“The Hebrew is concerned with practice, the Greek with knowledge. Right conduct is the ultimate concern of the Hebrew, right thinking that of the Greek.” -William Barrett
I remember learning this distinction between these two ancient ways of thinking sometime shortly after high school when I was at YWAM. The basic idea that some saw “belief” as merely an intellectual exercise, and others as more a matter of action. Our society, and much of the church, is dominated by a Greek way of thinking. So, “believing” in Jesus is mostly a …

When it comes to politics and faith I find a lot of Christians fall into one of two categories particularly when it comes to social issues: The church should care for the needs of the people (more republican leaning) or The church should influence the government to care for the needs of the people (more democrat leaning). Generally speaking, in theory, many agree that it’s a Christian thing to care for those in need, Christians just differ on how. But, then here is the crazy thing to me: both sides …

After discovering John Piper’s sermons (via a youth leader in my high school youth group), round about my sophomore year, I became a Christian Hedonist. At the time, I did not know what Hedonism was, but learned, via context, that “Christian Hedonism” was a bit of a radical/controversial doctrine. Piper sums it up most concisely like this:
“God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him.”
The idea of our “satisfaction” being central to life’s purpose, to ‘worship’ and to God was apparently counter to what most religious …

I intended to put a lot more time into this post then I have. I was also hoping for some dialog with others pre-writing to get my thoughts stirring, but neither of those two things happened, and I promised you readers I’d get something up, so here goes (how’s that for a lame preface)
 
Last week, I suggested listening to this sermon, Did Christ Die For Us or for God?, by John Piper. It was one of the foundational sermons in my early faith development and something I had not really …

In preparation for a post I intend to write next week, I’ve been listening to one of two John Piper sermons that have been quite foundational in my early formative faith/theology years (sophomore and junior year of high school). The sermons are from a Passion Conference, which was an annual college student conference focused around bringing students together toward a shared evangelistic and missional call (this is my own summary). I did not attend, but received the tapes from a leader in the youth group I was attending. The two …

If I did musical intros to my blog posts, the one for this post would be Bob Dylan’s, Gotta Serve Somebody. I’m not quite sure when I chose this title for my blog or mantra for my life, but as time goes on I find myself more and more comfortable with it. I think the question that it immediately evokes is: who? Who am I trying to follow?
Several years ago, that answer would have been staunchly black and white. I am following Jesus, the God of the Bible and no …

A series of occurrences recently have caused me to really want to revisit some of my basic beliefs that probably formed sometime in high school and beginning of college. It’s interesting that much of my spiritual growth and understanding of my faith came about over 10 years ago when I was in high school. And it was during that time that I think I formed some of the sort of root theological views that I had and have continued to hold or ascribe to for several years. What’s interesting is …

After a week and a half, one of the realities that has set in is that I simply don’t refer to God often enough to even warrant frequent use of pronouns. One area that most church going folks do reference God is in our singing.