Jesus At 2am - A Humorous, Intelligent Look At The Bible, Church History & The Life Of Faith

“Thou shalt not…” is not a phrase we typically associate with love.   For most of us, the language of commandments or “the Law of God” conjures images of dispassionate judge at best, and a wrathful tyrant at worst. But in the biblical story, Torah (the Hebrew word for Law) was understood at a gift […]

The promise of salvation is not merely a promise to deliver souls to a blissful afterlife, but rather the rescue of every aspect of creation from the curse of sin. Salvation is about restoring this world (unto eternity).  And thus the Project of Salvation begins not with images of harps and clouds, but of God […]

  What will become of this broken world in light of the curse of sin???  – that is the driving question of the biblical story. Will creation unravel entirely, like a cloth that has been torn inexorably apart?  Is the cosmos destined to a fate of death and dissolution?  Or can thing yet be set […]

Central to the biblical story is the conviction that something has gone terribly wrong.  The world as we experience it is not the world as God intended. In this episode we turn to the biblical explanation why – how humanity moved from the Garden of Eden to a cosmos in which “thorns and thistles” are […]

Understanding the Bible in its various chapters and verses requires that we first understand the story as a whole.  (Hard to make sense of the details when you don’t know much about the big picture.) So for the next 40 weeks or so, I will do my best to trace the outline of the biblical […]

There is probably no aspect of Christianity more difficult to accept intellectually than the bodily resurrection of Jesus.  And one could hardly be blamed for approaching the idea with complete skepticism.  It seems so much more plausible that the gospel accounts are speaking either metaphorically or just plain mistakenly.  Perhaps the authors desired to have […]

One pastor’s not-so-creepy look at the God who is in the empty tomb business.  The short version:  Where there is God, there is life.  And the message not merely of Easter, but of the whole biblical story, is that God is everywhere and always about his work.  The empty tomb of Jesus was simply the […]

As we conclude this series in modern church history, we examine the intellectual challenges that confronted the church in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.  Perhaps the most obvious of these was the rapid progress of scientific discovery – things like James Hutton’s work in geology (radically redefining the age of the universe) and […]

It would be nearly impossible to overestimate the impact of John and Charles Wesley on contemporary American Protestantism.  From the hymns we sing, to the small groups we attend, to the empowerment of the laity to teach and preach, to the eventual ordination of women into professional ministry, the Wesleys – and the Methodist tradition […]

The religious zeal that marked the first Puritan colonies was destined to wane.  As new generations were born, and new waves of settlers arrived, new priorities and visions of the good life began to take shape.  Many professed a Christian faith and had connection to the church, but not with the same rigor as those […]

Why I hate Ash Wednesday, the illegality of death in Irvine, and the comfort of Psalm 23.  

The Reformation gave birth not to a solitary Protestantism, but to a wide variety of Protestantisms.  (The Reformers came to quick agreement that the Bible – and not the traditions or authorities of the Catholic Church – was the ultimate arbiter of truth.  What they could not agree upon was what the Bible intended to […]

When Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses outside the door of the campus church in Wittenberg, he had no intention of dividing the Catholic Church.  But within a decade of that event, such acts of protest had gained irreversible momentum, and  “Protestantism” was officially born. Throughout the 16th century new church governments were formed, new […]

One of the greatest challenges to understanding the message of Jesus is knowing how to categorize him as a speaker.  When those first audiences gathered, who did they think they were going to hear?   A teacher?  A philosopher?  A political leader?  Or something else? In this fifth installment in the Next Steps into the Gospels course […]

Few elements of the biblical story cause contemporary readers more difficulty than talk of demons and devils.  To our (post-?)modern sensibilities, they seem, at best, misdiagnoses of psychiatric conditions, and, at worst, conjure images of the church at its most misguided (witch trial, anyone?).  And yet, Jesus’ confrontation with demonic powers is a fundamental dimension […]

Much of Jesus’ ministry – and the Gospel descriptions thereof – revolve around his “miracles” (the Gk. word is best translated “works of power”).  But what was their purpose?  Did they simply serve to impress his audience, to demonstrate his might or authority?  Or are they part and parcel of the declaration that “the kingdom […]

To read the Gospels is to be drawn in to a world of great complexity.  Immediately we encounter passionate political conflicts, religious sects vying for power, palace intrigues, and the mounting threat of violence in the streets. It is into this world – the world of Israel in exile, grasping for a means of deliverance […]

There is a tremendous difference between reading the Bible and understanding the Bible. Many of us - myself chief among them - spend years reading the Bible feeling some combination of frustration, boredom, and complete confusion.