrifice, but not a sacrifice offered up by fallen mankind to God. He offered Himself up freely as a sacrifice by God to God for mankind ³ ( John 3:16 ; John 11:27-33 ; Romans 8:32 ; 1 John 4:9 ).

Unlike the sacrifices of the pagans, Old Testament sacrifices had to be offered in a spirit of humility and repentance ( Numbers 15:22-31 ; Isaiah 66:1-4 ; Amos 5:21-24 ). It wasn’t enough that they simply be performed as magical means of appeasement. Back To Article
“The object of the sacrifice is to establish a moral relation between the man as a personal being and God the absolute Spirit, to heal the separation between God and man that had been caused by sin. Now, as free personality is the soil out of which sin has sprung, so must the atonement be a work rooted in free personality as well. Being outside the sphere of moral freedom, the animal may be regarded as innocent and sinless; but for the same reason it cannot possess innocence in the true sense of the word and thus have a righteousness that could form an adequate satisfaction for the sin and guilt of man” (New Unger’s Bible Dictionary, p.1100). Back To Article
“Who makes the propitiation? In a pagan context, it is always human beings who seek to avert the divine anger either by the meticulous performance of rituals, or by the recitation of magic formula, or by the offering of sacrifices (vegetable, animal, or even human). Such practices are thought to placate the offended deity. But the gospel begins with the outspoken assertion that nothing we can do, say, offer, or even contribute can compensate for our sins or turn away God’s anger. There is no possibility of persuading, cajoling, or bribing God to forgive us, for we deserve nothing at His hands but judgment. Nor, as we have seen, has Christ by His sacrifice prevailed upon God to pardon us. No, the initiative has been taken by God Himself, in His sheer mercy and grace” (John Stott, The Atonement). Back To Article

What Would Be a Healthy Response to My Guilt Over Past Sins?

Dan Vander Lugt
Personal Struggles, Relationshipsawareness, guilt, regrets, remorse, spirituality

As you look back, you are filled with guilt and remorse over the sin you committed, either as an unbeliever or a backslidden or immature Christian. It’s important to remember that your sin and backsliding or immaturity isn’t unique. Israel as a nation was often unfaithful to her covenant relationship with Jehovah. Peter denied the Lord, wept bitterly, and later was publicly restored (Matthew 26:69-75; John 21). The Lord also reproached the believers in Ephesus because they had left their first love, and He urged them to “remember,” “repent,” and “return” (Revelation 2:1-7).

Even though the Bible tells us we receive a new life when we believe, we are still influenced by the “flesh,” the “law of sin” within us (Romans 7). The old nature is still part of us and continues to affect us (1 Corinthians 3:1-3; Ephesians 4:22).

I am a pastor’s son, but I never experienced genuine conversion until I was in my mid-20s. By that time I had already attended a year of seminary. I have many regrets that deeply trouble me. The more spiritual vision we gain, the more we sorrow over the wrongs we’ve done.

Accordingly, there are three facts I’d like you to consider:

First, I doubt that anything you did was worse than the things committed by two of the greatest men of faith, David and Paul. David not only committed adultery, but had a good man killed to conceal his sin. Paul persecuted and murdered Christians. Yet both Paul and David were forgiven, though their past sins caused them legitimate sorrow. Our salvation has nothing to do with the extent of our past sins. It is entirely based on the infinite suffering of the Son of God himself, who fully and willingly bore the consequences of all our evil.

Second, sorrow over past sins has an important function. It softens the heart and engenders humility and compassion, qualities essential to the work of the kingdom. Consider the words of the prophet Ezekiel:

A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh (Ezekiel 36:26 KJV).

All of us need to realize the fools we were before we were willing to surrender our hearts to the Lord.

Third, don’t overlook the power of God’s grace. Even if we can’t repair the damage we have caused, God is able to bring healing and restoration in ways that would be impossible for us to anticipate. We can still pray for the healing and restoration of those we’ve injured.

Remember the parable of the prodigal son (Luke 15:11-32). God is always ready to welcome us as long as we are willing to humble ourselves and turn towards home.

What’s the Difference Between Normal Marital Conflict and Abuse?

Jeff Olson
Personal Struggles, Relationshipsabuse, accusing, belittling, bullying, complaining, conflict, confrontation, excuses, husband, intimidation, jealous, marital abuse, marital issues, marriage, narcissistic, playing the victim, possessive, punishing, relationships, threats, whining, wife

Every marriage experiences some degree of conflict. Most marriages experience strong differences of opinion. Arguments are not uncommon. Spouses are occasionally grumpy and unkind to each other. Spouses lose their tempers and can sometimes blow up at each other. Everyone is capable of being hypercritical or falsely accusing his or her mate. Small skirmishes for control over a particular issue can break out from time to time. These are all a part of the normal tension and conflict that inevitably arise when an imperfect man and woman join their lives together in a marital relationship.

Marital abuse, whether or not it involves physical violence, is very different. One key difference is that marital abuse is a one-sided, oppressive relationship where one spouse establishes a pattern of unhealthy control. Even though there might seem to be times of peace and affection, these good times linger in the shadows of the subtle or not so subtle controlling tactics an abusive mate uses for the purpose of getting his or her own way.

For example, an abusive spouse may prevent his (or her) partner from seeing family members, going out with friends, or going back to college. He may try to regulate the people his spouse talks to, where his spouse goes, or how and when his spouse spends money. He may demand all of his mate’s attention. He may put his spouse on an irrational guilt trip for talking to or doing things with other people. He may consider his spouse’s needs as an infringement on or a betrayal of his own needs. He may act insanely jealous and falsely accuse his partner of cheating on him. He may constantly monitor and check up on the whereabouts of his spouse. Many are known to lash out and belittle their spouse when they don’t get their own way or when they feel betrayed or abandoned. Others threaten to divorce or to physically hurt their spouse or destroy a cherished possession, all in an effort to intimidate and punish their mate.

While normal marital conflict can at times seem far worse than what it really is, it tends to lessen in time because of the loving foundation of the relationship—“love covers over a multitude of sins” (1 Peter 4:8). That important foundation is painfully missing in a marriage marked by abuse. Because of the extreme levels of selfishness at work in the heart of the abusive spouse, marital abuse, if not confronted, will only escalate and get worse over time.

Another important difference is that normal marital conflict and marital abuse require different levels of intervention. While some married couples who experience normal conflict may require help from an objective and wise third party, many can eventually work through their differences by themselves within an atmosphere of mutual love, consideration, and forgiveness. Marital abuse, however, is a different story. Due to safety concerns and an abuser’s excessive self-focus and chronic complaints of being a victim, addressing marital abuse and restoring the relationship is a much more difficult and complicated process. It requires outside help from those who can provide guidance, support, and protection for an abused spouse as the abuser is confronted and held accountable.

While most abusive spouses will insist on joint-marital counseling once their pattern of domination and control is exposed, this is the last place to begin addressing marital abuse. For his or her own reasons, neither spouse is ready for the kind of honest and open conversation that is needed for marital counseling to be beneficial. Almost without exception, abusive spouses will derail the counseling process by trying to micromanage it. And most are far from being able to discuss their pattern of control without acting like a victim. On the other side, abused spouses will not feel safe enough to openly share their true thoughts and concerns, let alone admit to any faults they may have. They are understandably afraid that their partners will shut them down, twist their words, or later make them pay. Years of being controlled have also taught an abused spouse to see things mostly through the eyes of her (or his) spouse in order to avoid doing something “wrong.” Marriage counseling will not be beneficial until abused spouses recover the ability to think for themselves and the freedom to show up as a person in the relationship.

Abusive spouses who are truly serious about stopping their pattern of domestic abuse will agree to pursue a path of individual counseling (separate from their spouse). Their individual counseling is designed to increase their awareness and insight into how they try to control their spouse, the damage it has caused to their marital relationship, and why they feel such a deep and pressing need to dominate their partner and maintain a victim mentality. Joint-marital counseling is only possible once abusers stop playing the victim in the marriage, end all of their excuses, and consistently own up to their patterns of control and the harm it has caused. Only then are they ready to have honest conversations with their spouses and to continue their own journey of working through and finding healing and freedom from their own personal wounds and insecurities.

To read more about physical and non-physical abuse in marriage and what can be done to address it, please feel free to order our booklets When Violence Comes Home , When Words Hurt, and When Power Is Misused.

What’s the Difference Between Sinful Anger and Godly Anger?

Tim Jackson
Bible, Christian life, Personal Strugglesanger, personal struggles, understanding

Like everything else in our lives, our emotions have been discolored by sin. Most emotions reflect a blend of both self-centeredness and goodness. If we are waiting for a moment of selfless purity to express our anger, it will probably never happen. However, knowing that we are flawed can lead us into deeper dependence on the One who gave us emotions in the first place. The Holy Spirit residing within us helps us monitor and learn from our emotions.

When monitoring our anger, it is important to understand that much of our anger is fueled by a hatred of injustice, whether real or perceived. Anger over injustice reflects the core longing for justice we all share. We are incensed when life seems unfair. We can know, however, if the anger we feel is sinful or godly by considering the provocation, goal, motivation, and timing of our anger.

Selfish anger is provoked when we believe we’ve been treated unjustly or unfairly. We want something, we don’t get it, we feel deprived, and now someone is going to pay for having treated us this way (James 4:1-4). The goal is revenge. When driven by vengeance, we demand that someone pay now for the injustice we’ve suffered. We impatiently demand immediate execution of justice according to our specifications, and refuse to allow time for God to work in the hearts of those who have offended us (James 1:19-20). Our anger becomes a caustic acid intended to burn those we feel have burned us unfairly. When offended, we can be ruthless, hard, unreasonable, and devoid of mercy in our response.

Conversely, godly anger is provoked in us when we witness persistent violations of God’s standards of justice (Psalm 119:53). There is an appropriate time to be outraged over those who hold God in contempt and mar the beauty of His creation. The goal of godly anger is to warn the person who has breached God’s divine law so that once exposed they can have the opportunity to change (Ezekiel 3:18-21). This kind of anger is like iodine, an ointment intended to purge infection and promote healing in the recipient (Proverbs 27:6). It is painful at first, but in the end, it soothes and heals.

Godly anger is motivated both by the love of Christ that works in us to extend His love to others (2 Corinthians 5:14), and by the fear of His coming execution of perfect justice (2 Corinthians 5:11). Godly anger is marked by a confidence in God’s longsuffering character (Psalm 86:15; 2 Peter 3:9), knowing that only He is qualified to carry out vengeance equitably. Godly anger refuses to resort to personal acts of revenge now, but is willing to wait for God’s wrath to be poured out against evil in His good time (Psalm 73:16-19; Romans 12:19).

Because we are to be like Christ in every way (Ephesians 4:1; 1 John 4:17), by implication we are also called to reflect His righteous anger. If we are to stand for the Father the way Jesus did, we need to stand for the things He’s for, and against the things He’s against. Godly anger reflects our Father’s passion for justice. While we rely on Him to execute final justice (Romans 12:19-21), godly anger motivates us to work for fairness and justice on behalf of those who are oppressed (Micah 6:8; Romans 12:17-18). It reflects dependence and confidence in God as the ultimate Judge who always executes justice rightly (1 Peter 2:23).

What’s the Purpose of Sex?

Tim Jackson
Christian life, Ethicsethics, morality, sex, sexuality, social concern

Of course, sex is necessary for the propagation of the race. But while we are to “be fruitful and increase in number” (Genesis 1:28), sex is not merely limited to the procreation of the human species.

Sexual intimacy is designed to reflect the beautiful mystery and intimate union between God and His people ( Ephesians 5:25 ). God gave us sex to arouse and satisfy our innate craving for intimacy, for union ( Genesis 1:24-25 ). A couple who enjoys emotional, relational, and spiritual intercourse with one another will be drawn to celebrate their love through sexual intimacy. That’s why sexual intimacy is exclusively reserved for marriage. Sexual experiences outside of marriage mar our enjoyment of the beauty of sexual intimacy in its proper context as God intended.

The Bible describes the sexual experience within marriage as honorable ( Hebrews 13:4 ). Some of the most beautiful erotic literature ever composed is found in the wisdom literature of the Old Testament. For some, the idea of verbally inspired erotic literature is difficult to accept. Yet God has frankly recorded for us His view of the delights of sexual intimacy between a married couple in poetic verse:

Drink water from your own cistern, running water from your own well. Should your springs overflow in the streets, your streams of water in the public squares? Let them be yours alone, never to be shared with strangers. May your fountain be blessed, and may you rejoice in the wife of your youth. A loving doe, a graceful deer — may her breasts satisfy you always, may you ever be captivated by her love ( Proverbs 5:15-19 ).

In the Song of Solomon, the husband’s description of his bride’s body ( Song of Solomon 4:1-15 ) and her description of his ( Song of Solomon 5:10-16 ) reveals the joy of love and sexual intimacy that God extols for a married couple. While sexual intimacy between a couple is not to be observed by anyone outside of the relationship, God, the One who sees and knows all, must smile with delight when He sees two of His children enjoying the good gift of sex He has given to them.

God intended sex to be far more than mere pleasurable sensations. He designed it as the intimate union of body, soul, mind, and spirit exclusively shared between a husband and wife. It’s about being open, exposed, naked, and unashamed in the presence of our spouse who finds us desirable and yearns to draw close to us. That’s how God captures our hearts. Being captured by our lover will give us a taste of being caught up in Christ’s love in a way that we feel deeply enjoyed without shame. In essence, sexual intimacy within marriage should draw us to deeper worship of God who initiated sexuality for His glory and our delight.

Enjoying sex with one’s spouse is always to be viewed as a part of the whole marriage relationship. Sex is never to be singled out as some isolated aspect of our being that is disconnected from the rest of the relationship. Rather, sexuality is a vehicle for expressing our identity as a man or a woman made in the image of God. Sexuality pulsates throughout a godly marriage and is not exclusively reserved for the bedroom experience.

A devastating assault on our ability to enjoy sexuality is the perpetuation of the myth, “Sex is just sex. It’s just another biological urge demanding satisfaction.” But that’s not true. God didn’t make sex as a mere physical act. Whether we’re willing to acknowledge it now, or we face the pain of admitting it after the fact, sex is always woven into our view of ourselves, one another, and God. Each of us distinctly reflects the image of God through the lens of our sexuality as either male or female. How we handle this good gift of sex will either enhance the glory of God’s image in us or will mar that glory.

If anyone should be enjoying sexuality, Christians should. We should know better than anyone else that sex was never intended to be an end in itself. It is intended to be a joyous celebration of the intimate love that a man and woman share together in the covenant relationship called marriage. It is designed to be a reflection of the intimate love relationship between Christ and His church ( Ephesians 5:25-33 ).

When Is a War Just?

Dan Vander Lugt
Contemporary Issues, Ethicsaggression, Bible, empire, just war, justice, nationalism, patriotism, revenge

Most Christians agree that it is sometimes right for Christians to serve in the military. This consensus is based on the fact that the New Testament declares the legitimacy of government, the necessity of its use of force against evil (Romans 13:3-4; 1 Peter 2:13-14), and the responsibility of Christians to cooperate with the legitimate power of government (Matthew 8:5-9; Luke 3:14; 6:15; 14:31; Acts 10-11).

During the church’s first 300 years, very few Christians served in the military. The obvious reason for their reluctance to serve was that the Roman government was corrupt, and the military was often used to persecute their own fellow believers. The questions of the degree to which Christians should support war, or the standards by which they should determine whether any particular war is just or unjust only became major issues after the conversion of Constantine and his endorsement of Christianity as the empire’s dominant religion. Following the Edict of Milan (ad 313), Christians began to share in the power of government, and the church’s association with political power soon brought corruption. Rather than continuing to view the teachings of Jesus Christ as their ethical model, many Christians began to look to the Old Testament for analogies that falsely identified Rome with Israel and viewed its wars against pagan enemies as a continuation of Israel’s wars against the Canaanites.

Thoughtful Christians like the influential Augustine of Hippo stood against such rationalizations and declared: “War should be waged reluctantly and with tears in one’s eyes.” Following Augustine,¹ the church fathers carefully developed a set of standards for a “just war” based on biblical principles. Here is a summary of these principles:²

Just War Principles

War cannot be just unless all nonviolent options have been tried and have failed.

Just war can only be waged by legitimate authorities, not private individuals and groups.

Just war can be waged only in response to an injury suffered (e.g., an enemy attack) with the motivation of appropriate compensation for the wrong suffered. (In other words, an aggressive war of conquest is by definition unjust.)

War can be just only if there is a reasonable degree of likelihood of victory. To shed blood in unwinnable conflicts is never just.

A war can be considered just only when the peace it seeks to establish will be better than the peace that already exists.

A war is just only when violence committed against the enemy is proportional to the violence suffered at the enemy’s hands. Excessive force is never just.

Just wars never target civilians. The deaths of civilians in a just war must be the unavoidable consequence of attacks on military targets.

Just war principles have always been violated in war. Soldiers caught up in the emotions of battle and hatred of the enemy have murdered, pillaged, and raped. However, Christian just war principles at least tempered the effects of war in the West until modern times.

Tragically, with the rise of secular national states, “just war” theory was swept aside on a massive scale, first in Europe during the Napoleonic conquests, and then in North America during the Civil War. The scale of national violence continued to mount through the 20^th century, and Christians have become accustomed to participation in wars that have little concern for justice, proportionality, and safety of civilian populations.

The writer of the epistle of James stated:

What causes wars, and what causes fighting among you? Is it not your passions that are at war in your members? You desire and do not have; so you kill. And you covet and cannot obtain; so you fight and wage war. You do not have, because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions. Unfaithful creatures! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God (4:1-4).

Christians must guard against allowing earlier Christian collaboration with unjust war to serve as a precedent for their own support of unwarranted violence. Great wars have always involved the tragically flawed decisions of men who turned away from peaceful options, and the violations of just war principles that occurred in these wars always set the stage for further escalation of evil.

It is tempting for Christian citizens of powerful nations to shrug their shoulders and say: “Times have changed. Modern weapons and terrorism have made the principles of just war untenable.” Tragically, many evangelicals have become so accustomed to “total war” that they assume any war their government initiates is necessary.

As we exit a century that has been savaged by human violence and atrocity on a scale far greater than anything the world had seen before ³ and enter a new century with even more potential for conflict and destruction, it is high time that evangelical Christians repent their blind nationalism and worship of Caesar and return to their calling as peacemakers (Matthew 5:9; Philippians 2:15; James 3:17-18).

Genuine patriots have never offered unquestioning, unqualified support to leaders who lead them into war. Jesus’ simple statement to Peter in the Garden of Gethsemane still applies to individuals and to nations of our day: “Put your sword back in its place, . . . for all who draw the sword will die by the sword” (Matthew 26:52).

In his treatise Against Faustus the Manichean, Augustine declared: “The real evils in war are the love of violence, the cruel passion for revenge, the blind hatred of the enemy, the sometimes insane uncontrolled resistance to attack, the lust for power and other things of this sort.” Back To Article
“The just-war tradition is as old as warfare itself. Early records of collective fighting indicate that warriors used some moral considerations. They may have involved consideration of women and children or the treatment of prisoners. Commonly they invoked considerations of honor: some acts in war have always been deemed dishonorable, whilst others have been deemed honorable. Whilst the specifics of what is honorable differ with time and place, the very fact of one moral virtue has been sufficient to infuse warfare with moral concerns. The just war theory also has a long history. Whilst parts of the Bible hint at ethical behavior in war and concepts of just cause, the most systematic exposition is given by Saint Thomas Aquinas. In the Summa Theologicae, Aquinas presents the general outline of what becomes the just war theory. He discusses not only the justification of war, but also the kinds of activity that are permissible in war. Aquinas’s thoughts become the model for later Scholastics and Jurists to expand. The most important of these are: Francisco de Vitoria (1486-1546), Francisco Suarez (1548-1617), Hugo Grotius (1583-1645), Samuel Pufendorf (1632-1704), Christian Wolff (1679-1754), and Emerich de Vattel (1714-1767).” (“Just War Theory,” The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy) Back To Article
Zbigniew Brzezinski estimated that during the past century, 167,000,000 to 175,000,000 lives were “deliberately extinguished by politically motivated carnage.” See the Discovery Series booklet, Violence: Why It Happens Back To Article

When Will the Rapture Occur?

Dan Vander Lugt
Bible, Christianityend time, future events, heaven, imminent, midtribulational, postribulational, pretribulational, prophecy, rapture

The early church wasn’t dogmatic about the time sequence of endtime events. This fact should keep us from being so dogmatic in our interpretation of biblical endtime prophecy that we either become contemptuous of Christians who don’t share our viewpoint, or we make their view of the rapture a test for fellowship. Keeping in mind the need for constraint and tolerance on this issue, we’ll explain why we believe the rapture will take place before the tribulation.

The main support for a pretribulational rapture is the clear biblical evidence for the imminence of Christ’s return — the evidence that the Lord’s return will be without warning ( Matthew 24:36-39,43,45-51;25:13 ) — along with the most reasonable interpretation of 2 Thessalonians 2:1-12 .

Belief in the imminence of the Lord’s return involves the implication that the rapture will occur before the time of great tribulation mentioned in Matthew 24:2 , 2 Thessalonians 2:3 , and Revelation 17:14 . If the Lord’s return is to be truly imminent (without warning), it will occur before this tribulation time. Consider that if the events described in these passages began taking place — bringing about, among other things, the first 3 1/2 years of the Antichrist’s reign — believers would realize that they were in the last days and there would be no element of surprise. If surprise were ruled out, we would say that the Lord’s return will be soon, but not imminent.

2 Thessalonians 2:1-12 , which speaks of the revealing of the Antichrist, must be understood in the light of the statement, “He who now restrains will do so until He is taken out of the way. And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord will consume with the breath of His mouth and destroy with the brightness of His coming” ( 2 Thessalonians 2:7-8 ).

It is our view that the “restrainer” is the Holy Spirit working through the church of Jesus Christ. Therefore, we believe that the Antichrist will not be openly revealed until the church is taken away in the rapture and its influence of being “salt” and “light” is removed. (It is important to realize that the Holy Spirit will continue to work among the people on earth even after the removal of the church. However, the Holy Spirit will not work through the body of Christ as He is doing today)

We respect anyone who has a strong view of scriptural authority, including our friends whose study has led them to a midtribulational or a posttribulational viewpoint. Our main problem with their viewpoints is the elimination of the possibility of a truly imminent, any-moment rapture.

Where Is Heaven?

Dan Vander Lugt
Bible, Christianitydimension, heaven, parallel worlds

While the Scriptures symbolically refer to heaven as being up and hell being down, all we know for sure is that heaven is a real place that is located in a different dimension of reality than the one in which we presently exist. In Acts 1:9 , for example, we read that Jesus “was taken up, and a cloud received Him out of their sight.”

Modern science has demonstrated that it would be possible for an almost endless number of “parallel worlds” to be around us without our being able to perceive them because of differences in their atomic structure. The Scripture contains clear evidence that there are a number of “dimensions” of reality. Recall, for example, the occasion when Jesus appeared to His disciples following His resurrection ( John 20:26-27 ). He passed through closed doors, yet He possessed a solid body, as evidenced by His challenge to Thomas to touch His hands and His side.

Where Was Jesus Before His Resurrection?

Dan Vander Lugt
Bible, Ethics, Godbody and the resurrection, God, heaven, Hell, Jesus Christ

Jesus’ clear statement to the believing thief on the cross implies that He was in heaven between the time of His death and His bodily resurrection:

And an inscription also was written over Him in letters of Greek, Latin, and Hebrew: THIS IS THE KING OF THE JEWS. Then one of the criminals who were hanged blasphemed Him, saying, “If You are the Christ, save Yourself and us.” But the other, answering, rebuked him, saying, “Do you not even fear God, seeing you are under the same condemnation? And we indeed justly, for we receive the due reward of our deeds; but this Man has done nothing wrong.” Then he said to Jesus, “Lord, remember me when You come into Your kingdom.” And Jesus said to him, “Assuredly, I say to you, today you will be with Me in Paradise” (Luke 23:38-43).

Nineteenth-century Scottish Presbyterian pastor David Brown paraphrased our Lord’s reply this way:

Thou art prepared for a long delay before I come into My kingdom, but not a day’s delay shall there be for thee, thou shalt not be parted from Me even for a moment, but together we shall go, and with Me, ere this day expire, should thou be in paradise.

The term paradise as used in Luke 23:43 can designate a garden (Genesis 2:8-10), a forest (Ezekiel 31:7-9), or (as in 2 Corinthians 12:4 and Revelation 2:7) the place of peace and blissful consciousness that exists for the redeemed in the presence of God.

Just before dying, Jesus said, “Father, into Your hands I commit My spirit” (Luke 23:46). This implies that when He died He went immediately into the presence of the Father. Both He and the repentant thief were in heaven that day.

On the third day, Jesus was resurrected with a glorified body. But He had not yet ascended to the Father in His glorified body when He encountered Mary Magdalene (John 20:17). Jesus appeared and disappeared during the next 40 days, leaving heaven and appearing on earth in His glorified body, so His ascension wasn’t the first time He had been in heaven since His death. It was merely a deed done publicly to strengthen the faith of His disciples and to clearly demonstrate that His ministry on earth would now be replaced by that of the Holy Spirit (John 14:26; 15:26; 16:7).

When Jesus told Mary not to cling to Him because He hadn’t yet ascended to the Father, He wasn’t implying that He hadn’t yet seen heaven. He was saying that there would be a time in heaven when Mary would once again be able to embrace Him. Now, however, she must not cling to Him, for His earthly work was done.

Who Are the Descendants of Abraham?

Dan Vander Lugt
Bible, Contemporary IssuesAbraham, Christian church, church, descendents, Israel, Jesus Christ, seed, servant

Who are the descendants of Abraham through whom “all of the peoples of the earth will be blessed”?

Abraham’s physical descendants include both Jewish and Arab peoples. Through his son Ishmael, Abraham gave the world a rich heritage of Arab culture and achievement. Through his son Isaac, Abraham gave the world a Jewish family line that was chosen by God to be a special servant nation. Through Israel God also gave the world a spiritual revelation of Himself that includes the Old and New Testament Scriptures. However the greatest fulfillment of God’s promise to bless the whole world through Abraham (Genesis 12:1-3) was seen in Israel’s long awaited Messiah and Savior who died for the sins of all people and rose again to offer new life to all who would believe in Him.

Praise be to the Lord, the God of Israel, because he has come and has redeemed his people. He has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David (as He said through his holy prophets of long ago), salvation from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us — to show mercy to our fathers and to remember his holy covenant, the oath he swore to our father Abraham (Luke 1:68-73 NIV).

And you are heirs of the prophets and of the covenant God made with your fathers. He said to Abraham, “Through your offspring all peoples on earth will be blessed” When God raised up his servant, he sent him first to you to bless you by turning each of you from your wicked ways (Acts 3:25-26 NIV).

Through this Messiah Abraham also has descendants who aren’t part of his physical line. The apostle Paul declares that Abraham’s seed can also be spiritual:

Understand, then, that those who believe are children of Abraham (Galatians 3:7 NIV).

If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise (Galatians 3:29 NIV).

For this reason I, Paul, the prisoner of Christ Jesus for the sake of you Gentiles — Surely you have heard about the administration of God’s grace that was given to me for you, that is, the mystery made known to me by revelation, as I have already written briefly. In reading this, then, you will be able to understand my insight into the mystery of Christ, which was not made known to men in other generations as it has now been revealed by the Spirit to God’s holy apostles and prophets. This mystery is that through the gospel the Gentiles are heirs together with Israel, members together of one body, and sharers together in the promise in Christ Jesus (Ephesians 3:1-6 NIV).

As these Scriptures show, today’s church represents the spiritual “seed” of Abraham more truly than one who is simply Abraham’s physical descendant without sharing his faith.

Who Are the Palestinians?

Dan Vander Lugt
Bible, Contemporary Issuesapartheid, Arabic, crusades, ethnic cleansing, Israel, Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Muslim conquest, Nakba, Palestine, Zionism

“Palestinian” is the term that identifies non-Jewish people, both Christian and Muslim, who have lived in the Holy Land for generations. During the last 150 years, many of these people found themselves displaced by Jewish settlers returning to their ancestral homeland. As Israeli immigrants returned in steadily increasing numbers, Palestinians responded in various ways. Some made peace with their new Jewish neighbors. Others passively tolerated Palestinian losses. Still others have resorted to violence and force of arms.

It is important to see that even though Palestinians are often thought of simply as “the enemies of Israel” the real Palestinian populace has a complex make-up and history.

When Israel moved into the land under Joshua, it was called the “land of milk and honey.” Because Canaan was such a hospitable and fertile land, it has been inhabited from the earliest times. Archaeology has determined that Jericho is one of the world’s oldest inhabited sites.

When Israel conquered Canaan, many inhabitants were driven out, but large numbers remained. Many Israelites intermarried with Canaanites and people of nearby nations ( Judges 14:1-3; Ruth 1:1-4 ). Consequently, the land was never inhabited by Israelites alone. Further, when the leading classes of Israel and Judea were driven into Assyrian, Babylonian, and Persian exile because of unbelief and non-compliance with the Mosaic Covenant, many common people remained in the land. They multiplied and were joined by colonists from other nations. When Israelite leadership returned and regained political control, they did not expel the great numbers of non-Jews or less observant Jews who lived in the land. At the time of Christ, Jews were actually a minority in large areas of the land.

Again, after the destruction of Jerusalem and the dispersal of the Jews by the Romans in A.D. 70, many common people remained in the land. They had Israelite ancestry to some degree but hadn’t been part of the rebellion against Rome. (It was under Roman rule that the Holy Land, as a whole, was first called Palestine, a name related to the Phoenician peoples who had long populated the coastal areas.) As Christianity spread through the Roman Empire, many of the descendants of these common people of the Holy Land became either nominal or genuine Christians. Then, in the seventh century, Arabic-speaking Muslim armies conquered Palestine, Egypt, and all of the nominally Christian lands of northern Africa, along with Spain.

Although Muslim armies forced Christians and Jews to submit to Islamic law and imposed taxes and other restrictions that made them “second class citizens,” they spared their lives and permitted them to stay. This included the residents of Palestine. Further, unlike many historical conquerors, the Arabs didn’t send settlers to colonize the lands they conquered, but set up military garrisons in cities established to maintain Muslim rule. Except for a brief period when the Crusaders established a beachhead in the Muslim world, Muslim rule continued in Palestine under successive regimes until the end of World War I, when it came under the control of Great Britain.

During all of this time — from the time of Roman rule into the twentieth century — life continued largely unchanged. The people worked the land, tended their herds, carried on trade, and practiced the simple professions that supported village life. Although the Muslim conquest introduced Arabic as the language of everyday life and offered significant advantages to those who were willing to convert to Islam, Christians and Jews were tolerated as “people of the book” and many Jews and Christians remained in the land, carrying on their own traditions and generally living in peace with their Muslim neighbors.

Today the vast majority of “native Palestinians” are Muslims, but a significant percentage of them are adherents to other religions, including Christianity.

Who Selected the Documents That Are Included in the Bible?

Dan Vander Lugt
Bible, ChristianityApocrypha, Canon, Canon of Scripture, council, inspiration, manuscripts, New Testament, Old Testament, prophets

The 39 books of the Old Testament and the 27 books of the New Testament are the only writings Christians consider fully inspired. The books that are in our present Old Testament were universally accepted at the time of Christ and endorsed by Him. In fact, there are nearly 300 quotations from the Old Testament books in the New Testament.

A number of books that are considered valuable but not inspired are found in the Roman Catholic and Anglican Bibles. These books are called the Apocrypha (which means “hidden,” “secret,” or “profound”). The Apocrypha was accepted by the council of Carthage, but was not accepted by many important church leaders, including Melito of Sardis, Tertullian, Origen, Athanasius, Cyril of Jerusalem, Epiphanius, Gregory of Nazianzus, Basil the Great, John Chrysostom, and Jerome. ¹

Although the New Testament Canon was officially confirmed in its present and final form by the third council of Carthage in 397, the 27 documents it contains were accepted as authoritative from the very beginning.

The New Testament is solidly rooted in history. It revolves around the death, burial, and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Not even the rationalist critics of the 19th century could find reason to question Pauline authorship of 1 Corinthians, and it has been acknowledged as the earliest written testimony of Christ’s resurrection. In 1 Corinthians 15 Paul declared:

For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised; and if Christ has not been rasied, your faith is worthless, you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If we have hope in Christ in this life only, we are of all men most to be pitied (vv. 16-19).

First-century Christians circulated documents—either written or approved by the apostles—which contained an authoritative explanation of the accounts concerning Jesus’ life and teaching. These documents often quoted from each other and presented the same gospel message from different perspectives and in different styles. Hundreds of other documents were written and circulated, but the church quickly rejected spurious documents and established the authority of those that were genuine.

“Augustine alone of ancient authors, and the councils of Africa which he dominated, present a different picture. Augustine specifically accepted the apocryphal books and gives the total number as forty-four. He is the only ancient author who gives a number different from the twenty-two or twenty-four book reckoning. The list includes Tobit, Judith, 1 and 2 Maccabees, 1 Esdras (the book composed of part of 2 Chronicles, Ezra, and Nehemiah), Wisdom of Solomon, and Ecclesiasticus. The Local councils of Carthage and Hippo, dominated by Augustine, included the same books. This listing prob. agreed with the ideas of Pope Damasus who dominated the local council of Rome at 382. It will be remembered that it was Damasus who urged Jerome to translate also the apocryphal books for his Vulgate. Jerome did so with the explicit declaration that they were not canonical.
“Green (op. cit. 168-174) discusses the witness of Augustine and points out that Augustine seems to vacillate. Green quotes Augustine; ‘What is written in the book of Judith the Jews are truly said not to have received into the canon of Scripture’ (Augustine, City of God xviii, 260). ‘After Malachi, Haggai, Zechariah, and Ezra, they had no prophets until the advent of the Savior’ (id. xvii, last ch.). He was well aware that Maccabees were after the cessation of prophecy. Green concludes that Augustine was using ‘canonical’ in the sense of books which may be read in the churches without putting them all on an equal plane.” Excerpted from an article by R.L. Harris (“Canon of the Old Testament”) in the Zondervan Pictorial Encyclopedia of the Bible. Back To Article

Who Should Come First in My Stepfamily: My Spouse or My Children?

Allison Stevens
Relationshipsparent-child relationship, parenting, relationships

The relationship between parent and child is important, but it’s not as fundamental as the relationship between a husband and a wife (Genesis 2:24). Too often, though, parents feel a pull to put the children first in the family, and in the process, they neglect their spouse.

It’s natural for parents to feel protective of their children. But parents who have gone through a life-shattering divorce feel especially protective. They don’t want their children to hurt anymore, or to fear losing them again. For that reason, putting a new spouse first can feel like they are betraying their children.

Children need to know you love them and that you will always be there for them. Just as important, they need the security of a stable home. A healthy marriage gives children that security, because when a husband and a wife are looking out for each other’s interests, they will also look out for the best interests of the children.

Putting your spouse first never means that you neglect or abuse your children. And it certainly doesn’t mean that you allow a new spouse to neglect or abuse the children. Even something like showing favoritism, which is natural to do, should be talked about and addressed in a blended family. Ignoring unfair treatment is wrong (Romans 12:9). Parents are always responsible to provide loving, secure, healthy, and safe homes for their children to grow (Proverbs 14:26).

It’s important for husbands and wives to consider one another’s feelings and opinions. They need to stick together and head in the same direction as a couple and as parents. They should pursue each other and show deep care and respect for one another. A caring and loving spouse knows that what affects them, affects their spouse and the children. Happy marriages are loving, respectful, and considerate (Ephesians 5:21-33).

A good marriage not only gives children the security of a stable home, but it also gives them a positive example of what God intended a marriage to be. They will learn about love, confession, forgiveness, accountability, responsibility, and honesty. Parents who love one another deeply help their children develop realistic expectations about what it takes to build a strong marriage. Children need that kind of example to give them hope for their own futures.

Why Are Christians Opposed to Public Nudity?

Dan Vander Lugt
Contemporary Issues, Ethicsethics, individuality, innocence, intimacy, modesty, nudity, sexuality

Sexuality and individuality are sacred gifts. Although nudity is necessary under certain special circumstances, as when a person is examined by a physician¹ or taking a shower in a locker room, indiscriminate nudity is degrading.

Humans were created as image-bearers of God. Although we share many characteristics with the animal world, we have been entrusted with a degree of dignity that surpasses our animal kin.

While it’s true that prolonged exposure to nudity tends to make a culture less sensitive to it, no culture could ever be completely desensitized. Indiscriminate nudity is a misguided attempt to recapture an innocence that, since the Fall ( Genesis 3:6-11,23-24 ), is no longer available.

It would be wonderful if lust and wrongful sexual attention weren’t a problem, but realistically, in our imperfect world, there is a tendency to look upon others merely as objects for personal sexual gratification or control (Matthew 5:28). Westerners also place an inappropriately high value on physical attractiveness, as well as setting unrealistic standards for it. To idolize a temporary, culturally defined standard for beauty is destructive. It bases individual worth on physical attractiveness rather than character, objectifies people, promotes exploitative relationships, empowers the pornographic industry, and is doubtlessly an important factor in the modern epidemic of bulimia and anorexia. Indiscriminate nudity would place an even higher value on anatomical perfection, further degrading our human values and making self-esteem even harder for the average person to attain.²

The Bible doesn’t dictate the norms for the type of clothing to be worn in every society, but it requires modesty.³ First Peter 3:3-6, for example, exhorts women to seek the beauty that comes from within (“the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit”). Peter said that women should place a greater emphasis on spiritual beauty than on mere physical adornment. They shouldn’t dress merely to accentuate their physical beauty, but be concerned as well with the effect their appearance has on others, using beauty as a means of edification.

The Bible also tells us that our bodies are holy, temples of the Holy Spirit:

Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a man commits are outside his body, but he who sins sexually sins against his own body. Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body (1 Corinthians 6:19-21).

It isn’t that the nude human body is “dirty” and needs to be covered. This idea is a perversion of Christian teaching. The body isn’t something of which we should be ashamed. It is a creation of God, and, in spite of human irresponsibility, something that we should celebrate and honor. Nearly everyone in the West, including conservative Christians, agrees that Western art would be impoverished without work of great artists who treat nudity with dignity. Exposed skin isn’t the only issue—otherwise we would be in agreement with the strict Muslim view that modesty requires a woman to cover as much of her body as possible.⁴ It isn’t that the sight of the nude body is “dirty” but that it is holy—too precious to be shared with strangers. Indiscriminate nudity deprives husbands and wives of the joy of reserving the visual part of physical intimacy for each other alone. In our fallen world, the love between husband and wife is the only place where sexual intercourse still expresses the innocence of Eden. Only in a loving marriage—where genuine intimacy is nurtured by fidelity—is the beauty of each individual partner free to bloom.

Working through our culture, our enemy strives to degrade our perception of sexuality to mere expression of animal instinct and pleasure. Christians need to be on guard against anything that degrades the God-ordained dignity of human sexuality—including indiscriminate nudity.

1. Interestingly, under such circumstances, there are specific required procedures and special legal protections shielding patients from sexual advances by caretakers. These laws not only apply to physicians, but also to counselors who have a privileged access to the secrets and intimate facts of a person’s life. Back To Article

2 . Most people realize that besides wearing clothing to protect ourselves from the elements, we clothe ourselves to enhance our appearance and enable modesty. The testimony of thousands of generations of people in nearly every culture is that the world would be a less attractive place if everyone went around naked. Even the most beautiful people know that clothing enhances their attractiveness. But even more important, appropriate attire serves as a shield against voyeurism at the same time it protects others from an uncomfortable sense of being subtly (or not so subtly) manipulated. Back To Article

3 . The Jews were modest people. Jesus’ disciples probably shed their outer garments when working as fishermen, but they, along with other God-fearing Jews, would have been scandalized by public nakedness that was part and parcel (as in the Hellenistic gymnasium) of a Hellenistic culture whose degeneracy easily surpassed the seediest “tenderloin district” of a modern metropolis. Back To Article

4. Strict Islamic culture requires women to wear long gowns and veils in public. Such cultural requirements place an unfair burden on women, requiring them to be the primary guardians of sexual dignity while depriving them of the opportunity to become fully developed persons and full partners with men. Back To Article

Why Are There So Many Christian Denominations?

Dan Vander Lugt
Christianity, Contemporary IssuesApostles' Creed, apostolic, catholic, church, church councils, denominations, orthodox, Reformation, sectarianism

Divisions in the church go back to the first century. In his first letter to the Corinthians, the apostle Paul lamented that strife and divisions had resulted in some saying, “I am of Paul,” and another, “I am of Apollos” ( 1 Corinthians 3:3 ).

Denominations, which could be called “formalized division,” began a little later in the Apostolic Church, when orthodox ¹ believers defended the teaching of the apostles against the distortion of the gospel with false teachings based on pagan ² or Jewish ³ traditions.

Eventually the true church was firmly established on a foundation of essential doctrinal truth: belief in the deity of Christ and the Trinity, and acceptance of the established Canon of Scripture. This universal agreement of the early church was characterized by the Greek word katholikos, which meant “according to the whole.” The English term was “catholic,” and it meant the true church as accepted by genuine followers of Christ. Outside the catholic church were sects that denied important elements of truth: Gnostics, Ebionites, Montanists, Arians, Pelagians, and others. These were considered “unorthodox” (not accepting the right doctrines).

The two terms, catholic and orthodox, eventually came into common language as indicators of true Christian belief. Sadly, however, they also became the names of the first denominations: A separation occurred within the church in 1054 when the Greek-speaking church of the east separated from the Latin-based church in the west over a number of political and cultural differences, along with some relatively minor doctrinal disputes. The church in the east became known as the Eastern Orthodox Church, and the church in the west was called the Roman Catholic Church. These main divisions continue to the present.

Later, reformers among the Roman Catholics felt a need for spiritual renewal and correction within church. They especially protested the addition of non-biblical tradition to the Bible as essential to the faith and practice of Christianity. These protesting reformers eventually brought about a second major separation. From this “Protestant Reformation” came Lutheran, Calvinist, Baptist, and other denominations.

Finally, in the first part of the 20th Century, the Pentecostal Movement came into bloom. This group of Christians were convinced that all the gifts given by the Holy Spirit to the followers of Christ at Pentecost (the dramatic moment when God’s Holy Spirit descended upon the Christians fifty days after Jesus’ ascension) must be evident in the life of believers today. The Greek word for divine gift is kharisma; hence the term “charismatic” is often used to describe this group of denominations. The additional bestowal of some of these gifts after one accepts Christ as one’s personal Savior is often referred to as the “second blessing.” ⁴

While there are differences between the denominations, most of the basic doctrines agreed upon by the early catholic church are still accepted by all. For example, Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, most Protestants, and most charismatic groups believe in the Trinity and in the Deity of Christ—established by the church councils of Nicaea and Chalcedon. All orthodox Christian denominations agree that Jesus Christ, the God-man, died to atone for the sins of the world, and was raised from the grave to break the power of Satan and death.

With the exception of the reference to Christ descending to hell, the principles contained within the Apostles’ Creed, taken primarily from the old Roman Creed, are also universally accepted. This creed is recited in hundreds of thousands of Christian churches around the world every Sunday, regardless of denomination:

I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ His only Son our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried; He descended into hell; the third day He rose again from the dead; He ascended into heaven, and sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty; from thence He shall come to judge the quick and the dead. I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy Christian church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. Amen.

It is important not to become so preoccupied with the minor differences between the denominations that we overlook their broad areas of agreement. While some of the doctrinal differences that exist have produced serious perversions of the Gospel, there are other aspects to the presence of a wide range of viewpoints that are positive. Because of denominational differences, there are a variety of practical approaches to Christian living. While this fragmentation makes it more difficult for the world to see the unity of the Body of Christ, it’s also true that these groupings make it harder for the church as a whole to become mired in ritual and formalism than would be the case if one denomination dominated Christian life. As a source of more information regarding Christian denominations, we recommend A History of the Christian Church by Williston Walker (Scribners). We also recommend the books of outstanding historian, Kenneth Scott Latourette.

Orthodox is a term taken directly from the Greek language. It simply means “correct belief.” Any church is considered to be orthodox in the broadest sense if it accepts the formulations of doctrine that were made by the major councils of the early Church such as those held in Nicaea in 325 and in Chalcedon in 451. These decisions settled such important doctrinal issues as Christ’s Deity and the unity of His personhood while possessing two natures (human and divine). Back To Article
Eerdman’s Handbook to the Bible makes this observation regarding early pagan influences in the church:
About the time the New Testament letters were being written there began to develop a number of sects which later (in the 2nd century) came under the general heading of “Gnosticism.” They varied considerably in detail, but shared the basic belief that “matter” was evil and spirit was good. It followed that God could not have created the world out of matter, nor could his Son have become incarnate in it. So they envisaged a whole range of subordinate beings between God and the world. Humanity shares in the evil of the material world, but they also (or some of them) contain a divine spark which can be set free and thus redeemed. In order to be redeemed they need to have knowledge (Greek gnosis) of their heavenly origin. These views were expressed in fantastic myths and made known to initiates in sects like those of the mystery religions. Back To Article
The pernicious influence of Judaizers is vehemently denounced by Paul in Galatians 5:1-8 and Philippians 3:1-7. Back To Article
The doctrine of the “second work of grace” or “second blessing” is rooted in the Wesleyan/Armenian tradition. It maintains that we can, if faithful, experience a special time of spiritual growth and renewal. Because the Bible teaches that sanctification is a progressive experience, it is certainly possible that some people will have a wonderful season of renewal that could be called a “second blessing.” However, Scripture nowhere indicates that all Christians will experience this. Many Christians experience the steady growth in their lives that can only be attributed to the power of God’s Spirit.
The Bible teaches a three-fold aspect of sanctification. First, there is a positional aspect in which every believer is sanctified or set apart for God at the moment of salvation ( 1 Corinthians 1:30; Philippians 1:1; Hebrews 3:1 ). Second, there is a progressive aspect of sanctification in which believers are being sanctified by the work of the Holy Spirit through the Scriptures ( John 17:17; 2 Corinthians 3:18; Ephesians 5:25,26; 1 Thessalonians 5:23,24 ). And third, there is the consummation at the return of Christ when our sanctification will be complete. We shall be in the likeness of Jesus Christ ( Ephesians 5:27; 1 John 3:2; 1 Corinthians 15:51-53 ). Back To Article

Why are there so many English Translations of the Bible?

Dan Vander Lugt
Bible, Contemporary IssuesBible, translations

We have a variety of English translations for several reasons. The first is that whenever a document is translated from one language to another, it is impossible to do a word-for-word translation. Different languages seldom have identical word meanings or grammatical structures. Therefore, different translations usually represent different styles of translation. Using some popular English translations as examples: the King James Version uses elegant but often old-fashioned English; the New American Standard Bible strives to be as close as possible to a word-for-word translation while still retaining normal English syntax; the Living Bible uses paraphrasing to communicate the meaning of the text; and the NIV utilizes a thought-for-thought or idea-for-idea method of translation called dynamic equivalence.

A second reason for new translations is that languages are constantly changing. Meanings of individual words and ways of expressing concepts are always in flux. This is why the original King James Version (written in the 1600s) is difficult for many modern readers to understand. In fact, the English language changed so much over the next 150 years, that the King James Version we read today underwent numerous modifications until 1769.

Finally, there are large numbers of ancient manuscripts in the original languages, and they contain some minor differences. Nearly all conservative scholars agree that these differences affect word choices, but not major doctrines.

Why Believe in God’s Existence, When It Can’t Be Proven Scientifically?

Dan Vander Lugt
Christianity, Godatheism, belief, design, fact, faith, God's existence, rational, reality, scientific fact, scientific proof, theism, values

Something that can be demonstrated by the scientific method is a scientific fact. But it doesn’t follow that just because something can’t be demonstrated scientifically it is less “real” or important than “scientific fact.”

For example, the survival of human civilization depends on the distinction that most people make between good and evil. Yet moral values like good and evil can’t be scientifically proven. Does the fact that moral values can’t be proven imply that they are less real—less “factual” in an ultimate sense—than the things that science can prove?

Most people would consider it morally evil for a man/woman to abandon his/her wife/husband and young children to begin a new life with another woman/man. Most people would consider this a serious moral failure, one of the “worst” things a person could do. But is there any compelling “scientific evidence” that could be brought to bear on such behavior to “prove” that it is wrong?

What “scientific evidence” could prove that murder, rape, and robbery are wrong? What would become of our system of justice if the prosecution had to scientifically prove that it is wrong for one person to kill, rape, or rob another person!

The existence of love, evil, and good are not “falsifiable hypotheses.” Yet most people—including atheists—admit that values like “love,” “goodness,” “friendship,” and “loyalty” are moral/spiritual realities that truly exist. Theists, whether Christian or non-Christian, have long considered the mind-boggling complexity of the material universe as evidence of a Creator. Although the scientific “spirit of the age” of the 20^_th century once insisted that the material world was nothing more than the product of impersonal, random evolution, today’s scientific consensus is shifting towards the conclusion that the universe was consciously designed (with incredible exactitude) for the development of life.¹

Just as it is reasonable to assume that everything in physical reality has a cause, it is reasonable to assume that everything in spiritual reality has a cause. Immaterial spiritual values like love and goodness are even more amazing than the material wonders of the universe.

God’s existence cannot be proven scientifically. But although God’s existence can’t be proven, reasonable people acknowledge that the small number of alternative explanations for the wonders of material and spiritual reality can’t be proven either. Although faith is as much a matter of the heart as the mind, and belief in God is a moral as well as a rational decision, the rational case for the existence of God as the source of all reality is stronger than any other explanation.

Anthony Flew, an eminent British philosopher who has been widely published as one of the world’s most intellectually capable and well-known atheists, has recently become a theist on the basis of scientific evidence for design:
Darwin himself, in the fourteenth chapter of The Origin of Species, pointed out that his whole argument began with a being which already possessed reproductive powers. This is the creature the evolution of which a truly comprehensive theory of evolution must give some account. Darwin himself was well aware that he had not produced such an account. It now seems to me that the findings of more than fifty years of DNA research have provided materials for a new and enormously powerful argument to design. (From an interview with Anthony Flew by Gary Habermas, published by the Journal of the Evangelical Philosophic Society.) Back To Article

Why Care About the Earth?

Dean Ohlman
Christian life, Contemporary Issuescontemporary issues, environment, environmentalism, nature, social concern

One of the thrilling promises given to us by Paul is that “our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under His control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like His glorious body” (Philippians 3:20-21, NIV). This passage, in tandem with Acts 3:18-21, speaks of the future when Jesus Christ will return and with His followers establish His messianic kingdom, which, according to evangelical theologians, will be on this present earth.

Our “heavenly citizenship” tells us who our true Sovereign is and to whom we owe allegiance. And His kingdom is actually going to come to earth. That’s what we pray for in “the Lord’s Prayer,’ and what the apostle John tells us about in the Revelation (Rev. 21:6). That understanding should keep us from carelessness regarding God’s good creation. Poet T. S. Eliot, a friend of C. S. Lewis, gave believers a good point to ponder in his poem “Choruses From the Rock”: “‘Our citizenship is in Heaven;’ yes, but that is the model and type for [our] citizenship upon earth.” (p.100; T. S. Eliot, Collected Poems 1909-1935; Harcourt, Brace & Jovanovich; 1936)

The atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ provided not only for the salvation of mankind, but also for the restoration (Rom. 8:21) and reconciliation of the whole creation (Colossians 1:20). Our nonhuman co-worshipers—the stars, the land, the animals, the plants—will share our return to pre-Fall conditions which, as suggested by John Wesley, may even exceed the glories of the original creation (John Wesley Sermon #60 “The General Deliverance,” Section III, 1872).

What remarkable things might be accomplished if we lived on the fallen earth today in light of the way we expect to live on the restored earth tomorrow? We believe that through the process of sanctification we can become more like Christ. Are we to assume that sanctification improves relationships only between man and God and between man and man, and not between man and the natural world? The influential Bible scholar and Christian philosopher Francis Schaeffer challenged us in this area: “God’s calling to the Christian now, and to the Christian community, in the area of nature – just as it is in the area of personal Christian living in true spirituality – is that we should exhibit a substantial healing here and now between man and nature and nature itself, as far as Christians can bring it to pass” (Pollution and the Death of Man: The Christian View of Ecology, Tyndale House, 1970 p.69).

We ought to always remember this: to abuse the earth is to profane the handiwork of God.

Why did God Give our Pets Such Short Life Spans?

Dan Vander Lugt
Christian life, Personal Struggles, Relationshipsdeath, grief, grieving, Pet Death, pets

Although land tortoises can live over 150 years and parrots sometimes live as long as people, most pets have short life spans Perhaps the Lord gave our pets short life spans to keep us from getting more attached to them than to our fellow human beings. Since the love of some intelligent pets for their human masters is remarkably unconditional, they often establish a deep emotional connection with us. In fact, we sometimes find it easier to love them unconditionally than each other.

The emotional impact of the death of a family’s pet is like the loss of any family member, though on a lesser scale. It offers opportunities for learning important lessons in preparation for future losses that will be worse. The grief at a pet’s death can bring an awareness of our need for deeper relationships with the people in our lives.

Why Did Jesus Condemn the Self-Righteousness of the Pharisees?

Dan Vander Lugt
Bible, Christianitycorruption, hypocrisy, law, pride, repentance, righteousness, self-righteousness, sinners

Jesus condemned the Pharisees’ self-righteous hypocrisy because it blinded them from seeing their need for repentance and a Savior.

Many Pharisees prided themselves in their strict avoidance of obvious, outward sin. But they refused to look inside themselves and acknowledge the presence of inner sin that didn’t fall within the boundaries of their man-made rules. Jesus knew that in spite of their obsession with outward perfection, they willfully resisted consciousness of their inner corruption and need for grace:

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you cleanse the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of extortion and self-indulgence. Blind Pharisee, first cleanse the inside of the cup and dish, that the outside of them may be clean also. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs which indeed appear beautiful outwardly, but inside are full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness. Even so you also outwardly appear righteous to men, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness (Matthew 23:25-28 NKJV).

Jesus didn’t associate with “known sinners” like tax collectors because He minimized their sin ( Luke 19:1-10 ). He freely associated with them because He knew that they were more open to repentance.

Now it happened, as Jesus sat at the table in the house, that behold, many tax collectors and sinners came and sat down with Him and His disciples. And when the Pharisees saw it, they said to His disciples, “Why does your Teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” When Jesus heard that, He said to them, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. “But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy and not sacrifice.’ For I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance” (Matthew 9:10-13 NKJV).

“Known sinners” weren’t full of self-righteous pride, deliberately concealing their hidden sins behind a legalistic façade of “righteousness.” Jesus was keenly ironic when He said, “I didn’t come to call the righteous to repentance.” He knew that the Pharisees weren’t righteous, but their pretense of righteousness kept them from accepting the only remedy for their condition — repentance and faith in Him. The obvious sins of “public sinners” made them more likely to repent and look to Jesus for the answers they needed.

We are all sinners, both inwardly and outwardly. Although we may not be notorious “public sinners,” we all share a fallen nature and are often controlled by the “flesh” — the “sin principle” — within us (Romans 8). Jesus’ stern warnings to the hypocritical Pharisees make it clear that sin we ignore and deny is no less serious in its effects than the sin of the public sinner.

Why Did Many Jewish Leaders Hate Jesus Christ and the Apostolic Church?

Dan Vander Lugt
Christianity, World Religionsethnic identity, Jesus Christ, Judaism, legal righteousness, messiah, New Testament, oral law, Paul, persecution

Some people have the impression that Jewish hostility for Christianity began only after Jews experienced persecution by Christians. Actually, Jewish hostility toward Jesus Christ and His church began long before Jews experienced persecution by Christians. Biblical scholar N. T. Wright summarized the reason for Jewish rejection of Jesus and the church:

What evokes persecution is precisely that which challenges a worldview, that which up-ends a symbolic universe. (N. T. Wright, The New Testament and the People of God, Fortress Press, p. 451) ¹

Jesus taught that Jewish nationalism and commitment to the “oral law” (“traditions of men”) distorted the purpose of the written law (Torah) (Mark 7:1-20). He declared that Israel’s dominant religious leaders were not in the tradition of Moses, David, and the prophets, but were servants of Satan (John 8:37-44). Their “Judaism” depended on legal righteousness based in “oral law” (the “traditions of men”; see Mark 7:1-23) and “works” that artificially distinguished them from the Gentiles whom they regarded as ritualistically unclean. Adherents of this perspective believed that their legal righteousness would assure them of the future Messiah’s approval when he appeared on the scene to cast off the Roman yoke and institute worldwide Jewish rule.

John the Baptist proclaimed the worthlessness of legalistic righteousness (Matthew 3:1-12), and Jesus declared that the legalistic righteousness of the Pharisees was pitted against the genuine law of God He had come to uphold.

Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. I tell you the truth, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. Anyone who breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do the same will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 5:17-20 NIV).

Instead of leading them toward fulfillment of the promises God had given Israel, their legalistically based self-righteousness motivated them to reject and kill the Messiah and His followers (Matthew 21:23-46; John 8:42-59; Acts 4-5; 7-9; 12:1f; 13:42-51; 14:2-5; 14:19; 17-18; 24:5; 26:9-11; Galatians 1:11-16; 4:29; Philippians 3:5-7; 1 Thessalonians 2:14-16).

Jesus called into question the meaning of the primary Jewish symbols—Sabbath, food taboos, ethnic identity, ancestral lands, and ultimately the Temple itself.²

The quotation below is by a modern Jewish man who, like the religious leaders of the first century, misunderstands what Jesus came to offer His people. It vividly illustrates the radical effect Jesus’ teaching must have had on His contemporaries.

John’s Gospel abolishes what is sacred for Judaism and replaces it with “Christ”. Everything that was held to be important by “the Jews” is dismissed in John as insignificant. Christ replaces or supersedes Judaism. The Church expresses this idea today by claiming to be the “New Israel.” According to John, Christ replaces the Temple (John 2:18-22); the Law (John 5:39-40) and Israel itself (John 15:1-17)—the “vine” being a symbol of Israel (Psalm 80:8; Ezekiel 15:1-6 and Hosea 10:1). There is no room left for Judaism as an expression of God’s will. This has led to what one author has called “a theological vendetta” against the Jews. Too often in history those who have concluded that Judaism is obsolete, have also concluded that the Jews are equally obsolete, with tragic results. Christology is the study of the nature of “Christ.” In Johannine Christology, Christ is portrayed as a divine man who fulfills prophecy and reveals God in his own flesh. This was and still remains, pure anathema to Jews. From a Jewish perspective the Johannine god-man vision of Christ is a repulsive paganism. By virtue of their innate inability to accept such a vision of the Messiah, Jews are automatically condemned by Johannine Christology. It is inherently antisemitic (“Anti-Semitism and John’s Gospel,” by Tom Macabi from Web site “Holocaust Understanding and Prevention”).

A Jewish scholar and Bar-Ilan University academic makes it clear that in some Jewish minds today, orthodox Christianity is “the root cause of 1500 years of the Christian idolatrous anti-Semitism which led to the holocaust.” He declared that Christians have a choice:

Either retain their present belief system and be anti-Semitic or form a partnership with the Jewish people. . . . As long as Christians keep Jesus as God, they will be anti-Semitic because that belief must lead them to believe that those who reject Jesus reject God. (Rabbi Dr. Pinchas Hayman, Australian Jewish News, Melbourne Edition, Vol. 62, no. 43, p. 9)

Obviously most Christians wouldn’t agree with this rabbi’s conclusion that faith in Christ is anti-Semitic. However, the fact that he sees the issue in these terms demonstrates that some Jews today still have the mindset of Jesus’ enemies in the first century, and to those with this mindset the challenge of Jesus Christ and the gospel remain a call to war (Matthew 10:32-42).

Jesus was claiming to be speaking for Israel’s god, her scriptures, and her true vocation. Israel was trusting in her ancestral religious symbols; Jesus was claiming to speak for the reality to which those symbols pointed, and to show that, by her concentration on them, Israel had turned inwards upon herself and was being not only disobedient, but dangerously disobedient, to her god’s vision for her, his vocation that she should be the light of the world. Jesus’ contemporaries, however, could not but regard someone doing and saying these things as a deceiver. His agenda clashed at every point with theirs. In symbol, as in praxis and story, his way of being Israel, his way of loyalty to Israel’s god, was radically different from theirs. (N.T. Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God, Fortress Press, p. 442) Back To Article
The clash between Jesus and his Jewish contemporaries, especially the Pharisees, must be seen in terms of alternative political agendas generated by alternative eschatological beliefs and expectations. Jesus was announcing the kingdom in a way which did not reinforce but rather called into question, the agenda of revolutionary zeal which dominated the horizon of, especially, the dominant group within Pharisaism. It is not to be wondered at, therefore, that he called into question the great emphases on those symbols which had become the focal points of that zeal: Sabbath, food taboos, ethnic identity, ancestral lands, and ultimately the Temple itself. The symbols had become enacted codes for the aspirations of his contemporaries. Jesus, in challenging them, was not ‘speaking against the Torah’ per se. He was certainly not ‘speaking against’ the idea of Israel as the chosen people of the one true god. Rather, he was offering an alternative construal of Israel’s destiny and god-given vocation, an alternative way of telling Israel’s true story, and alternative to the piety which expressed itself in nationalistic symbols. He was affirming Israel’s election even as he redefined it. (N.T. Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God, Fortress Press, p. 390) Back To Article

Why Didn’t Paul Quote Jesus?

Dan Vander Lugt
Bible, Christianitybiblical inspiration, Christ, historical Jesus, history, inspiration, reliability of scripture, scriptural authority

Doesn’t the fact that Paul didn’t quote Jesus show that he wasn’t interested in Him as a real person but only as a means of promoting his new faith in a (metaphorically) “risen Christ”?

Christians have long assumed that Luke’s Acts of the Apostles and Paul’s letters were written to illustrate and apply the things Jesus taught through His words and deeds. Both Acts and the epistles of Paul are Jesus-centered and consistent with all that Jesus taught. Acts describes the emergence of the apostolic church and Paul explains the principles of the gospel of Jesus Christ in ways that made them easily accessible to the diverse Gentile communities of the Roman Empire. In neither case would it have been practical for Luke or Paul to duplicate the detailed records of Jesus’ teaching and ministry that were cherished and carefully preserved by the church.

This argument that Paul must not have been concerned with Jesus as a real person because he didn’t quote Him is based on the underlying assumption that the Gospels’ description of Jesus isn’t accurate. Assuming that a miracle-working Jesus who claimed to be the Son of God with the authority to forgive sin could not really have existed, it offers an alternative explanation for how the Jesus tradition came into being. It claims that Paul created an entirely new religion about Jesus based on his own religious experience expressed in terms common to the religious and philosophical language of his day, transforming a popular teacher into a godlike mythological figure. It postulates that the whole Christian community eventually began to view Jesus in Paul’s mythologized way so that when the four Gospels were eventually written they didn’t contain accurate historical recollections of Jesus’ real life and deeds, but a collection of stories constructed around Paul’s imaginary Jesus.

To hold this view requires a number of closely related, highly questionable assumptions. A number of ATQs have been written that relate to the practical question of whether first-generation disciples and followers of Jesus would have been willing to view Him as worthy of worship and “resurrected from the dead” if His body remained decomposing in its tomb.¹ But there are other reasons the idea that Paul invented Christianity doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.

During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a common reason given for questioning the accuracy of the Gospel accounts was that a semi-literate, primarily oral society wouldn’t be able to preserve an accurate group memory of an historic event like Jesus’ life and ministry. In recent decades, studies of how historical traditions are passed along in oral societies have demonstrated that group memory is capable of equaling or exceeding the accuracy of modern historians.

Orality studies have confirmed over and over again that [oral traditions] can, in fact, be examples of intentionally transmitted historical material. Indeed, as we have already shown, such studies frequently have confirmed that these traditions are capable of reliably transmitting historical material as well as (some would claim even better than) modern literate historians (The Jesus Legend: A Case for the Historical Reliability of the Synoptic Jesus Tradition, p. 390).

The gospel was important to the first Christians. Their identities and lives’ purposes depended on it, and they were willing to die for it. They based their lives on its underlying story, a narrative that formed the cognitive basis of their faith.

We know that the gospel, the “good news” (defined by Paul himself in 1 Corinthians 15:1-7), was attracting believers to the apostolic church at a rate that alarmed the Jewish leadership group to which Paul originally belonged. Paul doubtlessly knew what Christians believed even before he began persecuting them. He was a “special agent” specifically chosen to combat the new Christian sect. A man of his capacities would hardly have gone to the trouble of eradicating Christians if he didn’t know—and intensely oppose—what they believed.

Paul’s conversion occurred only two or three years after Christ’s ministry. Recent orality studies (studies of how group memories and traditions are preserved in predominantly oral cultures) have also shown that when a group considers a tradition worthy of preservation, it selects individuals to be the official representatives (tradents) of the tradition. These tradents are the experts entrusted with the responsibility to preserve and transmit the tradition. In the case of the early church, tradents listed by Paul himself in his epistles were apostles and eyewitnesses of Christ’s ministry. They included Peter, John the son of Zebedee, the rest of the Twelve, Jesus’ half brother James, Barnabas, Andronicus and Junia, and Silvanus. All of these eyewitnesses would never have allowed Paul to begin teaching something that changed or distorted the Jesus narrative.

When Paul’s allegiance suddenly switched to the group he had been persecuting (Acts 22), he spent three years adding knowledge to what he already knew. He then met with Peter and Jesus’ brother James, spending 15 days with Peter in Jerusalem (Galatians 1:18-19). After 14 years of ministry to the Gentiles, he met with the Jerusalem elders and received their formal endorsement (Galatians 2:1-9).

Paul’s knowledge of Jesus’ story, as well as his ongoing endorsement by the key eyewitnesses of the apostolic church, indicate that Paul was a faithful adherent to the body of preserved knowledge, not someone who started a new Christian tradition that the apostolic church eventually came to accept. But even though there is overwhelming evidence that Paul was faithful to the accounts of Jesus’ life, stories, and parables that were preserved by the witnesses in the Christian community, why didn’t he refer to Jesus more often and use quotations from Jesus when they would have strengthened his case?

This is an interesting question, and it helps put things in perspective to consider that the author of the Gospel of Luke followed a similar pattern of seldom quoting Jesus in his Acts of the Apostles. An overwhelming majority of biblical scholars—whether conservative or liberal—acknowledge that both The Acts of the Apostles and The Gospel of Luke were written by the same author. Yet, in spite of the fact that the author of Acts was intimately acquainted with the events and teachings of Jesus, he seldom quoted Jesus directly in Acts.

The fact that the author of Luke—which contains hundreds of quotations of Jesus—included very few quotations from Jesus in Acts is interesting, but it hardly implies that he questioned the significance of Jesus’ ministry and teachings. Another thing to bear in mind is that letters can’t be considered completely representative of Paul’s spoken teaching. After all, he spent long periods of time establishing and training churches, and verbal teaching would be more likely to include even more allusions and partial quotations than brief epistles painfully written with the implements of his time.

Today, few Christians familiar with Jesus’ teachings quote chapter and verse in discussions of issues with other Christians. Familiar with Jesus’ teachings as well as principles from the Scriptures as a whole (including the Old Testament), they allude to general principles based on a common understanding. This was what Paul did. Paul made dozens of allusions to the teaching of Jesus without quoting Him directly, just like Christians do today.²When Paul wrote his epistles, the Gospels hadn’t yet been written, but the stories, parables, and teachings that would be eventually written down on papyrus and parchment were already a treasured common possession of the apostolic Christian community. There still were hundreds of eyewitnesses of the events of Jesus’ life adding to and correcting the store of common knowledge and providing the contextual background for everything Paul and other Christian leaders said or wrote.³

In his epistles, Paul made frequent reference to Jesus as a real historical person (Romans 1:3; Romans 4:24-25; Romans 6:4-9; 1 Corinthians 6:14; 9:5; 11:23-25; 15:3-8; 2 Corinthians 4:14; 10:1; Galatians 1:1,19; 4:4; 6:12; Philippians 2:8; 3:18; 1 Thessalonians 2:14-15; 4:14). Paul referred or alluded to the Jesus tradition on numerous occasions, a few examples being 1 Corinthians 7:10-11; 9:14; 11:23-26; and 1 Thessalonians 4:15-17. He even used “ the technical terms for handing on a tradition.” ⁴

As mentioned earlier, to accept the argument that Paul created an entirely new religion based on his subjective religious experience requires a willingness to ignore an overwhelming amount of evidence. Craig Evans expresses the only conclusion that can be reached when the Gospel accounts are read with minds open to the actual evidence:

Christian faith began with the resurrection of Jesus, whose death was interpreted (in Jewish terms) as atoning and saving and in fulfillment of prophecy. There was no disagreement on this point. All who believed in Jesus and were numbered among his followers concurred on these essential beliefs. There was no other “Christianity” that thought otherwise. The Gospels written in the first century, that is, the New Testament Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John), narrate the discovery of the empty tomb and appearances of the risen Jesus to His followers. The resurrection of Jesus and its saving power become the central truth of Christian preaching and missionary activity, to which Peter and Paul give emphatic witness. There simply is no evidence of any other Christian movement in the first generation following Easter that preached something else (Fabricating Jesus: How Modern Scholars Distort the Gospels, p. 191).

The fact that Paul didn’t quote Jesus frequently implies nothing about how important he considered Him to be.

See the ATQ articles, Was Jesus Just a Wandering Philosopher? and Do the Gospels’ Miracles Make Them Legendary Accounts? Back To Article
Paul Rhodes Eddy and Gregory A. Boyd provide a list of “distinctive parallels between Paul and Jesus” (The Jesus Legend: A Case for the Historical Reliability of the Synoptic Jesus Tradition, pp. 226-28). Back To Article
“In the early Christian movement we may suppose that the authorized tradents of the tradition performed this role of controllers, but among them the eyewitnesses would surely have been the most important. We must re-mind ourselves, as we have quite often had occasion to do, that Vansina and other writers about oral tradition are describing processes of transmission over several generations, whereas in the case of the early church up to the writing of the Gospels we are considering the preservation of the testimony of the eyewitnesses during their own lifetimes. They are the obvious people to have controlled this in the interests of faithful preservation.

“In favor of this role of the eyewitnesses, we should note that the early Christian movement, though geographically widely spread, was a network of close communication, in which individual communities were in frequent touch with others and in which many individual leaders traveled frequently and widely. I have provided detailed evidence of this elsewhere. First or secondhand contact with eyewitnesses would not have been unusual. (The community addressed in Hebrews had evidently received the gospel traditions directly from eyewitnesses: see 2:3-4.) Many Jewish Christians from many places would doubtless have continued the custom of visiting Jerusalem for the festivals and so would have had the opportunity to hear the traditions of the Twelve from members of the Twelve themselves while there were still some resident in Jerusalem. Individual eyewitnesses of importance, such as Peter or Thomas, would have had their own disciples, who (like Mark in Peter’s case) were familiar enough with their teacher’s rehearsal of Jesus traditions to be able to check, as well as to pass on, the traditions transmitted in that eyewitness’s name as they themselves traveled around” (Richard Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony, p. 306). Back To Article
“We have unequivocal evidence, in Paul’s letters, that the early Christian movement did practice the formal transmission of tradition. By ‘formal’ here I mean that there were specific practices employed to ensure that tradition was faithfully handed on from a qualified traditioner to others. The evidence is found in Paul’s use of the technical terms for handing on a tradition (paradidomi, 1 Cor 11:2, 23, corresponding to Hebrew masar)and receiving a tradition (paralambano, 1 Cor 15:1, 3; Gal 1:9; Col 2:6;1 Thess 2:13; 4:1; 2 Thess 3:6, corresponding to Hebrew gibbel)These Greek words were used for formal transmission of tradition in the Hellenistic schools and so would have been familiar in this sense to Paul’s Gentile readers. They also appeared in Jewish Greek usage (Josephus, Ant. 13.297; C. Ap.1.60; Mark 7:4, 13;Acts 6:14), corresponding to what we find in Hebrew in later rabbinic literature (e.g., m. ‘Avot 1.1). Paul also speaks of faithfully retaining or observing a tradition (katecho, 1 Cor 11:2; 15:2; krateo, 2Thess 2:15, which is used of Jewish tradition in Mark 7:3, 4, 8, corresponding to the Hebrew ‘ahaz)and uses, of course, the term ‘tradition’ itself (paradosis, 1 Cor 11:2; 2Thess 2:15; 3:6, used of Jewish tradition in Matt 15:2; Mark 7:5;Gal 1:14; Josephus, Ant. 13.297).

“Paul uses this terminology to refer to a variety of kinds of tradition that he communicated to his churches when he established them. These certainly include ‘kerygmatic summaries’ of the gospel story and message (for which the best evidence is 1 Cor 15:1-8), ethical instruction, instructions for the ordering of the community and its worship, and also Jesus traditions (for which the best evidence is 1 Cor 11:23-25). It is obvious that Paul took over the technical terminology for tradition from the usage with which he would have been familiar as a Pharisaic teacher. But it is therefore important to note that there is sufficient evidence of this terminology in early Christian literature outside the Pauline letters to show that it was not peculiar to Paul or solely derived from Paul’s usage (Jude 3; Luke 1:2; Acts 16:4; Didache 4:13; Barnabas 19:11). The terminology is of considerable importance, for to ‘hand on’ a tradition is not just to tell it or speak it and to ‘receive’ a tradition is not just to hear it. Rather, handing on a tradition ‘means that one hands over something to somebody so that the latter possesses it,’while receiving a tradition ‘means that one receives something so that one possesses it.’ While this need not entail verbatim memorization, it does entail some process of teaching and learning so that what is communicated will be retained. Moreover, it is clear that the traditions Paul envisages require an authorized tradent to teach them, such as he considered himself to be. In one case where Paul speaks of traditions, he makes clear that his authority for transmitting at least some of them to his churches was not his apostolic status as such, but the fact that he himself had received them from competent authorities (1 Cor 15:3). He thus places himself in a chain of transmission (Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, pp. 264-65). Back To Article

Why do Christians Believe God is Triune?

Dan Vander Lugt
Bible, Christianity, GodGod, Persons, Trinity, Triune

Christianity isn’t founded in a philosophical perspective that evolved into a religion. Christian faith resulted from the revelation of God to the human race through Jesus Christ.

The Gospels make it clear that Jesus’ disciples misunderstood Him throughout His life. They thought that, as the promised Messiah, He would use supernatural power to set up an earthly kingdom. Consequently, when He was arrested and crucified, they lost hope (Matthew 26:56, 69-75). But at this point of despair and hopelessness, God revealed His redemptive plan. Jesus rose from death and physically appeared to His disciples in a glorious form (Luke 24:36-49; 1 Corinthians 15:1-8).

In the face of such a stupendous event, the disciples no longer had doubts regarding Jesus’ identity. Thomas, who was absent when Jesus first appeared, believed the testimony of His resurrection was too good to be true (John 20:24-26). But when he found himself face-to-face with Jesus, his response was simply: “My Lord and my God!” (John 20:28).

The apostles believed that Jesus is divine, along with the Father and the Holy Spirit (John 1:33-34; 14:16, 26; 16:13-15; 20:21-22). They believed in the divinity of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit without ever questioning the foundational biblical truth that God is One (Exodus 20:2-3; Deuteronomy 6:4; Mark 12:29; 1 Corinthians 8:4, 6; Ephesians 4:3-6; James 2:19).

The starting-point of the Trinity is, naturally, not a speculative one, but the simple testimony of the New Testament. We are not concerned with the God of thought, but with the God who makes His Name known. But He makes His Name known as the Name of the Father; He makes this Name of the Father known through the Son; and He makes the Son known as the Son of the Father, and the Father as Father of the Son through the Holy Spirit. These three names constitute the actual content of the New Testament message. This is a fact which no one can deny (Emil Brunner, The Christian Doctrine of God, “Dogmatics,” vol. 1).

Although the biblical writers don’t use the terms Trinity or triune God, the Bible clearly teaches that God exists in three Persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit (Matthew 3:16-17; 28:19; 2 Corinthians 13:14; Ephesians 2:18; 1 Peter 1:2). Each of these divine persons has His own personal characteristics and is clearly distinguished from the other persons (John 14:16-17, 26; 15:26; 16:7-15). Each divine person is equal in power, being, and glory, and each person is called God (John 6:27; Acts 5:3-4; Hebrews 1:8). Each has divine attributes (Hebrews 9:14; 13:8; James 1:17), and each performs divine works and receives divine honors (John 5:21-23; Romans 8:11; 2 Corinthians 13:14). In regard to His being or essence, God is one; but with respect to His personality, God is three.

This issue is basic to Christian faith. The doctrine of the Trinity (like the doctrine of the incarnation to which it is closely related) expresses some of the most profound and mysterious truths about God and His relationship to His creation. As the great church leader Athanasius pointed out, our salvation depends upon the incarnation. If Jesus were not both truly God and truly man, His death wouldn’t be sufficient to atone for our sin.

The Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, edited by Walter A. Elwell, gives the following concise definition of the Trinity:

Within the one essence of the Godhead we have to distinguish three “persons” who are neither three Gods on the one side, nor three parts or modes of God on the other, but co-equally and co-eternally God.

Although this theological definition is helpful, it is important to realize that none of us can have direct knowledge of God. His characteristics can only be described by analogy, and no analogy is perfect.

Why do Christians disagree so much about the Bible?

Bryan Buie
Bible, Christian lifearguments, Bible, Christians disagree, confusion

The Bible is an ancient and complex book, and not always easy to understand. That is why so many people have differing views about subjects as foundational as the Lord’s Table and baptism, and even more variation on topics like church government, spiritual gifts, and end times. Entire denominations and church movements have been formed around a collective understanding of what they believe the Bible teaches on these subjects.

Many assert that disagreements are a result of others who are unwilling to follow what the Bible “plainly” teaches. “Those churches,” they may think, “just don’t take their Bible seriously.” The problem with this kind of thinking is that it is often not true. The closer we get to the people we disagree with, the more we find that they are often godly, sincere, and informed individuals who desire to do and believe what the Bible teaches just as much as we do.

“It’s clear we just have two different opinions on this topic,” my friend jested. “You have yours and I have His.” Watching his finger point to the heavens, I couldn’t help but think how this humorous gesture communicated so much about how I often mistake my understanding of what the Bible says for what the Bible actually does say.

If we really listen to those we disagree with, we might not only start seeing their biases, but ours, as well. Our beliefs—like theirs—are affected by culture, economic status, family, place in history, and even our own denomination’s emphasis on certain doctrines and issues. Is it possible that we often don’t see another person’s perspective because we are looking to ourselves, not Christ, as the ultimate source of truth? Perhaps a way forward is to humbly and honestly admit our own imperfections and shortcomings. Then we can begin to work through our disagreements together with a focus on Jesus Christ.

Why do Christians sometimes seem fake to the outside world?

Sam Carbaugh
Christian life, Christianity, Contemporary Issuesfake, hypocrisy, hypocritical

Not only do Christians seem fake to the outside world, they can also seem fake to other Christians, too.

The reason for fakery in the lives of those who claim to follow Jesus often comes down to expectations of perfection within church communities and a lack of authentic humility among churchgoing people. Courage and humility can begin to correct the pandemic of fakeness in the church.

Christians often feel a cultural pressure to appear as holy and perfect as possible to one another and to the world. The trouble is that we are neither holy nor perfect. This can lead to a fake witness. We are strongly motivated by two impulses to try to keep up this front: fear and pride. For example, I fear what others may think of me if I behave authentically, or show a little of the everyday-still-in-need-of-a-Savior-self to others. I’m afraid that somehow I might be judged by others if I don’t act like I think a “good” Christian should. Yet, oddly, I’m proud, because acting this way usually results in compliments and admiration for me because of my good behavior.

What am I to do?

Jesus calls his followers to tell others about his work in the world. He is our redeemer and the fullest expression of a life faithfully lived. Personally, I am far from the fully faithful person Christ is calling me to become; however, as his redemption is being worked out in my life, I can point to him and what he is doing rather than trying to fake my own holiness. The tools available to bear this witness are two deeply Christian virtues: courage and humility.

It takes great courage to be truly humble. True humility leads, almost automatically, to authenticity, and the ability to be authentic will bear a great witness to the One who invites us to become more like him.

Why Do Many Western People Doubt the Accuracy of the Gospels?

Dan Vander Lugt
Bible, Christianitybiblical inspiration, Christ, historical Jesus, history, insiration, reliability of scripture, scriptural authority

There is an old saying that “familiarity breeds contempt.” The Gospels are so familiar in Western culture, and were so deeply influential in its shaping, that Westerners often fail to think about them objectively. Because they are so close and familiar, most people don’t value them enough even to know what they contain. In his book Ring of Truth, Oxford scholar and longtime friend of C. S. Lewis, J. B. Phillips, wrote:

So long as a man confines his ideas of Christ to a rather misty hero figure of long ago who died a tragic death, and so long as his ideas of Christianity are bounded by what he calls the Sermon on the Mount (which he has almost certainly not read in its entirety since he became grown-up), then the living truth never has a chance to touch him. This is plainly what has happened to many otherwise intelligent people. Over the years I have had hundreds of conversations with people, many of them of higher intellectual calibre than my own, who quite obviously had no idea of what Christianity is really about. I was in no case trying to catch them out: I was simply and gently trying to find out what they knew about the New Testament. My conclusion was that they knew virtually nothing. This I find pathetic and somewhat horrifying. It means that the most important Event in human history is politely and quietly bypassed. For it is not as though the evidence had been examined and found unconvincing: it had simply never been examined.

But beyond the tendency to take the Gospels for granted, many Western people unknowingly reflect the unexamined assumptions of their generation. Unaware of their bias, their denial of the reliability of the gospel tradition is usually much stronger than the reasons they give for doing so. (See the ATQ article Recent Media Have Claimed Jesus Christ Is Legendary: Is It True?)

The emotional power of untested assumptions reflects some of the natural inclinations that the apostle Paul wrote about in his first New Testament letter to the Corinthians.

“But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.
But he who is spiritual judges all things, yet he himself is rightly judged by no one”
(1 Corinthians 2:14-15 NKJV).

The inability of unbelievers to recognize their bias is a striking example of spiritual blindness. But along with a spiritual blindness that unconsciously distorts reality so that truth becomes invisible even when in plain view, there may be an element of intentional hostility (Matthew 13:11-17; Romans 1:18-22).

Yet Christians are in no position to “judge” modern unbelievers who seem to grasp at straws to avoid the truth. They are probably no worse people than we are. The New Testament makes it clear that apart from God’s grace, everyone—including Peter (Matthew 16:23), Paul (Acts 9:1-6), Jesus’ own family (Mark 3:21; John 7:5), Jesus’ townspeople (Mark 6:1-5), and others who should have known better (John 20:24-29) were inflicted with spiritual blindness and infected with doubt.

For many people in the West, Christianity has become a convenient scapegoat. This shouldn’t surprise us. Just as pagan intellectuals like Julian the Apostate once blamed the gospel for the deterioration of the Roman Empire, unbelieving Western intellectuals today blame Christian faith either directly or indirectly for the Western cultural failures and offenses of the past 2,000 years. The world’s hostility toward Christ isn’t incidental, and the same hatred that was directed toward Him and His message can be expected to be directed against the genuine story of His life, death, and resurrection.

See the ATQ article What Are Some Arguments Used to Downplay the Significance of the Gospels?

Why Do Morally Unprincipled People Prosper?

Dan Vander Lugt
Bible, Christianityinjustice, judgment, lawless, unprincipled, unscrupulous, wicked

An ancient writer asked the same question:

Behold, these are the ungodly, who are always at ease; they increase in riches. Surely I have cleansed my heart in vain, and washed my hands in innocence. For all day long I have been plagued and chastened every morning (Psalm 73:12-14).

It’s not surprising that unprincipled people have a degree of success in this world. Jesus said, “The sons of this world are more shrewd in their generation than the sons of light” (Luke 16:8). Because self-centered people have little concern about harming others, they have an initial advantage. Their options aren’t limited by conscience. They are single-mindedly focused on their goals. Their lack of guilt even lends them a counterfeit appearance of innocence, making them effective deceivers.

It is painful to see morally bankrupt people exploit others who tend to be gentle, honest, and meek. But their success is short-lived. The personal qualities that give them immediate success bring about their eventual destruction (Psalms 64, 73)

The inability of self-absorbed people to identify with the needs of others makes it easy for them to manipulate and deceive, but it also prevents healthy relationships and spiritual growth. Their brazen self-centeredness repels people of conscience. Unable to develop loving relationships and lacking inner moral control, they remain like emotional children, passing through life’s stages untouched by maturity and spiritual growth.

“…having eyes full of adultery and that cannot cease from sin, enticing unstable souls. They have a heart trained in covetous practices, and are accursed children” (2 Peter 2:14).
“The way of the wicked is like deep darkness; they do not know what makes them stumble” (Proverbs 4:19 NIV).
“The evil deeds of a wicked man ensnare him; the cords of his sin hold him fast” (Proverbs 5:22 NIV).

Because of their moral blindness, the children of darkness judge others’ deeds by the same standards they judge their own (Matthew 6:22-23; Ephesians 4:17-19; 1 John 2:11). Projecting their own self-centered motivations on everyone else, they even hate those who care about them and are trying to rescue them from their moral blindness and self-destruction (Matthew 13:15; 23:37-38; John 12:40). If you tell the truth to a liar, he suspects a lie. If you offer friendship to a schemer, he questions motives. If you offer love to a betrayer, he expects a trap.

“Whoever corrects a mocker invites insult; whoever rebukes a wicked man incurs abuse. Do not rebuke a mocker or he will hate you; rebuke a wise man and he will love you” (Proverbs 9:7).
“Do not give dogs what is sacred; do not throw your pearls to pigs. If you do, they may trample them under their feet, and then turn and tear you to pieces” (Matthew 7:6 NIV).

Worst of all, without the intervention of God, those who are committed only to themselves are unable to comprehend the message of the cross, the only message that can transform, heal, and save them.

“The message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God’ (1 Corinthians 1:18).
“For we are to God the aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and those who are perishing. To the one we are the smell of death; to the other, the fragrance of life. And who is equal to such a task?” (2 Corinthians 2:15-16 NIV).

So, while unprincipled people prosper in the short-term, in the long-term they are headed for ruin. Jesus said that those who follow Him have a cross to bear (Matthew 16:24), and His cross involves forgoing the temporary and short-lived pleasures of a self-absorbed life. Jesus gave up earthly power, wealth, and security, even to the point of directly confronting Satan’s entrenched power in the political and religious systems and authorities of His day. Although the immediate result of His self-sacrifice was persecution, torture, and death, the lasting result was His resurrection and vindication, and the fulfillment of Israel’s hope.

Those who seek eternal life will experience some short-term pain that others may avoid. But the rewards far outweigh the costs (Proverbs 3:13-24; Matthew 6:33; 11:28-30; 19:29; John 16:33; 2 Corinthians 1:5).

Why do some church people seem so “phony?”

Tim Gustafson
Christian life, Christianityfake, fear, hypocritical, phony

One answer is fear. Every church is comprised of ordinary human beings, but we often refuse to acknowledge our similarities to each other. We feel as though we ought to rise above our problems—especially temptations.

Yet so often we don’t. And so we regularly fake it for fear of what people will think. We fear that others might pull away from us if they knew the worst about us. This, of course, leads to hypocrisy.

While Jesus hates hypocrisy, he loves us. And so he told us: “Don’t be like the hypocrites who love to pray publicly … where everyone can see them. I tell you the truth, that is all the reward they will ever get.”[1] He also said, “When you fast, don’t make it obvious, as the hypocrites do.”[2] Jesus was warning us about religious people who valued how they looked more than they valued their relationship to God and to each other.

Can we get past the fear that isolates us and turns us into hypocrites? Yes, but it starts with dangerous honesty.

One of the remarkable things about the Bible is its honesty about its “heroes.” Noah got so drunk he passed out. Abraham was willing to let another man take his wife (twice!) until God intervened. Moses’ anger turned into murder. David had an affair with a married woman and then orchestrated her husband’s death in battle. Yet Hebrews 11 points to these individuals as heroes of the faith. They were ordinary people with big flaws and genuine faith.

The apostle Paul wrote openly about his struggles. “‘Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners,’” he wrote, “and I am the worst of them all.”[3] In another letter he admitted, “I want to do what is right, but I don’t do it. Instead, I do what I hate.”[4] This caused him to exclaim, “Oh, what a miserable person I am! Who will free me from this life that is dominated by sin and death? Thank God! The answer is in Jesus Christ our Lord.”[5]

Our faith should be public, but it shouldn’t look “religious.” We are called to be followers of Jesus, even though we won’t follow Him perfectly. And church, of all places, should be a safe environment where we can admit our imperfections, our struggles, our addictions, and our tendency to fail. In other words, it’s a place where we hypocrites can be honest—even about our hypocrisy.

This question Why do church people seem so fake? is rooted in a stereotype. Surely many church attenders are fake. But most of us realize we are on a spiritual journey that started when we turned to Jesus in faith. Our part is to admit our own hypocrisy, ask God to change us, and let our own example of honesty become part of the solution, not a perpetuation of the problem.

[1] Matthew 6:5

[2] Matthew 6:16

[3] 1 Timothy 1:15

[4] Romans 7:15

[5] Romans 7:24–25

Why do women stay with abusive men?

Dr. Sabrina Black
Christian life, Contemporary Issues, Ethics, Relationshipsabuse, marriage, relationships

The reasons women stay in abusive relationships are varied and complicated. If we are going help those who suffer in domestic abuse situations, we must first recognize that these women need someone who will listen to their story, not re-victimize them with questions and innuendos. Sometimes we do more harm than good when we say things like:

Why doesn’t she just leave?
Why would anybody in their right mind stay with him?
She must like the abuse; she keeps going back!

A woman who is being abused may leave several times in her mind and actually attempt to move out more than five times before she is finally successful. Often it is dangerous for a woman to leave an abusive relationship, but there are also many other reasons that she doesn’t just walk or run away.

Sometimes women stay because they are afraid. She fears:

Greater physical danger to herself and her children if she tries to leave.
Being hunted down and suffering a worse beating than before.
Negative responses or lack of understanding from family, friends, police, ministers, counselors, courts, etc.

Sometimes women stay because they do not have the resources to leave. They do not have:

Employment or a source of income.
Knowledge of shelters, advocacy groups, or support.
Spiritual strength, wisdom, discernment, or a loving community.

Sometimes women stay because they believe things will get better if they just try harder. They think:

“I need to keep the family together no matter what. Kids need a father.”
“I swore to stay married till death do us part. I promised to stay with him in sickness and in health, for better or worse. I can’t just leave him because he has a problem.”
“I can help him get better if we stay. No one understands him like I do.”
“It’s really not that bad. Other people have it worse.”
“I am the cause of the violence and it’s all my fault.” She may feel as though she deserves the abuse.

And sometimes she stays, as strange as it sounds, because she loves her abuser.

Often the abuser is quite loving and lovable when he is not being abusive.
He really does make her feel good and he knows what she likes.

She remembers what he used to be like, especially during the makeup phase.

(adapted from Live Right Now)

Why Does the Bible Tolerate Slavery?

Dan Vander Lugt
Bible, Christianityancient world, Hellenistic world, history, slavery, slaves

The slavery tolerated by the Scriptures must be understood in its historical context. Old Testament laws regulating slavery are troublesome by modern standards, but in their historical context they provided a degree of social recognition and legal protection to slaves that was advanced for its time (Exodus 21:20-27 ; Leviticus 25:44-46).

In ancient times, slavery existed in every part of the world. Slaves had no legal status or rights, and they were treated as the property of their owners. Even Plato and Aristotle looked upon slaves as inferior beings. As inhumane as such slavery was, we must keep in mind that on occasion it was an alternative to the massacre of enemy populations in wartime and the starvation of the poor during famine. It was to the people of this harsh age that the Bible was first written.

In New Testament times, slave labor was foundational to the economy of the Roman empire. About a third of the population was comprised of slaves. If the writers of the New Testament had attacked the institution of slavery directly, the gospel would have been identified with a radical political cause at a time when the abolition of slavery was unthinkable. To directly appeal for the freeing of slaves would have been inflammatory and a direct threat to the social order. ¹ Consequently, the New Testament acknowledged slavery’s existence, instructing both Christian masters and slaves in the way they should behave (Ephesians 6:5-9 ; Colossians 3:2 ; Colossians 4:1 ; 1 Timothy 6:2 ; Philemon 1:10-21). At the same time, it openly declared the spiritual equality of all people (Galatians 3:28 ; 1 Corinthians 7:20-24 ; Colossians 3:11). ²

The gospel first had the practical effect of doing away with slavery within the community of the early church.³ It also carried within it the seeds of the eventual complete abolition of slavery in the Western world.

The fact that the Bible never expressly condemned the institution of slavery has been wrongfully used as a rationale for its continuance. In the American South prior to the Civil War, many nominal Christians wrongly interpreted the Bible’s approach to slavery and used their misunderstanding to justify economic interests. The terrible use of African slave labor continued in spite of those who argued from the Scriptures for the spiritual equality of all races.⁴ Today the Christian message of the spiritual equality of all people under God has spread throughout the world, and it is rapidly becoming the standard by which the human values of all nations are measured.

By the time of Christ, there had been several large slave rebellions. The rebellion led by Spartacus in 73 BC terrorized all of southern Italy. His army defeated the Romans in two pitched battles before it was defeated and its survivors crucified. Back To Article
Also in direct contradiction to pagan values, both the Old and New Testaments clearly denied that there is anything demeaning about physical work. Jesus and His disciples were “blue collar” working men, and Paul was a tentmaker by trade (Mark 6:3 ; Acts 18:3 ; Acts 20:33-34 ; 1 Corinthians 4:12 ; 2 Thessalonians 3:8,11). Back To Article
Already by the second century, a former slave named Pius was the Bishop of Rome. Back To Article
William Wilberforce is a prime example of the influence of the gospel. An unlikely candidate for conversion, he was a high-living member of the upper classes and a rising star in English politics. His conversion to Christianity led to his lifelong dedication to the abolition of slavery in the British Empire. His dream was fulfilled just before his death in 1833 when the House of Commons passed a law that abolished slavery.
Another example is John Newton, the author of the beloved hymn “Amazing Grace.” Newton was a slave trader prior to his conversion. Afterwards, he became a crusader for the abolition of slavery and an important influence in the life of William Wilberforce. Back To Article

Why doesn’t God just forgive everyone?

Marlena Graves
Christian life, Ethics, God, Relationshipsforgiveness, grace, hope, repentance

I’ve often wondered something similar myself. “Why doesn’t God save everyone?” After all, he has the power to do so.

Did you know that some Christians do believe that God saves everyone … eventually?

Saving everyone would entail forgiving everyone. But not everyone is truly sorry for their sins. Some people show no remorse for their sins or even acknowledge that they have sinned against others and God. How can God forgive the unrepentant? Some people talk as though forgiveness doesn’t require repentance, like when we speak of forgiving unrepentant abusive parents or violent terrorists. But it seems best to me to keep those concepts—forgiveness and repentance—connected while acknowledging that something else is going on in the cases just mentioned.

My husband (a philosophy professor) and I have often discussed this question. He offers this example. Suppose a parent offers to forgive a child for a particular misdeed, yet the child keeps sinning against the parent with no remorse. The relationship between the parent and the child is still fractured even though the parent extended forgiveness to the child. The parent desires an intimate, joy-filled relationship exemplifying reconciliation. God is like that parent.

God is good, beautiful, and full of compassion (Psalm 136:1). Forgiveness through Jesus Christ is for all (John 3:16; 2 Peter 3:9), but not all of us have it. Some of us continue to arrogantly resist God because we think we know better than God. Like Satan, we desire to be God (see Isaiah 14:12–15; Matthew 4).

But some say that in the end, even if people experience hell, they’ll have a chance to escape hell. Furthermore, they claim God’s love is irresistible and unconditional, so the unrepentant in this life cannot help but be wooed and so repent even after death. As for me, I’m inclined to think that some will stubbornly resist God in this life and in the next.

This question leads to many other theological questions about the nature of hell, the problem of evil, and the salvation of people such as babies, the intellectually disabled, and others who cannot understand the propositions of the gospel. There is quite a bit I don’t know about this topic. But I do know God is loving, compassionate, and just. And I truly trust him to judge rightly.

Why Doesn’t God Make His Existence Undeniable?

Dan Vander Lugt
God, Relationshipsdeity, freedom, God's existence, monotheism, omnipotence, truth

God may have designed the universe so that the motive for faith must be as much moral, relational and spiritual as it is logical. Consider what the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews writes:

Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. This is what the ancients were commended for. By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible. By faith Abel offered God a better sacrifice than Cain did. By faith he was commended as a righteous man, when God spoke well of his offerings. And by faith he still speaks, even though he is dead. By faith Enoch was taken from this life, so that he did not experience death; he could not be found, because God had taken him away. For before he was taken, he was commended as one who pleased God. And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him. (Hebrews 11:1-6 NIV, italics added).

In fact, the intrinsic nature of faith, hope, and love are such that they shouldn’t and can’t be reduced to mere logic. If God designed the universe so that His presence could be “proven” in the scientific, mathematical sense, faith wouldn’t have to be a decision of the heart. It would be mere acquiescence of the mind, motivated by necessity and fear but not by love. If faith, hope, and love were reduced to a logical decision, freedom would vanish. Who would dare stand against God if logic always seemed completely on the side of faith? If God’s existence and ultimate control were undeniable, people would obey out of fear and would struggle to conceal their resentment.

Rather than being a loving, heavenly Father who allows prodigals to make mistakes, repent, and come home to experience His love, He would be viewed as such an ominous authority that creatures would never dare become prodigals, who by returning to faith could discover freedom, individuality, calling, and love. Self-awareness would be overwhelmed by the obviousness of God’s presence. Creatures would be so engulfed by His power and glory that they couldn’t even begin to discover themselves. Love as we know it could never exist in such a world.

This may be why faith, hope, and love affirm logic but transcend it; why they must involve moral choice rather than mere logical deduction. This too may be why He employs randomness within the creative process, leaving profound evidence of His involvement and presence but doing nothing to coerce obedience.¹

“I believe that we Christians are warranted in seeing every potentially viable life form (or every viable variant of DNA) as something thoughtfully conceived in the mind of the Creator. As did Basil and Augustine, I believe that we may rightfully speak of God calling into being at the beginning, from nothing, all material substance and all creaturely forms (whether inanimate structures or animate life forms). And, still standing with Basil and Augustine, I believe that we may rightfully presume that the array of structures and life forms now present was not yet present at the beginning, but became actualized in the course of time as the created substances, employing the capacities thoughtfully given to them by God at the beginning, functioned in a gapless creational economy to bring about what the Creator called for and intended from the outset.
“In the context of this traditional Christian vision of God’s creative work . . . , we might now wish to employ the vocabulary of twentieth-century science and speak about the full array of functionally viable forms of DNA (and the creatures thereby represented) as constituting a ‘possibility space’ of potential life forms—this possibility space itself, along with all connective pathways, being an integral component of the world brought into being at the beginning. Furthermore, in the language of this theistic paradigm of evolutionary creation, we would speak of DNA being enabled by the Creator to employ random genetic variation as a means to explore and discover (in contrast to create) viable pathways and novel life forms so that the Creator’s intentions for the formative history of the Creation might be actualized in the course of time.
“See, then, what this evolutionary creation paradigm accomplishes: Do material processes have to create? No, the possibility space of viable and historically achievable life forms is an integral aspect of the world that God created at the beginning. Material systems need only employ their God-given functional capacities to discover some of the possibilities thoughtfully prepared for them. But, one might ask, how can such ‘mindless’ material processes function to bring about what appears to be the product of ‘intelligent design’? The point is that they are not really mindless at all. Rather, every one of these processes and every connective pathway in the possibility space of viable creatures is itself a mindfully designed provision from a Creator possessing unfathomable intelligence.

“It seems to me that this theistic paradigm provides precisely what the naturalistic (broad) paradigm—the blind watchmaker hypothesis—could not. It provides the answer to the question, How is it possible that such a remarkable array of life forms is not only viable but historically realizable within the economy of the world at hand? Could anything less than the infinite creativity and faithful providence of God suffice?” (Howard Van Til, First Things, July/August 1993) Back To Article

Why Don’t Christians Stop Sinning Completely?

Dan Vander Lugt
Bible, Christianity, Ethicsconfession, conversion, hypocrisy, salvation, sanctification, sin

The Bible stresses both the importance of confessing ( James 5:16 ) and forsaking sin ( Ezekiel 18:31 ; Matthew 5:29 ; Luke 14:27 ; Romans 13:12 ; Ephesians 4:22 ). But just because Christians should confess and forsake their sins doesn’t mean that they are capable of achieving sinless perfection.

Certainly some sins are the outward and obvious kind that can be clearly confessed, forsaken, and avoided. No genuine Christian could commit an obvious, outward sin like adultery, murder, or theft without realizing it is wrong. In fact, it would be hard for a genuine Christian to commit such a clearly defined, obvious sin without a major struggle of conscience.

But not all of our sins are so outward and obvious or under our conscious control. There is another type of sin so deeply rooted in our depraved human nature that it seems to have its own life within us like a parasite or an alien being with a destructive craving to live independent of God.¹ This kind of sin is present in all of us — not just in obvious sinners, like thieves, adulterers, and murderers. Regarding this kind of sin, the apostle John wrote:

If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. . . . If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His word is not in us. (1 John 1:8-10 NKJV)

The apostle Paul described his struggle with this kind of sin in Romans 7:15-25:

For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am carnal, sold under sin. For what I am doing, I do not understand. For what I will to do, that I do not practice; but what I hate, that I do. If, then, I do what I will not to do, I agree with the law that it is good. But now, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me. For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh) nothing good dwells; for to will is present with me, but how to perform what is good I do not find. For the good that I will to do, I do not do; but the evil I will not to do, that I practice. (Romans 7:14-19 NKJV)

This kind of inner sin is often carried out unconsciously and in ignorance, but it eventually leads to death ( Romans 8:6,13 ) It appears in forms that are often subtle — like greed, pride, sloth, indifference to others, and lust. This inner sin is often so much a part of us that we recognize it only with difficulty, although others around us may see it clearly. Like an addictive poison, it has become so much a part of us — infecting every aspect of our personality and identity — that in this life it is impossible for us to be instantly freed from it. To be instantly purified of its influence would be more than we could bear.²

When we have faith in Christ we are instantly freed from the eternal penalty of our sin, but we can not be freed of the burden of inner sin itself except through a process — the process of sanctification by the power of the Holy Spirit ( 1 Corinthians 6:11 ; 2 Corinthians 3:18 ; 2 Thessalonians 2:13 ; 1 Peter 1:2 ) Sanctification creates a “new man” within us in the image of Christ, a new “nature” that is drawn to life and immortality instead of death and corruption. Unlike the instantaneous event of justification, the process of sanctification continues through our entire life on earth, reaching completion only in heaven ( 1 John 3:2,3 ).

See the ATQ article Are Christians Held Responsible for Unpremeditated and Unconscious Sins?

This is implied by numerous passages in Scripture that describe the immense gap between sinful humanity and the Holy God. ( Exodus 33:20-23 ; Isaiah 6:5 ; John 1:18 ; 1 Timothy 6:16 ). Back To Article
The biblical name for this instantaneous act of forgiveness is justification ( Romans 3:21-28 ; Romans 5:8, 9 ; Philippians 3:8, 9 ; Titus 3:4-7 ). Back To Article

Why don’t Protestant Christians pray to Mary and other saints, seeking their help and intercession?

Dan Vander Lugt
Christianity, World Religionsheaven, Mary, prayer, saints, worship

Christians who pray to Mary and saints in heaven to intercede for them sometimes say that praying to Mary and the saints is no different than asking living fellow believers to pray for them. They say that the Scriptures tell us to uphold each other and intercede for each other in prayer (Matthew 5:44; Ephesians 6:18; James 5:16).

Though Scripture doesn’t affirm it, it is conceivable that friends and loved ones who have preceded us to heaven are able to pray for us. But when Christians ask living friends and loved ones to pray for them, they don’t worship or attribute godlike qualities to them. They don’t assume they have unique intercessory abilities and special influence with the Savior. They don’t approach particular strangers and ask for their prayer support. Above all, they don’t “pray” to living friends. They ask them to share the burden of their prayer concerns with the Lord.

Christians who pray to Mary and the saints are assuming much more, believing that Mary and the saints are in a position to help in unique and specific ways: St. Anthony helps locate lost objects; St. Anne combats infertility; St. James the Greater heals arthritis; St. Jude offers hope to “lost causes”; St. Sebastian protects athletes; and many other “saints” are reputed to do specific things for many other categories of needy people.

The pagans of the Roman Empire once prayed to specific gods for help relating to the problems and challenges of life; and when Theodosius I officially outlawed pagan worship in ad 380, many people transferred their devotion from pagan gods to the saints. Thus, prayer to saints came to parallel devotion to the pagan gods of popular Roman religion.

Scripture doesn’t support the idea that “specialist” saints in heaven share with God the ability to hear thousands of prayers simultaneously. Nor does Scripture imply that particular people in heaven are able to intercede with God in a unique way in the case of particular kinds of needs. By attributing such abilities to these saints, we detract from the centrality of Jesus Christ as our divine and human mediator. We project the Savior’s unique qualities (1 Timothy 2:5; Hebrews 7:26-28; Hebrews 9:24; 1 John 2:1-2) on fellow believers who share our own sinful tendencies and frailties. Instead of honoring the Son of God who gave His life for us, we glorify the needy creatures He came to save. (See the ATQ article Why don’t Protestant Christians worship Mary and the Saints?)

Why Is Creation Such an Emotionally Charged Issue?

Dan Vander Lugt
Contemporary Issues, Godatheism, creation, Darwinism, design, evidence, evolution, naturalist, theism

Few issues are as intellectually complex and emotionally charged as the subject of creation. There are a number of reasons this issue arouses such strong emotions.

Both sides in the debate claim that the weight of evidence is on their side. For Christians and other believers in a personal God, the recently enunciated anthropic principle ¹ affirms their conviction that creation requires a Creator (Psalm 8:3, 4; Romans 1:20). Believers in naturalism (atheistic evolution) counter with the assertion that there is no mathematical, scientific “proof” that God intervenes supernaturally in the “closed system” of natural cause and effect.

Another source of conflicting evidence relates to the problem of evil. Believers in a personal Creator maintain that the limitless beauty of the universe and the existence of consciousness, self-sacrifice and love imply a loving, personal Creator. Naturalists focus on the randomness of nature and the universality of disease, predation, and suffering. They insist that the destructiveness in nature can be explained more easily by an impersonal universe than a loving, personal Creator.

Unfortunately, some believers in creation have had obviously flawed philosophical and theological perspectives. For example, because the book of Joshua speaks of the “sun standing still” (Joshua 10:12-14 ), a significant number of prominent Christians in the past assumed that the sun revolved around the earth. Because of this misreading of Scripture, they opposed the Copernican revolution. ². More recently, other prominent Christians have endorsed Ussher’s chronology ³, insisting that the world is exactly as old as a superficial reading of the Old Testament genealogies would imply ⁴. Such believers allowed their own interpretations of Scripture to become idols, outweighing overwhelming evidence and undermining the authority of Scripture itself.

Many atheistic evolutionists, on the other hand, make an idol of the scientific method. They are reductionists who “reduce” life to nothing more than what can be demonstrated by scientific fact. By restricting the realm of “fact” and “reality” only to things that can be demonstrated scientifically, they exclude God and the most important aspects of human life.

Believers in creation make the reasonable observation that further acceptance of atheistic evolutionism’s worldview will make the spiritual vacuum that already oppresses modern society even stronger. Godless evolutionism laid the groundwork for the violent atheistic ideologies of communism, race-based nationalism, and fascism that made the 20th century the most catastrophically murderous century in human history ⁵. Atheistic evolutionists (naturalists) fear—with much less evidence—that the antiscientific bias of those who affirm creation may cause a recurrence of blind superstition on a mass scale, like that produced the Medieval witch-craze in Europe. (See the ATQ articles Why Did Ancient Pagans Practice Blood Sacrifices? and Did Church Authorities Seek to Eradicate Paganism in Europe by Killing Millions of “Witches”?)

Each side has fundamental doubts about the other’s integrity. Naturalistic evolutionists tend to view religious creationists as intellectually lazy people who are unwilling to grapple honestly with the evidence. Generalizing, they conclude that unwillingness of some creationists to seriously grapple with vast areas of evidence uncovered by science implies that the faith of all creationists is propped up by mere ignorance and group consensus. On the other hand, believers in a Creator tend to see all naturalists stridently promoting a worldview that fails to answer the most basic questions of human existence and ignores the despair it creates. They view all evolutionists as arrogant zealots unhumbled before the mystery of life, motivated largely by a desire to deny their accountability to a higher Judge.

The subject of creation tends to draw out the obscurantism on both sides: an obscurantism that tends to minimize the significance of physical evidence, and an obscurantism that tends to minimize the significance of the spiritual side of reality. Each inflames its opposite. Before they can come to a fuller understanding, both creationists and evolutionists need to be willing to dispense with their “pat answers” that ignore either physical facts or spiritual reality (Isaiah 29:13; Jeremiah 5:1-3; Job 38, 39)

“You, therefore, have no excuse, you who pass judgment on someone else, for at whatever point you judge the other, you are condemning yourself, because you who pass judgment do the same things. Now we know that God’s judgment against those who do such things is based on truth. So when you, a mere man, pass judgment on them and yet do the same things, do you think you will escape God’s judgment? Or do you show contempt for the riches of his kindness, tolerance and patience, not realizing that God’s kindness leads you towards repentance?” (Romans 2:1-4. See the rest of the chapter).

A hundred years ago, the weight of the spirit of the age seemed to favor the naturalist who denied the need for God. Today, the spirit of the age is swinging in favor of those acknowledging the reasonability of a Creator Yet, it would be a mistake for Christians to depend on current scientific opinion as a basis for their faith. Healthy Christian faith thrives on both spiritual and rational integrity. Its vision of reality can be expanded by new scientific discovery without mistaking the world of mathematics and scientific observation for the sum of reality. Of all people, Christians should be most open to exploring both physical and spiritual truth.

“O LORD, you have searched me and you know me. You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar. You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways. Before a word is on my tongue you know it completely, O LORD. You hem me in—behind and before; you have laid your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain. Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there. If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast. If I say, ‘Surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me,’ even the darkness will not be dark to you; the night will shine like the day, for darkness is as light to you. For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be. How precious to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them! Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand. When I awake, I am still with you” (Psalms 139:1-18).

One of the most startling developments to come from modern physics is that the universe, in some very fundamental way, seems to have been “designed” or “tuned” to produce life and consciousness. Actually, what physicists have discovered is that there are a large number of “coincidences” inherent in the fundamental laws and constants of nature. Every one of these coincidences or specific relationships between fundamental physical parameters is needed, or the evolution of life and consciousness as we know it could not have happened. The collection of these coincidences is an undisputed fact, and collectively, have come to be known as the “Anthropic Principle.” (J. P. Provenzano, The Philosophy of Conscious Energy) Back To Article
Although not all early and Medieval Christians who took this view, Martin Luther was a prominent example of those who held that Joshua 10:12-14 proved that the sun revolves around the earth, rather than the earth revolving around the sun. Of course all the Bible verifies is that the sun and moon appeared to stand still. This apparently involved some kind of miracle, but God probably made the sun appear to stand still without stopping the rotation of the earth with all of the consequences of such an action.
Were the rotation of the earth stopped, the oceans would probably have flooded over the highest mountains and unprecedented earthquakes and volcanoes have been triggered as the result of tremendous pressures in the earth’s crust. All but the simplest life would be annihilated. Of course, God would have the power to suspend the laws of physics so that none of this would happen, but a miracle of this scale would seem to be a bit “excessive” just to help the Israelites win a battle. After all, there would be much simpler ways that God could make the sun “stand still.” Back To Article
In the mid 17th century Archbishop James Ussher of the Anglican Church published a chronology that concluded the “first day of creation began at nightfall preceding Sunday October 23, 4004 BC in the proleptic Julian calendar, near the autumnal equinox.” Back To Article
There is no certain biblical means of determining the amount of time that has elapsed between the creation of man and the coming of Christ. The genealogies of Genesis are clearly not reliable for this purpose. For instance, the Genesis genealogies would allow for only 300 years between Noah and Abraham, yet at the time of Abraham there were already great civilizations in such widespread places as Egypt, China, India, and Mesopotamia, and Greece. In addition, detailed archaeological evidences demonstrate that in some of these places many dynasties had already come and gone, and civilization was already ancient.
The solution to the apparent conflict between archaeological evidences and the biblical record lies in the fact that the genealogies don’t include unimportant individuals. The Hebrew word for son, ben, didn’t only mean son, but also was used to refer to grandsons and descendants. Similarly, the Hebrew word yalad (bear) also can have the meaning of “become the ancestor of” (Isaiah 29:23 is an example of yalad being used in this way).
There are a number of good examples of how genealogies tend to omit all but the most important individuals in a line. for instance, Matthew 1:1 names only Abraham, David, and Christ. Even though there are only four generations listed between Levi and Moses (Exodus 6:16-20), Numbers 3:39 states that Levi’s descendants already were numbered at 2200 males! (The genealogy shown for Ephraim seems to show 18 generations between Ephraim and Joshua. This genealogy is found in 1 Chronicles 7:20-27). The list of kings in Matthew 1:2-17 omits a number of names that are listed in the list of kings in the Old Testament.

These and other examples demonstrate that the genealogies of the Old Testament patriarchs are given in order to demonstrate the common descent of all mankind from Adam and Eve, not to provide an accurate chronology of the time that has elapsed from Adam to Christ. Back To Article
In his book, Out of Control: Global Turmoil on the Eve of the Twenty-first Century (1993), Zbigniew Brzezinski lists 167,000,000 to 175,000,000 “lives deliberately extinguished by politically motivated carnage.” Back To Article

Why Is Dressing Modestly Important?

Allison Stevens
Christian life, Ethicsethics, modesty, sex, sexuality

Is dressing modestly just an outdated cultural standard from the 50s? Turn on the television, go to the movies, or flip through the pages of just about any magazine and it appears that our society has lost the value of modesty. People dress in clothing and styles that are designed to reveal and to bring considerable attention to their bodies.

To suggest that we need to dress with modesty is often looked on as “restraining” or “limiting our freedom.” This argument, however, overlooks the personal rewards of living and dressing modestly.

Modesty in dress sends a message of purity and honor. It puts an emphasis on and values the inner person over outward attractiveness. It says that a person is worth far more than what meets the eye. There is a depth of character that rises above beauty or charm. When we dress modestly, we are saying that we posses inner qualities for which we should gain appropriate attention and value from others.

When we choose to dress in a provocative way, we send a message that we believe our value comes from our looks rather than from our heart. Skimpy clothing says that our worth is in our sex appeal. This is a weak foundation to build self-esteem or self-worth. What happens when we age and the wrinkles start showing? Where will the sense of value and worth come from then? For various reasons (e.g. past sexual abuse, low self-esteem) some believe that their worth comes from how good they look and how many heads they can turn. But that can leave a person feeling empty and alone. All of us, ultimately, want to be pursued and loved deeply because of our hearts and minds, not for our bodies. Dressing in a showy fashion puts the focus on our outward appearance, not on our heart.

The Bible places a high priority on modesty. In 1 Timothy 2:9 , for example, it teaches that Christian women are to dress modestly. They are to focus on their inner attractiveness rather than being overly concerned about outward appearance. This does not mean that they shouldn’t take care of themselves, look their best, and enjoy their beauty. It means that they should not use their God-given beauty for selfish, self-centered reasons, like competing with other women or gaining the lustful attention of men.

Modesty demonstrates self-control, which is a fruit of the Holy Spirit ( Galatians 5:22-23 ). Those who understand the principles of modesty acknowledge human sexuality and the tendency toward self-promotion. But they control those inclinations by choosing to express themselves with humility. Immodesty, on the other hand, can create a false sense of security and self-esteem because it puts too much emphasis on outward appearance.

It can be difficult to maintain modesty when we think of it in terms of it being “limiting.” But if we consider the personal rewards of modesty — self-respect, honor, and self-control — the price is too high not to be modest.

Why Is It Difficult for Victims of Sexual Abuse to Trust?

Jeff Olson
Personal Struggles, Relationshipsbetrayal, longing for love, seduction, setup, sexual abuse, suspicious

Trust is a universal struggle. All of us wrestle to some extent with trusting others because of painful experiences with betrayal. When the source of that betrayal is someone close to us, it can be especially devastating ( Psalm 55:12-14 ). Nowhere is this more true than when a child or teenager is sexually abused by a family member, close family friend, or some other trusted authority figure. Seduction and sexual exploitation by trusted individuals creates an environment for a lifetime battle with distrust.

Perpetrators of sexual abuse often prey on their victim’s longing for connection and love. They lure susceptible individuals into their snare by showering them with personal affection and kindness. Having won their victim’s confidence, abusers look for the chance to take advantage of their trust by sexually abusing them and eventually casting them aside like a worthless object.

Since a victim’s longing for love and connection is what set the stage for the abusive situation, they grow suspicious of anyone who arouses their deep longings for intimacy. In their mind, it may be another setup. The more those deep longings are aroused (no matter how well-meaning the other person might be), the more fearful the victim is that the trapdoor of abuse will spring open again. Consequently, a victim of abuse struggles deeply to trust anyone, especially those who express kindness and care.

Why Is It Hard for Muslims to Believe in Christ as Savior?

Dan Vander Lugt
Contemporary Issues, World ReligionsByzantine Christianity, Christianity, Constantine, idolatry, incarnation, Islam, Jesus Christ, messiah, Muslim, relics, Son of God, superstition

Islam was founded during an epoch when the weakened remnant of the Roman Empire had been “Christianized.” However the official Christian church was largely under the control of a corrupt and decadent empire and became associated with its evil deeds.

Further, the church had become the sponsor of idolatry. Many “sacred” objects, such as bones of saints and relics of the cross, were considered to have magical powers. Although the objects themselves were usually of questionable authenticity, church leaders exploited them to manipulate the superstitious masses.

When Mohammed observed the church and the “Christian” rulers of his day, he saw that they violated the very principles they claimed to uphold. Considering the flagrant corruption and idolatry of the Christian world, it isn’t surprising that he and other early leaders of Islam assumed that every aspect of Christianity, including its Scriptures and key doctrines, was corrupt.

As Muslim armies swept through “Christian” lands they found that they were often welcomed as liberators. The astonishing speed of their conquests, along with their conviction that they were restoring the pure monotheism of the Bible, gave them even more confidence that their mission was God-ordained and blessed.

In more recent times the nominally Christian nations of the West have established political and military dominance over the Muslim world, from Morocco to Indonesia. Again, association with the often violent and exploitive policies of “Christian” colonial powers sullied the image of Christ. Further, in recent years the decadent values of Western secularism have disrupted the lives of Muslim people who had lived in relative harmony with their beliefs for hundreds of years.¹

Today, just as few Christians are familiar with the Koran, many Muslims are unacquainted with the Bible. If they live in a Muslim society, all they are likely to hear about the Bible and Christian doctrine are misleading distortions based largely on cultural memories of conflict with the Western world.²

1. Conservative Christians are painfully aware of many of the negative effects of secularism in the modern world, including the breakdown of family life, the glorification of immorality, and the legalization of abortion. It is important to consider the negative effects of the massive influence of Western culture in the past century.

“Historically, over many decades, Christianity and Judaism made their own accommodations with modernity. The process produced further divisions and differences among them: liberal, fundamentalist, and evangelical Protestantism; orthodox, conservative, reform, and reconstructionist Judaism; orthodox or traditionalist and liberal Catholicism. Catholicism was for some time a distant third to Protestantism and Judaism in dealing with modernity. Until the second Vatican Council in the 1960s, pontiffs had condemned much of modernity — including modern biblical criticism, democracy, pluralism, and women’s rights. Despite change, all of the children of Abraham continue to struggle with modernity. The global resurgence of religion is driven by a desire of many well-educated believers of different faiths to rethink and reevaluate the relationship of religion to modernity. Many question the excesses of modernity, trying to reassert a faith and values that limit the unbridled use of science and technology, the sexual freedoms that weaken family life, the emphasis on individual rights rather than on responsibilities, or the accumulation and maldistribution of wealth.” pp. 123-124, Unholy War, Terror in the Name of Islam by John L. Esposito (Oxford University Press) Back To Article

2. Further, it is an unfortunate fact that in most nations with Muslim majorities, conversion to faith in Christ results in extreme social ostracism, or even in imprisonment or execution. “At birth, a person is marked either Moslem or non-Moslem depending on one’s descent. One’s religion is therefore marked on his or her birth certificate, identity card, and/or passport. Furthermore, a non-Moslem can easily become a Moslem, but not the reverse. This is why there are unknown visible churches of Moslem converts to Christianity. Converts do exist, but they are in small numbers, meeting secretly.” (Billy Kim, President of the Baptist World Alliance) Back To Article

Why is it Important Not to Treat Sexual Intimacy Casually?

Dan Vander Lugt
Christian life, Contemporary Issues, Ethics, Personal Strugglesintimacy, promiscuity, sex, sexuality

God intended sexual intimacy to mold a man and a woman physically, emotionally, and spiritually into “one flesh” (Genesis 2:24). Seeking a “one-flesh relationship” outside of a long-term, committed relationship is like a long-distance runner substituting performance-enhancing drugs for discipline and training or a graduate student hiring someone to write his/her master’s thesis.

Because we are not just animals, the human value of sexual experience is derived mostly from spiritual and emotional intimacy. Casual sexual experiences actually make it harder for people to yoke genuine intimacy with sexual arousal. This is why ordinary married people usually have a more deeply satisfying and long-lasting relationship than promiscuous celebrities who look spectacularly attractive and desirable.

We have fallen far from God’s plan for sexual intimacy. Contraception now allows the wholesale separation of sex from conception, birthing, parenting, and family bonding. Cultural changes have also identified pornography, promiscuity, and sexual relativism with sexual liberation. Consequently, we see unprecedented rates of divorce, family instability, and social problems.

Rather than experimenting with sexual experiences that scar and break hearts, Christians—whether single or married—should focus on establishing and nurturing genuine friendship and intimacy, the kind that will stand them in good stead for a lifetime.

Why Is New Testament Christianity Opposed to War?

Dan Vander Lugt
Christianity, Ethicsempire, forgiveness, military, military service, nationalism, pacifism, tolerance, vengeance, violence, war

Although most Christians agree that war is sometimes necessary in self defense (See the ATQ article When Is a War Just?), and nominal “Christians” have often wrongfully launched or participated in wars of aggression, genuine, New Testament Christianity would never be the cause of war.

The New Testament is neither hostile towards non-Christians, nor does it rationalize aggression against them.

Christianity’s core beliefs are clearly defined by the New Testament:

1. Humanity is sinful and needs redemption.

2. God loves the entire human race, regardless of race, gender, or cultural background.

3. The perfect life and atoning death of Jesus Christ provided our redemption.

4. Jesus is the “firstborn of many brethren” (Romans 8:29), the model for Christian living (John 17:16-26).

The New Testament views all people—including Christians—as sinners in need of forgiveness and calls on them to repent their sins, accept God’s free gift of salvation through Jesus Christ, and live gratefully, lovingly, and obediently with Jesus as their model. It portrays all people as equal in spiritual worth, whether rich, poor, male, female, slave, or free (Acts 17:26; Galatians 3:28; Colossians 3:9-11; 1 Peter 2:9). It also separates spiritual authority from governmental authority (Mark 12:16-17, John 19:11, John 18:36-37).

The New Testament requires Christians to be concerned for their enemies (Matthew 5:44; Luke 6:20-34; Acts 7:60; 1 Corinthians 13:1-3, 13; Ephesians 5:1-2); to shun self-righteousness (Matthew 7:3-5; John 8:3-11; Romans 5:8-11; Galatians 6:1); to repudiate the idols of ethnic pride and privilege (Matthew 8:5-13; Luke 10:30-37; Luke 17:11-19; John 4:9); to refrain from judging other people’s hearts (Matthew 13:24-30); to realize that one’s responsibility to God is of a higher order than one’s responsibility to the state (Mark 12:13-17); and to forgive repentant sinners and forswear revenge against them (Luke 23:34; Romans 12:14-21; Ephesians 4:31).

Only when flagrantly distorted and misapplied can the words of the New Testament be taken to imply that Christians should forcefully impose their faith on others. The gospel of Jesus Christ commands Christians to overcome evil with good; realize that love and forgiveness are essential to the establishment of God’s kingdom; be conscious of the distinction between the kingdom of God and the kingdom of the world; and be humble as sinners who have not only been forgiven but graciously given the power to live an obedient life.

Why Is Pornography Addiction a Serious Problem?

Dan Vander Lugt
Contemporary Issues, Personal Strugglesaddiction, lust, mass media, modern culture, nudity, sexuality, temptation, voyeurism

In ancient times, pornography was “writing about prostitutes.” (See the ATQ article Is Sexual Sin and Temptation a Bigger Problem Today Than It Was in the Early Church?) Today pornography is a multibillion dollar industry that is spreading a wide net by providing sexual arousal on demand.

¹ Unlike most cultures that restrain and channel eroticism and sexuality so that a people’s energy isn’t squandered through dissipation and compulsive sex, modern culture is drenched with sexual images, sexualized. It is so obsessed with short term sensual pleasure that sexual self-control and chastity tend to be popularly viewed as manifestations of mental or emotional disorder.

Paul’s warnings against intercourse with a prostitute in 1 Corinthians have been too easily overlooked in respect to pornography.

All other sins a man commits are outside his body, but he who sins sexually sins against his own body. ² Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body.” (1 Corinthians 6:9-20 NIV)

If large numbers of evangelical Christians began using cocaine on a regular basis, we wouldn’t be surprised when many of them developed serious problems relating to cocaine addiction. Yet although pornography is as addictive as cocaine, legal, and available anonymously, we are surprised—even shocked—that large numbers of Evangelicals are pornography addicts.

“Porn is not swallowed or rubbed on the skin. It enters the body directly through your senses, such as your eyes and ears. This gives it a direct link to your central nervous system, specifically, the pleasure centers in your brain. Porn provides instant arousal, a real enticement in these days of “give it to me now!” The physiological changes that happen when using porn happen almost immediately: your heart beats faster, your breathing gets shallower, and you start to feel a throbbing in your genitals.” ³

Pornography provides a high-quality counterfeit of the sensual ecstasy of sex. Rather than experiencing sexual and emotional pleasure as part of a meaningful relationship with a real person, the pornography addict deceives his own body to substitute arousal through illusion and fantasy for real relationship.

For many centuries Christians have contemplated the impersonal religious prostitution associated with fertility religions in other times and places with rightful abhorrence. Yet they largely overlook the fact that a new form of “fertility worship” has moved in to fill the void of loneliness and meaninglessness in our rootless culture, and that the modern form is far more subtle, insidious, and addictive than those of the past.

Physiological effects of pornography are as great (or greater) than actual sex with a prostitute. ⁴ Sex with a prostitute involves a degree of realism, and more likelihood of remorse, sympathy, or disgust. Pornography has all of the perfection of illusion, with no physical-relational strings attached.

The social and familial consequences of overstimulation and obsession with sexual pleasure are “coming home to roost”. Until recently “conventional wisdom” about pornography held that it was either harmless or beneficial as a means of overcoming “sexual repression.” Today many secular psychologists are acknowledging the escalating effects of rampant pornographic addiction and describing its symptoms and effects.

We are so awash in pornography these days that most of us don’t recognize it anymore. Of Internet users in the United States, 40 percent visit porn sites at least once a month. The number rises to more than 70 percent when the audience is men aged eighteen to thirty-four. The Internet has long been a driving force for the porn industry, pushing the bounds of access speed, streaming downloads, and file sharing. Now the cell-phone industry hopes porn will do for it what it’s done for the Web — make it very, very rich. The pornography industry brings in between $10 billion and $20 billion in the United States alone, and around $60 billion worldwide. (Hard numbers are hard to find, since cable giants and hotels chains are loathe to publicize their take from the skin industry.) That’s more than all professional sports. It’s three times more than Google, Yahoo, and MSN make in a year—combined. (quoted from “Not Your Father’s Pornography” by Jason Byasee). Back To Article
Because they are “sins against the body,” sexual sins utilize the body’s powerful instinctive drives to create degrading forms of addictive behavior that wreak havoc both for the sinner and everyone within his/her sphere of influence.
The Bible exalts human sexuality within marriage. It uses the image of husband and wife to portray the intimacy that exists between Christ and the church (2 Corinthians 11:2; Ephesians 5:21-33; Revelation 19:7), which is why Paul describes sexual sin with special concern. By means of sexual sin, the human will becomes the instrument by which the body’s reproductive instincts are misdirected to destructive ends, and, in turn, the body’s wholesome physical drives become complicit in enslaving the human will. The personal and social repercussions of sexual sin are extreme. Back To Article
“Studies have found that just by being exposed to graphic sexual material, males . . . and females [become sexually aroused]. The reactions are instinctual. Porn is so powerful as a sexual stimulant that the physiological changes can happen automatically even when the viewer doesn’t like the idea of porn or feels uncomfortable with some of its content. In terms of triggering a sexual response, our eyes see no difference between sex on the screen and sex in real life. So as far as your sexual arousal system goes, when you are watching porn, you are there. . . .
‘Oh come on,’ you’re probably thinking. ‘How can porn be like a drug? I can’t smoke it, drink it, or shoot it up.’ But the fact is that porn can have as powerful an effect on your body and brain as cocaine, methamphetamine, alcohol, and other drugs. It actually changes your brain chemistry. Porn stimulates and area of the brain known as the ‘hedonic highway,’ or median forebrain, which is filled with receptors for the neurotransmitter dopamine. Dopamine is released when you get sexually aroused. It is also released by other pleasurable activities, such as kissing, intercourse, smoking a cigarette, or taking other drugs. Porn causes the dopamine production in your system to spike. This dramatic increase in dopamine produces a drug-like high some researchers believe is most similar to the high caused by crack cocaine.” (quoted from pages 18 and 19 of The Porn Trap, The Essential Guide to Overcoming Problems Caused by Pornography, Wendy and Larry Maltz). Back To Article
“As we mentioned earlier, watching porn stimulates the release of powerful chemicals, such as dopamine and testosterone. These chemicals not only relate to sexual arousal and pleasure, but also are released in real life when someone is sexually attracted to and falls in love with someone else. In addition, powerful human bonding hormones, such as oxytocin and vasopressin, are released with orgasm. They contribute to establishing a lasting emotional attachment with whomever, or whatever, you happen to be with or thinking about at the time. The more orgasms you have with porn, the more sexually and emotionally attached to it you’ll become.
“A relationship with porn can act like an affair. It can take time and energy away from an existing intimate relationship. People who use porn often operate with the same kind of secrecy and deception as someone having a sexual affair. When a porn user is confronted by a partner, there is often denial, lying and attempts to cover up the wrongdoing. Without realizing it, maintaining a “love affair” with porn can become more important than staying connected to someone in real life. Also, if you use porn regularly, the mental images and scenarios of porn can keep playing in your mind during sex, making it hard to feel connected and intimate with the real person in your life. (The Porn Trap, The Essential Guide to Overcoming Problems Caused by Pornography, Wendy and Larry Maltz, p. 23.) Back To Article

Why Should Christians Wait for Marriage to Have Sex?

Allison Stevens
Christian life, Ethicsethics, morality, sex, sexuality

Sex is not only a hot topic in our culture, it’s also on the minds of most couples in love. It’s a natural, God-given desire — a gift intended to give us pleasure and express our intimacy.

But did God have a plan in mind for sex? What are the freedoms and guidelines? Let’s look at Scripture to find some answers to these questions.

First, God intended sex to be enjoyed between a man and a woman in marriage. God created Eve for Adam because Adam needed a mate comparable to him. He needed companionship, relationship, and intimacy. So God chose marriage as a sacred and honorable relationship in which to meet those needs ( Genesis 2:23-25 ).

Second, throughout Scripture we are commanded to avoid all forms of sexual immorality ( Acts 15:29 ; Romans 1:29 ; 1 Corinthians 6:13-18 ; Galatians 5:19 ; 1 Thessalonians 4:3 ). That God is concerned about sexual purity is clear in the Old Testament ( Deuteronomy 22 ). In the New Testament, Paul said that satisfying one’s burning passions before marriage is not an option for the believer ( 1 Corinthians 7:2,8-9 ).

Third, when we enjoy another’s body (physically or mentally) for sexual pleasure outside of marriage, we are guilty of covetousness. Exodus 20:17 says, “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house, you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, nor his male servant, nor his female servant, nor his ox, nor his donkey, nor anything that is your neighbor’s.” To covet means “to desire, take pleasure in, and delight in.” The point is that you may not take what is not yours. You may not take illegitimate delight in what does not belong to you. One must ask, “Am I selfishly delighting in (coveting) what is not mine?” Our bodies belong only to God and to our spouse ( 1 Corinthians 6:19; 7:4 ).

Last, as followers of Christ, we must govern all of our behavior, decisions, and thoughts with the principle of love ( Matthew 22:37-40 ). What does it mean to love your date? Loving means to put your date’s welfare, both short-term and long-term, above your own desires. To love is to respect and protect ( 1 Corinthians 13:4-7 ). We should test our intentions and actions by asking ourselves some questions: “Am I really seeking to do what God wants me to do?” “Am I placing my date’s welfare above my desires, thus loving that person?” “How does my dating life stand up to the test of love?”

The world wants us to believe that sex outside of marriage is okay. But without the commitment of marriage, sex is a shallow illusion of intimacy. It is nothing more than erotic stimulation and/or a temporary escape from loneliness. It is basically selfish. Consequently, it often becomes a means to manipulate and control others. This easily leads into the strange perversions of sexuality to which we as a sinful, desperate people are prone.

This is far from what God intended for His children. God loves us and wants only the best for us. God has given us all good things to enjoy, sex included (John 13:34 ;James 1:17 ). So how will we best enjoy our sexuality? Within the security of a committed marital relationship. Within a loving marriage there is assurance, accountability, and a commitment to work on the relationship when times are difficult.

You may wonder, “How far can I go before marriage?” Except for intercourse, Scripture does not specifically outline what is and what is not forbidden. God leaves that up to us to decide, keeping in mind the principles above. However, it is wise to prepare ourselves before we enter into a romantic relationship.

First, set your standards now! Don’t wait for a passionate moment to decide what is off limits. Holding hands, warm hugs, and kissing are all natural expressions of true love and genuine care for a person. If a touch like this does not cause you to lust and it is done out of respect for another, it can be considered an appropriate touch. There are, however, more intimate physical expressions that should be reserved for a married couple. They are designed to stimulate and excite and to culminate in sexual intercourse. These activities should be avoided by a dating couple because their purpose is to prepare the body for sex. Examples of these activities are fondling of breasts or genitals, heavy and passionate kissing, necking, petting, and oral sex. This list is not conclusive, however. If touching another causes you to lust, or if it defrauds that person, it’s time to back off.

Second, listen to the little voice inside! If you are doing something or are in a situation that is causing you to feel uncomfortable, guilty, or violated, listen to those feelings. They are there for a reason. Because there is a natural drive within each of us to protect ourselves, the feelings we have are “early warning” indicators that we may be experiencing personal harm. We need to trust our feelings, speak up, and exercise listening to that “little voice.”

Third, picture it! Imagine that the person you are dating is your future mate. That’s not so difficult. But now picture that person with someone else on a date. How would you want that date to go? How far would you want that sexual relationship proceed? What kind of activities would be off limits then? Now think of the person you are with as someone else’s future mate. How are you going to leave this person? A little used? Is that how you want your potential mate? How do you want your sister to be treated on a date? How do you want your brother to act? This little exercise puts our dating life in perspective, because we all have people so special to us that we want to love and protect them. This is how we should approach the person we are dating — as someone special to be loved and honored.

Waiting for sex until marriage can be difficult. We’re often tempted to choose what will give us instant pleasure. A man and a woman who are tempted to give in to their strong sexual desires will do well to admit their struggle before God, trust Him that He will meet their needs, and use wisdom and self-control to avoid falling into the trap of premarital sex.

Will God still love us if we choose the path that leads away from Him? Will He forgive us if we have not lived up to His standard of purity? Of course — we all struggle with living up to God’s standards. David is a good example of a man who gave in to the temptation of sex outside of marriage ( 2 Samuel 11:3-12:20 ). He and Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah, had sex. David lied and committed murder to try to cover his tracks. After he was confronted with his sin by the prophet Nathan, he repented and God forgave him. However, David still had to live with the consequences of his choices. He had to live with the fact that he had a man murdered. David’s reputation was irreparably marred, his son died, and his household was thrown into disarray. David suffered greatly because of his choice to have sex with Bathsheba. How will you choose to live?

Why Should I Get Involved in the Imperfect Church?

Dan Vander Lugt
Christianity, Relationshipsawareness, community, disillusionment, gossip, hypocrisy, ideals, imperfection, membership, selfishness

Selfishness, hypocrisy, and other “people problems” in church can be discouraging. But selfishness and hypocrisy shouldn’t drive us away from church involvement. Rather, it should make us aware of how much we all need it!

As children, we grow up in a world governed by adult authority figures who appear all-knowing, just, and wise. But as we approach adulthood, we learn how flawed and imperfect adult authority is. This awareness creates disillusionment, some of it painful. Disillusionment often turns into rebellion. As teenagers, most of us rebel to one degree or another against adults we perceive as arbitrary and unloving.

If we are fortunate enough to have loving parents, we are encouraged to “work through” our rebellion and anger. As we gradually mature into adulthood, we become aware of our own imperfections and conflicting ideals. This awareness of our own imperfection usually has the effect of humbling us, making us more realistic, and changing our rebellion into understanding and forgiveness.

Organizations, whether secular or religious, are made up of imperfect people. As adults we sometimes continue to expect perfection from organizations long after we have stopped expecting it from other individuals or ourselves. But just as teenagers grow into adults,Christians mature in their relationship with Christ. As we mature, we begin to discover how much we owe to God’s grace and how little we earn through our own efforts. This makes it easier to see how God is able to use His church, which, like us, can serve as an instrument of divine grace in spite of imperfection and sin.

Sinful individuals or a sinful church can’t produce lasting effects for the kingdom of God, but the power of God’s Spirit working through them can! ( 2 Corinthians 4:7 ). As Jesus said, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance” ( Mark 2:15-17 ). If we were all perfect we wouldn’t need the church. It is our imperfection that calls for the purifying process of membership in the body of Christ. Our mission is to love each other ( 1 Peter 4:8 ) in such a way that we gain the spiritual strength that can only be developed in union with other believers ( Ephesians 4:14-16 ).

We shouldn’t overlook the hypocrisy and problems that exist in the church. We need to do what we can to confront and deal with them in loving ways. The apostle Paul was probably as aware of hypocrisy and imperfection within the church as anyone who ever lived, yet he wrote:

Bear one another’s burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ. For if anyone thinks himself to be something, when he is nothing, he deceives himself. But let each one examine his own work, and then he will have rejoicing in himself alone, and not in another. For each one shall bear his own load (Galatians 6:2-5).

Why Should I Pray When it Doesn’t Seem that God Hears My Prayers?

Dan Vander Lugt
Christian life, God, Personal Struggles, Relationshipscommunication, fellowship with, prayer, presence, relationship with God

It is part of the human condition to struggle with a sense of God’s silence—or absence. The disciples and the prophets had moments of weakness and distrust that are recorded in Scripture for all of us to read.

The silence that causes us such anxiety is not only essential to growth in faith, but needed for our expression of genuine trust in prayer. Prayer and faith are the result of a process of trusting. This process involves wonder, doubt, and worry. It enables us to grow in our ability to trust God in small ways that in time make it possible for us to trust Him through the great crises of life.

Genuine prayer isn’t mere ritual, nor is it just a productive mental habit. Prayer in the midst of doubt and feelings of abandonment is essential to realizing our need for God’s help. It isn’t that faith and hope can’t grow without prayer. They can, but without it they grow only slowly and haphazardly. This is because without prayer, faith and hope grow without our conscious support and participation.

In Luke 11:9, Jesus says: “So I say to you, ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened to you” (NKJV).

The order Jesus describes here is simple. We first must ask, and then it is given. We first must knock, and then the door is opened to us. If we don’t pray, we’re like people who expect to receive without asking or to have doors opened without knocking. Prayer is important because it acknowledges both our need for God’s help and our willingness to look to Him for direction. When we don’t pray, it is apparent that we consider God irrelevant and we take life, with all of its opportunities and blessings, for granted.

If we don’t consciously ask God for direction, we’ll usually lack the vision to see opportunities when they appear. Prayer nurtures vision, and vision sustains patient endurance. No wonder that Isaiah spoke of the importance of “hoping in the Lord.”

Do you not know? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary, and his understanding no one can fathom. He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak. Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall; but those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint (40:28-31 NIV).

Ask the Lord to show you what and how to pray and what to expect when you do. He will respond.

Why Should We Care About the Environment?

Dean Ohlman
Christian life, Contemporary Issuescontemporary issues, environment, environmentalism, nature, social concern

Consider similar questions: Why should we care about our bodies since they are all going to die anyway? Or why care for our homes or business establishments since they will all eventually be demolished? Careful consideration of these questions should make it easier for us to draw the conclusion that biblical prophecy about the future must not be used to excuse present carelessness. This kind of attitude has often been expressed in the claim that “some believers are so heavenly minded they’re of no earthly good.”

The Bible passage that tells us of the “elements” of the earth burning “with fervent heat” 2 Peter 3:10-13) is not easy to understand nor is its chronology clear. Many Old Testament passages speak about the permanence of the creation (Psalm 104:5; 148; 78:69; Ecclesiastes 1:4); both Old and New Testament Scriptures tell of a future time of restoration and reconciliation when the earth will return to the peaceable kingdom much like that of the Garden of Eden (Isaiah 11:6-9; 65:25; Micah 4:1-4; Acts 3:18-21; Romans 8:18-25; Colossians 1:19-20; Revelation 22:1-3). Certainly that is a yet-to-be era on this earth, and one we should eagerly anticipate. If what Peter was predicting is a total remaking of the planet, it would have to come after the restoration—which would seem to make such destruction unnecessary.

Regardless, Francis Schaeffer reminded us in his book Pollution and the Death of Man: The Christian View of Ecology that “on the basis of the fact that there is going to be total redemption in the future, not only of man, but also of all creation, the Christian who believes the Bible should be the one who — with God’s help and in the power of the Holy Spirit — is treating nature now in the direction of the way nature will be then. [Our healing work] will not now be perfect, but it must be substantial, or we have missed our calling” (pp. 68-69. Tyndale House, 1970)

The major problem with basing our present attitude toward the earth on an uncertain chronology of the future is that we fail to remember the very clear mandates of the past. Caring for creation is a matter of obedience. It is our God-given responsibility to care. We understand this from Genesis 2:15. “The Lord God placed the man in the Garden of Eden to tend and care for it” ¹ (NLT). We are to be “good earth-keepers.”

The two Hebrew words in Genesis 2:15 used in reference to caring for the creation are rendered in the King James Version as “dress” and “keep.” In modern English, these words have lost the rich meanings known in the days of King James. In Hebrew they are “abad” and “shamar.” The definitions of these words according to James Strong’s concordance include the following understandings: abad = to work, to serve, to till, to keep in bondage, to be husbandman over; shamar = to hedge about, to guard, to protect, to attend to, to be circumspect, to take, to mark, look narrowly upon, to observe, to preserve, to regard, to reserve, to save, to wait for, to watch over (as a watchman). “Shamar” is used in the familiar Aaronic blessing: Numbers 6:24 “The Lord bless thee, and keep thee: The Lord make His face shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee: The Lord lift up His countenance upon thee, and give thee peace” (KJV). Adam was apparently expected to care for the earth as the Lord cares for it and for us. Back To Article

Why Shouldn’t Evangelicals Offer Unconditional Support to Israel or Palestine?

Dan Vander Lugt
Bible, Contemporary Issuesapartheid, ethnic cleansing, history, Israel, Israel-Palestinian Conflict, Jewish, Muslim, Nakba, Palestine

As we view Israel/Palestine today, we must be as concerned for the physical and spiritual well-being of her ethnic Jewish people as for the well-being of her ethnic Arabs (both Muslim and Christian). We must do all we can to awaken both Jewish and Arab people to the reality of the Messiah who gave His life for them.

But before we can effectively present the gospel to Israelis or Palestinians, we must cultivate their respect. All ethnic/religious/cultural groups have “skeletons in their closets.” We Western Christians are no exception. Jews have cultural memories of persecution by nominally Christian peoples in Europe. Muslims, on the other hand, have similar memories of wrongs committed by Christian armies crusading in the name of God, and of Western “Christian” colonial powers exploiting Muslim division and weakness. If we hope to be heard clearly, we must not be perceived as biased or unjust. Unfortunately, far from being unbiased and just, many Christian evangelicals today demonize Palestinian and Israeli Arabs while ignoring or rationalizing Jewish injustice and violence. There are numerous reasons that Evangelicals tend to be heavily biased in favor of Jewish Israelis rather than Arab Israelis and Palestinians. But rather than getting into the reasons for this bias, let’s go to Scripture to see why it is wrong.

At the very beginning of His ministry, just after His baptism by John, “Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert to be tempted by the devil” (Matthew 4:1 NIV). This time of testing wasn’t incidental. The temptations Satan set before Jesus were specifically designed to exploit any vulnerability in His human nature. Satan appealed to the selfishness, distrust, and personal pride that are at the root of all human sin, forcing Jesus to make deep and radical decisions regarding His calling. What kind of Messiah would He be?

Would He exploit supernatural power to change stones to bread, as a first act in avoiding the path of suffering that had been set before Him? Would He then feed the poor with the same satanic motivation, seeking their support for His personal agenda?
Would He coerce his Father’s endorsement (force His hand) by casting Himself from the pinnacle of the temple?
Would He cultivate earthly political power to overthrow Rome and establish an earthly kingdom in Jerusalem under His personal control by alliance with the principalities and powers of this world?

Rather than acting in selfish ambition, Jesus chose submission, servitude, and suffering. The miracles He performed were just as spectacular as those Satan proposed, but they were done through the power of the Holy Spirit in obedience to His Father.

Jesus refused to feed Himself miraculously, but guided by the Holy Spirit He miraculously fed thousands, changed water to wine, and filled the nets of faithful fishermen with fish. He refused to draw attention to Himself or give miraculous signs to those who demanded it, but walked on water, calmed the sea, healed the sick, and raised the dead to glorify His Father. Although He could have requested supernatural deliverance from the agony of humiliation, scourging, alienation, and death (Matthew 26:53), He submitted to them meekly, like a perfect sacrificial lamb.¹

Perhaps He faced these tests early on because of the tremendous pressure that would soon come to bear on Him to conform to the false expectations of His countrymen regarding what He (as Messiah) should do on behalf of national Israel. The expectation that Messiah would militarily deliver the Jews from pagan (Roman) rule and establish Jewish rule over the whole world was at fever pitch in the first century. Even Jesus’ disciples reflected this expectation (Matthew 16:20-22; Matthew 20:20-23; Luke 19:11).

Over the course of the first century, enthusiasm for a delivering Messiah resulted in numerous false messiahs, the horrific war of AD 70, and apocalyptic writings that continued to predict a delivering messiah even after the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple by Titus (4 Ezra; 2 Baruch). Eventually, the endorsement of the false messiah, Bar Kochba, by the most venerated rabbi of the post-70 period (Akiba) led to the final catastrophe of AD 135 under Hadrian.

The remarkable Jewish historian of that period, Josephus, described the foundation of Jewish messianic fervor and militant nationalism among his contemporaries:

But what more than all else incited them to the war was an ambiguous oracle, likewise found in their sacred scriptures, to the effect that at that time one from their country would become ruler of the world. This they understood to mean someone of their own race, and many of their wise men went astray in their interpretation of it . . . For all that, it is impossible for men to escape their fate, even though they foresee it. Some of these portents, then, the Jews interpreted to please themselves, others they treated with contempt, until the ruin of their country and their own destruction convicted them of their folly. (Josephus, War, 6.312-315)

N. T. Wright builds a strong case that the “ambiguous oracle” referred to by Josephus is the book of Daniel—specifically the second, seventh, and ninth chapters. (See Wright’s The New Testament and the People of God, pp. 312-320.) The book of Daniel was one of the most popular works in circulation among the Jews during the first century,² and it is likely that Jewish “wise men went astray in their interpretation of it,” apparently forecasting dates, “times,” and “seasons” for the coming of the expected Messiah into His kingdom in a manner that nurtured popular support for a military confrontation with Rome. (See Matthew 24:36; Acts 1:6-7; 1 Thessalonians 5:1-2.)

Israel had already given in to temptations Jesus resisted.³Jesus knew that national Israel had formed an alliance with Satan and was hell-bent to carry out Satan’s agenda. Out of love for Israel and her true calling, He confronted her with the fact that she had turned nationalism into an abominable parody of the covenant relationship God intended.⁴ Like the prophets who preceded them (Matthew 11:20-24; Matthew 12:38-42; Luke 13:1-5), John the Baptist and Jesus declared that unrepentant Israel was outside the covenant relationship, and needed to return like a humble proselyte to be considered a son of Abraham (Matthew 3:9; Luke 3:8; Luke 15:11-32). In the past, Israel had been delivered from the judgment that fell upon the pagan kingdoms that oppressed her and held her captive (Egypt, Babylon). But now, Jerusalem herself was persecuting true Israel. The true Israel, that Israel that was holding firm (Mark 13:13), was a small remnant—Jesus’ disciples. Jerusalem had taken on the role of Egypt and Babylon, aligned with Satan and facing judgment.

The old covenant had come to an end, replaced by a new covenant, “his blood” (Matthew 26:28 NKJV; 1 Corinthians 11:25; Hebrews 9:15). Israel’s old covenant story of exile and deliverance (Egypt, Assyria, and Babylon) was over. No longer in exile, Israel had been permanently restored in the person of Jesus Christ.⁵

The family of God would no longer be defined by ethnic and national Jewish categories, but would be made up of all of those willing to trust in Jesus and follow Him (Matthew 7:21; Matthew 12:50; Luke 11:27-28; John 6:29,40; Acts 3:22-23).
The Torah, which constituted a central symbol of identity for those under the old covenant, would be replaced under the new covenant by the Sermon on the Mount. The new covenant would be characterized by mercy, forgiveness, inclusiveness, and love rather than a quest for legal and ritual purity.
The Jerusalem temple and the system of worship based around it was obsolete and the destruction of the temple immanent, to be replaced by the resurrected Christ (Mark 14:58/Matthew 26:61; Mark 15:29-30/Matthew 27:39-40; John 2:19; Acts 6:14).⁶When Jesus was crucified, the veil of the temple was torn and its holiest chamber exposed. The epistle to the Hebrews—written to a culturally Jewish Christian audience—declares:

“He entered the Most Holy Place once for all by his own blood, having obtained eternal redemption” (Hebrews 9:12).

“By one sacrifice [Jesus] has made perfect forever those who are being made holy” (6Hebrews 10:14).

“The Holy Spirit also testifies to us about this. First he says: ‘This is the covenant I will make with them after that time, says the Lord. I will put my laws in their hearts, and I will write them on their minds.’ Then he adds: ‘Their sins and lawless acts I will remember no more.’ And where these have been forgiven, there is no longer any sacrifice for sin” (Hebrews 10:15-18).

Because of the horrific consequences of date-setting and speculative interpretation of prophecy, the rabbis surviving the second war with Rome committed themselves to the principle that Torah-observing Jews should never again seek a return to the land until the appearance of Messiah himself. Orthodox Jews remained committed to this principle for nearly 2000 years, but secular Zionists began a movement to return to a national homeland in the late 19th century. Approximately at the same time, some evangelical Christian leaders began to speculate that the Zionist-initiated return to the land was the beginning of the national return prophesied in Scripture.

For evangelical Christians to use prophetic speculation as a basis for providing unbelieving Israel with political and military support is to repeat the very same error that Israel committed when it sought to use military and political means to bring in the messianic kingdom. It is to join unbelieving Israel in its surrender to the same temptations Satan offered Jesus in the desert.

It is an attempt to exploit supernatural power.
It is an attempt to force God’s hand.
It is an attempt to carry out God’s plan through alliance with the (satanic) principalities and powers of this world.

To think that nurturing national Israel’s political and military power will expedite God’s program of redemption makes no more sense today than in the first century. Jesus said:

“Look, your house is left to you desolate. I tell you, you will not see me again until you say, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord’ ” (Luke 13:35).

Some evangelicals genuinely hope to befriend Jewish or Palestinian people and win them to faith in Jesus Christ. While this aspect of their motivation may be legitimate, any unconditional support of either side of an ethnic and religious conflict decides against a group of people for whom Christ died. Followers of Christ cannot afford to win converts by supporting violence and aggression.

Although major actors on the political stage, many evangelicals view themselves as detached observers with a biblical key to understanding unfolding world events. They think they are assisting the fulfillment of prophecy, the soon return of the Lord, the culmination of the church age, the great tribulation, and the millennial reign. Like the zealous nationalist Jews of the first century and today’s religious Zionist Jews (Gush Emunim and others), they think they can give the Lord a helping hand in bringing about His Day. In actuality, evangelicals who unconditionally support the establishment and defense of a Jewish state founded upon the rejection of Jesus Christ are nurturing the rise of anti-Christian power throughout the world.

Just as it was folly for Jewish leaders of the first and second century to believe they could have certainty regarding unfolding future events, it is folly for modern evangelicals to think they can predict how current events will fit in with the events of the endtime. (See the ATQ article, How Often Have People Misapplied Prophecy?) Jesus himself declared the folly of such speculation (Matthew 24:44; Matthew 25:13;Mark 13:35; Revelation 3:3).

Many Christians in the past have mistakenly supported violence on the basis of a conviction that they were participating in endtime events. Granted that our pretribulation view of the rapture is true, do we have any more real certainty about when the rapture and the tribulation will occur than first-century Jews had regarding the manner and time of Messiah’s coming? If we are heavily complicit in the violence of our age, isn’t it more likely we will reap the whirlwind (6Hosea 7:7) we have sown?

The day of the Lord is not a time when the devil has his way with an ethnic Israel he hates. Rather, it is a time of God’s judgment on wickedness, both in Israel and the world:

“Woe to you who long for the day of the Lord! Why do you long for the day of the Lord? That day will be darkness, not light” (Amos 5:18).

“‘See, I will send my messenger, who will prepare the way before me. Then suddenly the Lord you are seeking will come to his temple; the messenger of the covenant, whom you desire, will come,’ says the Lord Almighty. But who can endure the day of his coming? Who can stand when he appears? For he will be like a refiner’s fire or a launderer’s soap” (Malachi 3:1-2).

“Blow ye the trumpet in Zion, and sound an alarm in my holy mountain: let all the inhabitants of the land tremble: for the day of the Lord cometh, for it is nigh at hand; A day of darkness and of gloominess, a day of clouds and of thick darkness, as the morning spread upon the mountains: a great people and a strong; there hath not been ever the like, neither shall be any more after it, even to the years of many generations” (Joel 2:1-2 KJV)

“The earth shall quake before them; the heavens shall tremble: the sun and the moon shall be dark, and the stars shall withdraw their shining” (Joel 2:10).

“The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and the terrible day of the Lord come” (Joel 2:31).

“The great day of the Lord is near—near and coming quickly. Listen! The cry on the day of the Lord will be bitter, the shouting of the warrior there. That day will be a day of wrath, a day of distress and anguish, a day of trouble and ruin, a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and blackness” (Zephaniah 1:14-15 NIV).

“‘Surely the day is coming; it will burn like a furnace. All the arrogant and every evildoer will be stubble, and that day that is coming will set them on fire,’ says the Lord Almighty. ‘Not a root or a branch will be left to them’ ” (Malachi 4:1).

If evangelicals think God will permit them to continue to throw fuel on the fire of violence and hatred and suddenly snatch them out of the conflagration just before it engulfs the world, it is only because they are under the spell of satanic illusion.

The New Testament makes it clear that the kingdom of God is based on justice and love, not violence, ethnic privilege, and possession of “holy land.” The kingdom of God is based on the Sermon on the Mount, not on speculation about unfolding events. The actions of the church must be consistent with purposes of the kingdom of God, or the church may share national Israel’s judgment in the day of the Lord.

“The struggle is precisely about the nature of Jesus’ vocation and ministry. The pull of hunger, the lure of cheap and quick ‘success,’ the desire to change the vocation to be the light of the world into the vocation to bring all nations under His powerful rule by other means—all of these would easily combine into the temptation to doubt the nature of the vocation of which He had been sure at the time of John’s baptism. If you are the Son of God . . .” (N. T. Wright, Jesus, the Victory of God). Back To Article
“We know from Josephus that the book of Daniel was a favorite with Jews of the first century AD. One of the climactic moments in this book, arguably, is the scene in which the true Israel, seen in apocalyptic terms as a human figure, is exalted to a position of glory and authority over the mythical beasts who have been oppressing God’s people. Whatever referents may have been in the mind of the original authors, there should be no doubt that in the first century many would read such imagery as referring to Israel and the nations, and would hear in the background the overtones of Genesis 2. Divine order will be restored to the creator’s garden, through a genuine Adam—i.e., Israel—who will renounce idolatry and so, in obedience to the creator, rule wisely over the creation” (Wright, The New Testament and the People of God, p. 266). Back to Article
“What then must Jesus have thought was going on? How was the story working out? The battle He Himself had to fight was with the Satan; the Satan had made its home in Israel, and in her cherished national institutions and aspirations. The house had been occupied by seven other demons, worse than the first; so it would be with this generation. But, like Jezebel trying to seduce Jehu, the Satan was now attempting to lure Jesus himself into making the same mistake as Israel had done. If that turned out not to be possible, the Satan would try either to scare him off, or to kill him ahead of time.” (N.T. Wright, Jesus, the Victory of God) Back to Article
“Jesus . . . set His face against the central institutions and symbols of Israel. He did so, not because He thought they were bad in themselves, but because He believed they were being wrongly used by His contemporaries to buttress a spurious reading and enacting of the true Jewish worldview. . . . He did not aim . . . to depart from Judaism, from the traditions of Israel; His aim was to call Israel back to what He saw as the true meaning of those traditions” (Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God).Back to Article
“From His point of view, He was fighting Israel’s real battle by challenging Israel’s idolatrous nationalism, which was passing off its Satan-induced worldview as true allegiance to the reign of YHWH. His opponents, meanwhile, especially the Pharisees (during the Galilean ministry) and the chief priests (in Jerusalem) were resisting His attempts, and so challenging the validity of His mission, His vocation, His blueprint for Israel. They rejected His message, His urgent summons to the way of peace, because they rightly perceived that it would mean softening their grip on some cherished, and indeed God-given, national and cultural symbols” (Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God).Back to Article
“Jesus answered and said unto them, Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up. Then said the Jews, Forty and six years was this temple in building, and wilt thou rear it up in three days?” (John 2:19-20 KJV)

“This remarkable assertion coheres completely with the theme that emerges steadily at the centre of Jesus’ story. He was claiming prophetic and messianic authority to pronounce judgment on the Temple. It was for this that He was eventually accused before the authorities” (Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God, p. 335).Back to Article

Why Shouldn’t I Use Marijuana and Other “Recreational” Drugs?

Dan Vander Lugt
Contemporary Issues, Ethicsaddiction, artificial, chemically induced, consciousness, high, marijuana, overdose, pendulum, recreational drugs

The negative consequences of using drugs “recreationally” far outweigh their short-term pleasures.

First are the physical effects. Marijuana, for instance, may have dangerous long-term effects, including cancers of the head and neck. Amphetamines and cocaine are highly addictive and cause rapid physical deterioration. Barbiturates depress the central nervous system and are so physically addictive that withdrawal can be fatal if someone dependent on them attempts to stop taking them without medical supervision. (Another peculiar danger of barbiturates is the ease with which a person can take a fatal overdose.) Alcohol, too, is highly addictive for persons with a genetic tendency towards alcoholism.

Most drugs that are used for “recreational” purposes are physically addictive to some degree. All of them are psychologically addictive. Because they chemically induce euphoria and an altered state of consciousness, they introduce what has been called the “pendulum effect.” As the effect of the drug wears off, the user pays a price for the experience of a chemically induced “high.” The user’s emotional state following an artificial high is invariably worse than his original one. This produces an slightly greater dose of the drug is needed to duplicate the same effect.¹This pendulum effect often results in a vicious cycle of escalating drug use. ²

The term jaded has long been used to describe a person whose normal sensitivities have been dulled by obsessive pursuit of pleasure. Today there is serious concern that at least some artificial highs may cause permanent damage to the nervous system. Chemically induced highs—especially in the case of such powerful drugs as cocaine—may permanently diminish a person’s capacity to experience physical and emotional pleasure. But even if artificial highs cause no permanent damage, they interfere with the development of our ability to experience the legitimate joys and pleasures that God designed to be part of daily living.

1. Increasing immunity to the effects of a drug is called tolerance. Back To Article
Tolerance for a drug occurs when greater amounts of the drug are required to achieve the same high. Back To Article

Why Shouldn’t I View Pornography or Sexually Explicit Educational Videos?

Dan Vander Lugt
Contemporary Issues, Personal Strugglesaddiction, darkened mind, dignity, hardened heart, illusion, intimacy, lust, porno, pornography, seduction, self-absorption, sexuality, sin against the body

Pornography and sexually explicit “educational” videos don’t promote the development of love and intimacy — they undermine it. A married couple may benefit from better knowledge of sexual physiology and technique, but information about sex should be provided in a way that respects the tenderness, mystery, and wonder of marital love. Filmed sex is a crass violation of human dignity and intimacy.

Intimacy is a matter of the heart. It can’t be captured by bright lights and a camera. All that can be captured on film is an illusion of intimacy. Lonely people who watch pornography in hopes of satisfying some of their longing for intimacy will be drawn in the opposite direction — toward voyeurism and self-absorbed lust. In fact,the more a person succeeds in imitating pornography, the more he will fall into the snare of sexual addiction and the further he will be from understanding the nature of real love.

Scripture contains some of the most beautiful erotic literature ever written ( Song Of Solomon 4:9-15; 5:10-16 ). It is clear that God created us as sexual beings, and He intends for us to delight in our sexuality when expressed within the bond of marriage. But Scripture also contains severe warnings against self-absorbed lust ( Exodus 20:17 ; Proverbs 5:3-6; 9:13 ; Matthew 5:28; 15:16-20 ; Colossians 3:4-7 ; 1 Thessalonians 4:2-7 ). In the same epistle in which the apostle Paul wrote his marvelous “love chapter,” he made a striking observation about sexual sin:

Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a man commits are outside his body, but he who sins sexually sins against his own body. Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body (1 Corinthians 6:18-20).

In these verses Paul indicated what it is about sexual sin that makes it so destructive. He declared that it is a sin “against the body.” This clearly refers to much more than the mere physical effects of sexual sin. Real love and intimacy require a commitment of the heart ( 1 John 2:16; 4:8 ). Human sexuality is designed for much deeper purposes than mere sensual pleasure, release of tension, and self-gratification. It was designed to express the passionate, tender unity of a husband and wife in committed love. The apostle Paul wrote:

Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ Himself? Shall I then take the members of Christ and unite them with a prostitute? Never! Do you not know that he who unites himself with a prostitute is one with her in body? For it is said, “The two will become one flesh.” But he who unites himself to the Lord is one with Him in spirit (1 Corinthians 6:15-17).

“A man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.” This is a profound mystery (Ephesians 5:31-32).

If a person commits his body to sex according to the pornographic model, the power of self-absorbed lust is released in full force,untempered by love. The Scriptures warn us that this will produce a darkened mind and an insensitive and hardened heart ( Romans 1:21-24; Ephesians 4:17-19 ). As a hardened heart and darkened mind vainly try to duplicate the joy of an intimacy in counterfeit form,the flames of lust flare with ever greater intensity. As lust grows, so does sexual addiction, diminishing our ability to experience in the body the ecstasy of real intimacy and genuine erotic love.

A book you may find helpful is False Intimacy by Dr. Harry Schaumberg (Navpress).

Why Shouldn’t Sex Be Casual?

Dan Vander Lugt
Contemporary Issues, Ethicsboundaries, coarse, dignity, fulfillment, hypocritical, ignorance, illicit, individuality, intimacy, love, lust, seduction, vulnerability

Because it was the Creator’s intention that human beings have the freedom to make their own decisions, everyone has to come to terms with the basic issues of life. One of these issues is that outside of certain bounds some of the most profoundly pleasurable and meaningful things can become the most destructive.

The emotions connected with human sexuality are so powerful and multi-faceted that we can only begin to describe them. The complementary spiritual and physiological components of male and female find unique fulfillment and intimacy here. Significantly, this profound experience provides the context for the conception of new human life.

Tragically, some in every generation make the sensations of sex the goal of the experience. They neglect the legitimate bounds for sexual experience and eventually face the consequences of that neglect.

Mankind has long been aware of sexual attraction’s tremendous potential for destruction. In The Odyssey, the great Greek poet Homer pictures its power as almost irresistible. In order to avoid being lured to his death by the enticing song of the Sirens, Ulysses commands his men to lash him to the mast of his ship, to plug their ears, and ignore his cries.¹ The Old Testament, too, contains solemn warnings regarding the danger of illicit sexual attraction.

When wisdom enters your heart, and knowledge is pleasant to your soul, discretion will preserve you; understanding will keep you, to deliver you from the way of evil, . . . from the immoral woman, from the seductress who flatters with her words, who forsakes the companion of her youth, and forgets the covenant of her God. For her house leads down to death, and her paths to the dead; none who go to her return, nor do they regain the paths of life. (Proverbs 2:10-12,16-19)

For the lips of an immoral woman drip honey, and her mouth is smoother than oil; But in the end she is bitter as wormwood, sharp as a two-edged sword, her feet go down to death, her steps lay hold of hell, lest you ponder her path of life—her ways are unstable; you do not know them (Proverbs 5:3-6).

Jesus also portrays the destructive power of sexual immorality with great seriousness:

“You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that whoever looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, pluck it out and cast it from you; for it is more profitable for you that one of your members perish, than for your whole body to be cast into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and cast it from you; for it is more profitable for you that one of your members perish, than for your whole body to be cast into hell” (Matthew 5:27-30).

The apostle Paul wrote:

So I tell you this, and insist on it in the Lord, that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their thinking. They are darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts. Having lost all sensitivity, they have given themselves over to sensuality so as to indulge in every kind of impurity, with a continual lust for more (Ephesians 4:17-19 NIV).

The Bible says that God is the source of all of the love we know in life ( 1 John 4:7 ). It declares that if we don’t know love, we don’t know God ( 1 John 7:8 ). Because we are created in God’s image and love is God’s primary way of making Himself known to us, the longing for love is deeply rooted in our nature. We usually encounter God’s love first in the context of relationships with people. But many people have become so focused on immediate pleasure, they have fallen for the lie that sex is “just a physical function,” romanticized and taken too seriously by earlier generations.

In spite of misleading presentations in the media, most people intuitively recognize the ugliness of impersonal, promiscuous sex. At some level, most people realize that sex involves more intimacy, vulnerability, and meaning than shaking hands, having a conversation, or flirting. This is why most people who engage in extramarital sex try to rationalize it by claiming some “special feelings” for their current “partner.” But how long are their “special feelings” likely to endure in an uncommitted relationship? For that matter, are their feelings real, or only illusions projected by darker desires—perhaps for control over another person?

What about the next “lover”? Will someone new produce “special feelings” of equal intensity? And what of the third, the fourth, the tenth? How long before the sickening realization that the fading “feelings” that accompany uncommitted sex have no roots? Once a person reaches this point of awareness (and many will not, and simply continue a blind pursuit of satisfaction they will never find) there will be few options. One is to despairingly abandon oneself to sensuality with no pretense of seeking love; another is to go from affair to affair, despairingly seeking the “perfect love” (even though one knows in his heart that each new affair takes him farther from his goal); and the last is to recognize the profound relationship between personal commitment, genuine love, and sexual ecstasy.

Sexuality is intended to be a banquet of intimacy. But since sex can occur without love or real intimacy, it must never be expected to provide the basis for intimacy (Proverbs 5:15-20 ). If it is, it will very quickly become a mere addiction, just another way of trying to kill the longing inside that has been placed there by God for the purpose of leading us to Him.

A person who uses other people for his sexual pleasure will become coarse and hypocritical. Such a change of character is inevitable. Misused sexuality separates the heart from physical intimacy. When misused this way, the focus of sex moves from the expression of unconditional affection for the beloved to other things, such as mere physical stimulation, power, or even the expression of self-hatred. Such deviant sexuality often transmutes into increasingly bizarre, overtly vicious behavior.²

The long-term effects of a recreational view of sexual relationships will be seen and noted by other people. But only the sexual addict himself has a firsthand experience of his spiritual and emotional changes. A sexual addict perceives sexual pleasure so differently that it would revolt and terrify a genuine lover. From the outside, the pursuit of sexual pleasure by a sexual addict—whether a “Don Juan” or someone less outwardly glamorous—appears desperate and all-consuming. How ironic that an addict’s desperate pursuit of sexual pleasure shows how little satisfaction and fulfillment he is finding.

God designed sex to be pleasurable, but the tremendous power of sex doesn’t flow primarily from pleasurable physical sensations of sex and orgasm. It flows from something deeper—a longing for genuine love and intimacy.

The German legend of the Lorelei on the Rhine River, immortalized by the beautiful poem of Heinrich Heine is remarkably similar to the portrayal of the sirens in The Odyssey.

Die Lorelei

Ich weiß nicht, was soll es bedeuten,
Das ich so traurig bin;
Ein Märchen aus alten Zeiten,
Das kommt mir nicht aus dem Sinn.

Die Luft ist kühl und es dunkelt,
Und ruhig fließt der Rhein;
Der Gipfel des Berges funkelt
Im Abendsonnenschein.

(I cannot determine the meaning
Of sorrow that fills my breast:
A fable of old, through it streaming,
Allows my mind no rest.
The air is cool in the gloaming
And gently flows the Rhine.
The crest of the mountain is gleaming
In fading rays of sunshine.

Die schönste Jungfrau sitzet
Dort oben wunderbar,
Ihr goldnes Geschmeide blitzet,
Sie kämmt ihr goldenes Haar.

Sie kämmt es mit goldenem Kamme,
Und singt ein Lied dabei;
Das hat eine wundersame,
Gewaltige Melodei.

The loveliest maiden is sitting
Up there, so wondrously fair;
Her golden jewelry is glist’ning;
She combs her golden hair.
She combs with a gilded comb, preening,
And sings a song, passing time.
It has a most wondrous, appealing
And pow’rful melodic rhyme.

Den Schiffer im kleinen Schiffe
Ergreift es mit wildem Weh;
Er schaut nicht die Felsenriffe
Er schaut nur hinauf in die Höh’.

Ich glaube, die Wellen verschlingen
Am Ende Schiffer und Kahn
Und das hat mit ihrem Singen
Die Lorelei getan.

The boatman aboard his small skiff, –
Enraptured with a wild ache,
Has no eye for the jagged cliff, –
His thoughts on the heights fear forsake.
I think that the waves will devour
Both boat and man, by and by,
And that, with her dulcet-voiced power
Was done by the Loreley.)

Heinrich Heine (The English translation used above can be found in many different sites in the Web.) Back To Article
Why else would sado-masochism in all its forms, promiscuity in spite the risk of AIDS and other STDs, and other such deviations from healthy sexual behavior occur? Back To Article

Why Would a Loving God Make People Suffer in Hell?

Dan Vander Lugt
Bible, Goddisproportionate, ethics, forgiveness, freedom, grace, Hell, judgment, justice, punishment

The biblical doctrine of hell is often badly misunderstood. Certainly, if God arbitrarily and unjustly punished His creatures for eternity, He would be evil rather than good.

Luke 12:47-48 , however, shows that punishment will depend on a number of factors, including one’s knowledge of truth, one’s intent, and one’s rejection of the good news and “light” of Christ. Jesus denounced the cities in which most of His miracles were performed ( Matthew 11:20-24 ) and told them they would be judged more harshly in the day of judgment than Tyre, Sidon, and Sodom. Jesus displayed compassion toward sinners. Even when He was on the cross He said, “Father, forgive them for they don’t know what they do” ( Luke 23:34 ).

It is wrong to think of hell as a place where sinners will receive horribly disproportionate punishment for their sins. Certainly, there is an element of coercion. Justice and retribution are involved. But a person’s presence in hell is also the result of a long series of choices. As a person passes through life he either becomes more open to truth, love, and spiritual life or he willfully withdraws from the light that God has given him and begins a descent towards spiritual darkness and death.

Hell is necessary in a universe where genuine free will exists. C.S. Lewis has written a remarkable little book on the subject of hell called The Great Divorce. While we do not endorse all of Lewis’ imaginative descriptions of what hell might be like, the value of his work is in his explanation of the need for hell and eternal punishment. It can be purchased at most bookstores.

Why Would an All-Powerful God Permit Evil?

Dan Vander Lugt
Bible, Godevil, freedom, permission of evil, self-awareness, suffering, theodicy

God permitted evil to enter His universe as the price of freedom. Although He could have created the universe without the potential for suffering or sin, such a universe would not have allowed free creatures to exist. It would have been a robotic universe, with no more awareness of grace or God’s goodness than a colony of insects.

The Bible teaches that God became a human being and entered into the suffering of His creation. By experiencing and sharing His universe’s suffering, He made redemption possible. He made it possible for all of the wrongs of the world to eventually be made right.

God’s true nature is revealed in Jesus Christ. The apostle Paul declared:

In Christ all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form (Colossians 2:9).

In the natural universe, underlying reality appears at times to be good and at times to be evil. Only Jesus provides a clear definition of God’s holy, loving nature.

Why Would God Allow Bad Things to Happen to “Good” People?

Dan Vander Lugt
God, Personal Strugglesdeath, God's love, injustice, justice, pain, persecution, suffering, theism, theodicy

Life often confronts us with tragic situations that make us wonder about God’s willingness or ability to help us. Why would a good God allow such things to happen? Doesn’t He care?

This question is addressed by the Book of Job. In this amazingly relevant story, God allows His best example of a “righteous” man to suffer terribly. Job’s faith is stretched almost to the breaking point, while well-meaning friends accuse him of having done something to deserve his suffering. Job’s struggle continued until it was finally broken by the evidence of God’s infinite wisdom and power.

It is impossible for us to fully understand the ways of a God who puts our faith to such strenuous tests. Yet the story of Job reminds us that God can take evil deeds done by others and work them into the fabric of His plan for our good.

God doesn’t shield His people from all of the wickedness and suffering of a fallen world. But He alone has the power to use pain, persecution, and even death as part of His plan for our ultimate good ( Romans 8:28 ).

Another example of how God brings good out of human evil is the story of Joseph ( Genesis 37-50 ). Despite being sold by his brothers into slavery, Joseph eventually became God’s instrument to spare the lives of multitudes in Egypt, including the members of his own family. Although his brothers acted wickedly, God used their evil deeds for His good ends. When his brothers feared he would seek revenge after their father’s death, Joseph said, “Don’t be afraid. Am I in the place of God? You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives” (Genesis 50:19-20).

One of the wonders of God’s providence is His unfailing power to demonstrate His goodness even through the intentionally evil deeds of His creatures. What a comfort to know that no evil can thwart the good intentions of our sovereign God!

Will People in Heaven Recall Earthly Events?

Dan Vander Lugt
Bible, Relationshipsafterlife, family, heaven, loved ones, memory

Does Isaiah 65:17 imply that people in heaven will have no recollection of earthly events?

Isaiah 65:17 (ESV) states: “I create new heavens and a new earth, and the former things shall not be remembered or come into mind.” What are the “former things” that “shall not be remembered or come into mind”? First Corinthians 13 tells us that in glory we will no longer see “as through a glass darkly” but we will “know as we are known.”

“For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known” (1 Corinthians 13:9-12 NIV).

When the resurrected Christ in His glorified body appeared to Thomas, Jesus still bore the marks of the Roman nails and spear (John 20:24-29). If in heaven we were unable to remember our lives here—including our sins—we would neither have a clear understanding of who we had been, nor an awareness of the worth of our redemption.

In heaven, our perspective will no longer be dominated by “former things.” Knowledge of past sins or earthly suffering will not cause the same kind of suffering and emotional anguish in heaven that it does now. We will see how God’s grace has healed all of the scars that sin left on our mortal lives. We will see how God’s grace could even use our repented sins to bring about His good purposes.

While there is so much we don’t know about the happiness of heaven, for now we can probably safely assume that, at the very least, “no knowledge of former things” means that we will not be dominated by memories of those things that are so painful and destructive now. As implied by Isaiah 65:17, the transformation that will occur in the new heavens and new earth will be so complete that our perspective will be utterly changed. Our earlier, fallen perspective will “not be remembered or come into mind.” The dark and tragic aspects of our past lives will be transformed by the light of a glorious new reality, filled with gratitude and joy.

Will We Still be Married in Heaven?

Dan Vander Lugt
Basics Of Faith, Bible, God, Relationshipsfuture life, heaven, husband, love for, marriage, relating to others, relationships, wife

Jesus made it clear that no one will be married in heaven: “At the resurrection people will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven” (Matthew 22:30 NIV).

But this doesn’t mean that we won’t know each other or will cease cherishing our earthly relationship. The rich man recognized Lazarus in Abraham’s bosom, even though he was in a different place and separated by a “great gulf” (Luke 16:19-31 NKJV). The disciples recognized Moses and Elijah at the transfiguration, even though these two men had lived many centuries before (Matthew 17:1-5). Finally, we recall the striking promise made by our Lord to the repentant thief in Luke 23:43, “I tell you the truth, today you will be with Me in paradise” (NIV).

The apostle Paul said we will have more knowledge in heaven than we have now (1 Corinthians 13:12). This implies that we will know and recognize people more fully in heaven than here on earth. He also said it was “far better” to depart and to be with Christ than to remain in the body on earth (2 Corinthians 5:6-8; Philippians 1:22-23).

In all of these passages, heaven is depicted as a place of greater experience than we now know on earth and a place where we will have more knowledge and understanding. This would lead us to believe that we will recognize other members of our family, even though we will not live in family units. Instead, all believers in this age will be united in the bride of Christ and in fellowship with our Savior as the heavenly Bridegroom (Ephesians 5:22-33; Revelation 19:7,9).

Scripture leads us to believe that we will enjoy such a state of wonderful intimacy with our glorified brothers and sisters that there will no longer be a need for the exclusive relationships that protect us from loneliness and despair in a fallen world. This does not mean, of course, that we will not know and share a perfect love with those with whom we have been especially intimate in our earthly lives. However, all of the joys and ecstasy of marital and family love will be far surpassed by the joys of perfect intimacy and trust in heaven.

With so many Translations, how can we know the English Translation we’re using is Accurate?

Dan Vander Lugt
Bibleauthority of Scripture, inspiration

It is important to be concerned about the accuracy of the Bible translation we’re using, but the fact that the wording varies in modern English translations is no reason to think they aren’t reliable. The Lord Jesus and the apostles considered the Old Testament Scriptures the very Word of God, but they weren’t troubled that the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Old Testament used by Greek-speaking Jews) differed slightly from the Hebrew text. The Old Testament quotations that sprinkle the New Testament are not word-for-word translations from the Hebrew text. The apostles quoted loosely from the Septuagint. Of the 175 Old Testament quotations found in the New Testament, not one of any length carefully follows the Masoretic Hebrew text. In general they are closer to the Greek Septuagint.

Jesus himself never sought to quote the Old Testament in a rigidly word-for-word way. An example is Luke’s account of His reading of Isaiah 61: -2 in the synagogue at Capernaum (Luke 4:17-21). We don’t know whether Jesus was reading from the standard Hebrew text or not. He may have freely translated it into Aramaic. In any case, Isaiah 61:1 (KJV) closes with the words: “Proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound.” Luke 4:18 closes with the words, “Preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised.” The wording is far from exactly the same. Does this mean that Isaiah 61:1 as we find it in the King James Version is not the Word of God or that the words recorded by Luke do not carry authority? This has obviously not been the conclusion of the Christian church through the centuries. We are confident that the inspired words of Isaiah are faithfully recorded and that Luke accurately recorded the words of Christ. A slight difference in the wording doesn’t trouble us, because both passages have the same basic meaning.

We believe the example of Jesus and the apostles serves an important purpose. If the Lord and His disciples didn’t get hung up on a minor difference in wording, we shouldn’t either. If the best available texts seem to call for small changes in the contemporary language we use to express the content they contain, they should be made. Our core concern should be the accuracy with which the inspired concept or idea expressed in the Scriptural text is conveyed.

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