Religious

Archive for Religious

God and Truth

One of the things I love about Christianity is the identification of Jesus with truth itself. For example, the gospel of John opens like this: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2He was with God in the beginning. 3Through him all things were made; […]

The Way to Salvation

One of the watershed moments in my spiritual development occurred during the counseling sessions from the pastor who was going to marry my (then) fiancee and me. He was the pastor of the church I was attending while at NYU, and I had asked him if he would marry us. He said yes but always […]

He’s a Crafty Devil

My favorite line from The Usual Suspects is when Verbal explains about Keyser Soze, aka “the Devil”: He is supposed to be Turkish. Some say his father was German. Nobody believed he was real. Nobody ever saw him or knew anybody that ever worked directly for him, but to hear Kobayashi tell it, anybody could […]

Analysis of the Lord’s Prayer, Part II

A few weeks ago I began analyzing the Lord’s prayer. Today I continue: “Your kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” Here is what I take away from this part, at least lately: There is a definite sense in which the things that happen on earth are not in […]

God Doesn’t Waste a Tear

The pastor at my old church used to frequently say that “God never wastes a tear in your life.” (That’s tear as in salty water from your eye, not tear as in a rip in your jeans.) His point was that all of the bad things that happened to you, can be turned around and […]

Quite a Compliment

I love the story of Jesus’ encounter with John the Baptist (Mt 3: 13-17): 13Then Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan to be baptized by John. 14But John tried to deter him, saying, “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?” 15Jesus replied, “Let it be so now; it […]

Strategies for Evangelism

Someone at the Des Moines Campaign for Liberty event gave me Mark Cahill’s One Thing You Can’t Do In Heaven. The one thing, is that you can’t share the good news of Jesus’ atonement for our sins with nonbelievers in heaven. The book is filled with stories and strategies of how Cahill goes around witnessing […]

Analysis of the Lord’s Prayer

I know Catholics refer to it as “the Our Father,” because e.g. in confession you can be assigned, “Say two Hail Marys and three Our Fathers,” but I think the more general term is to refer to it as “the Lord’s prayer,” because after warning how not to pray, Jesus then gives us a model […]