Today, the longing for cultural Christianity on both the left and the right hearkens back to an older version of Christendom that was a mixed blessing for the church in the western world. The cultural mediation of Christian views on created order has certainly benefitted the civilization we’ve inherited. But the gospel itself isn’t something that can be reduced to cultural mediation either. Instead, the gospel as a message stands apart from all human accomplishments and achievements, no matter how beneficial they might be.
09/15/26
Josephus does not tell us that Christianity is true, and Christians do not need Josephus to tell them that Christ is risen. But Christianity makes claims about things that happened in public history under identifiable rulers, priests, and governors. For that reason, testimony from outside the church matters.
09/16/26
The student of Scripture should always have a map open next to their Bible as they read. If possible, they should also travel to Israel, not to make a pilgrimage, but to see the context of the land in which these stories took place. These are not fairy tales made up about fictional fantasy lands; these are stories about real people in real places interacting with a real God.
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Chad Bird
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02/21/19
We have at least one thing going for us: we know the first of these two days —our birthday.
02/16/19
Our American ethos trumpets the ideal of the rugged individual who doesn’t need anyone else. But that’s not only a lie; it’s also the recipe for disaster.
01/28/19
Just as we believe ourselves to be forgiven because God sees us in Christ, so to forgive others is to see them as God sees them in Christ. To forgive, in other words, is to put God’s eyes in our eyes and our eyes in God’s eyes.
01/24/19
How long, O Lord,
will the voice of children’s blood
cry out to You from the ground?
01/17/19
Some things, once they are deemed disgusting or contaminated, permanently carry that quality with them. These things are even thought to be “contagious,” negatively affecting whatever they come into contact with.
01/11/19
When people are baptized, time is transcended. They go back to the Jordan and the Jordan comes forward to them. In a single splash, or a single dunk, they enter the war.
01/11/19
If I were granted three wishes, one of them would not be to know what the future holds.
12/24/18
With her iPhone, Mary snapped a pic of Jesus in the manger, chose the Clarendon filter, and posted it to her Instagram account.
12/17/18
My nonfiction reads took me into Orthodoxy, Roman Catholicism, and various varieties of Protestantism. Some of my favorites didn’t fall into neat and tidy categories, such as Jordan Peterson and Richard Selzer. It was difficult to narrow the list down, but here are my 12 1/2 favorites of the year.
12/13/18
If there’s a time of year to grasp the significance of this number, it’s now. Because the birth of Jesus casts light on the dark meaning of 666. And, most importantly, the birth of God’s Son is the death of that number’s power over us.
12/05/18
As the church gathers in worship, however, different words reverberate in readings, hymns, and homilies. These words beckon us to get dirty.
12/01/18
There’s no watch on the Lord’s wrist. No iPhone in the back pocket of his blue jeans. He did create time; it was his idea. But for him “the right time” is never our time. From our perspective, he’s either way too early or—more usually—way too late.
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