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.
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.
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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We try believing in more abstract concepts: justice, happiness, and self-improvement, only to find that we can never truly grasp which standards should be accepted and which should be rejected.
Jesus cuts right to the chase when it comes to the evil one. He calls the devil “a liar and the father of lies,”
Then, Jesus our Groom, with His nail-scarred hands takes our hands and walks out with us from that ultimate courtroom, and into eternity – His eternity – and a never-ending wedding feast.
Can there be joy in obedience? That depends on if obedience if a free choice or the result of threats.
Jesus opened our ears and mouth when He baptizes us. Jesus put His fingers into our ears, speaks to us, and washes our sins away.
My biggest criticism of Peterson’s mantra is that it seems to be exclusively a message of Law in a world in desperate need of grace.
For the past twenty years that I've been a Christian, I've not found any evidence in my reading of Judges 13-16 that qualifies Samson for the "book of faith" (Hebrews 11).
Only because He is an outsider can he afford the costly fee insiders could never afford no matter how hard they work.
On the cross, God removed the load of every single one of your sins and placed it instead on Christ. Then, He clothed you with the fullness of His holiness and perfection.
If I were the devil, I wouldn’t just entice believers to do bad things. We’re experts at that anyway.
When we Christians shoehorn Creedal Christianity into any of these ideological positions we obscure the Gospel mingling it with the Law and strip the Good News of its catholicity.
Right now (and I would add, for quite some time) there has been a debate within Christianity about the whole issue of culture.