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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Consolation is the breath of life filling our lungs, hearts, and minds with the fresh, incorruptible air of the new creation.
Rather than calling me to pick burrs off my coat, God’s love strips me of my delusions and cuts to the heart of my disease.
What postmoderns see in modernism is a misuse of power through the control of dominant narratives.
For all its stewing, regret ironically does not truly focus on the past. Often it is more concerned with the present and the future and how they would be if only we had done something differently.
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.
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.
The following is adapted from Called to Defend written by Valerie Locklair (1517 Publishing, 2017).
I am not going to give an apology for evolution as a scientific theory. Rather, I am wondering if the normal way of discussing evolutionary science within conservative Christianity has blinded us to certain fruitful uses of the theory.
Press further on the historicity of the Bible, and we start to get fidgety.
In order to shore up wavering faith commitments, both for the disciples and for us today, Jesus used His actions during a day’s worth of ministry to evidence the hard truth about His Messianic identity.
I have a confession: I don’t believe the Bible is true because it says it’s true.
“The lack of assurance of one’s standing before God causes a person to do anything to make things right in a vain attempt to gain eternal certitude. ”