When someone makes a statement that is difficult or unreasonable, human beings rationalize in order to ignore or moderate their words. Maybe the person didn’t mean it, or maybe they have some hidden strategy that explains their otherwise irrational position. Unfortunately for deniers, what a person says is what they mean. The duty of science…
Category: The Bible as Literature
False Humility
The expression “false pretense” is very strange. By definition, a pretense is the act of giving an appeance. In the Bible, anything that presents an apperance is already a lie, the depth and breadth of which is evident without the use of a modifier. In Matthew, the pretense of humility amplifies human arrogance, even as…
Be Perfect
The United States is at a crossroads. Regrettably, all of us listened to our parents, teachers and Walt Disney, who conspired to convince us that we should believe in ourselves–and now, everyone believes in themselves. It’s a disaster. We believe in ourselves and thus believe that our ideas, preferences and personal beliefs hold universal authority….
Empty Promises
People love to talk about what they want to do, what they should do or what they believe is right. We love it. We go online to brag about it and to cajole each other. Everyone is a fake preacher. We give lip service to lofty ideals (lying to ourselves and each other) pretending to…
Love is Not a Feeling
To our peril, we think about love and relationships in terms of how we feel about a person or how that person makes us feel. This attitude is understandable in children, but when adults think this way in marriage, the failure of their household becomes the failure of our neighborhoods, our communities, and, sooner or…
Every Last Cent
Christians come up with strange explanations as to the relationship between the Law of Moses and Pauline grace. Maybe, they argue, only part of the Law is valid—like the Ten Commandments—but the rest is draconian and Jesus came to rescue us from legalism. Others claim, maybe, because of grace, Jesus is saying that we can…
Not One Iota
“Being instructed out of the Law,” are you “confident that you yourself are a guide to the blind, a light to those who are in darkness, a corrector of the foolish, [and] a teacher of the immature, having in the Law the embodiment of knowledge and of the truth?” (Romans 2:18-21) “Are you confident,” Paul…