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.
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.
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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I explained to her that Jesus was quoting Psalm 22 and pointing us to the prediction of His crucifixion. She then replied, "Isn't there more to it than that?"
From creator to priest, our God now moves, from forming animals to slaying them, all so that His Adam and His Eve might remain truly His.
Wouldn’t it be great if there were something that could de-shame us?
My daughter’s honest, pointed question of “Why?” not only desired an answer; it deserved and demanded the “dreadful beauty” of an honest response.
Being thrown in the pit was but one of the many smoking guns that the prosecutor could bring forth as evidence.
Focus on control and you’ll end up with nothing but confusion and frustration and disappointment. It’s not about who’s in control in this life but whose you are in this life.
God wired us to be storytellers. God made man in his own image and that image includes a rational mind that communicates in large part through stories.
“You shall have no other gods,” God says, and we, spurred on by the prohibition, roll up our sleeves and get to work fashioning gods like there’s no tomorrow.
This chorus digs below the surface to reveal that beneath our chosen self-medications, be they alcohol or drugs or overeating or smoking or bed-hopping, you’ll unearth the real killer. And “it ain’t the whiskey.”
Barth's ideas resulted in a movement known as neo-orthodoxy, sometimes called dialectical theology, theology of crisis, or simply Barthianism.
Imagine a world in which it is always winter but never Christmas. Imagine a place where Deep Magic from the dawn of time requires the blood of the innocent be shed to save the guilty.
By the time we pulled off the side of the road, they had spilled out and surrounded our vehicle.