The Israelite God was different from all the other gods, thus, the worship of Yahweh differed from that of all other gods.
David finally found the truth that it was not his seed of kingship but the promise made to Abraham that made him holy. From that, David refused to be moved and wrote this Psalm by the necessity of the Spirit as the assurance of faith. The law never made a man holy, not even one as robust as David; yet faith did this great thing without lifting a finger.
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.

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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.
“Whatever you do, don’t share the Gospel with me?” Those were my exact words to my slightly mystified seminary professor. As he set his coffee down, I could tell that he was holding back in an effort to allow me to process what I was thinking.
He was a beggar on the streets. And, he was as good as dead if he didn't receive a blessing. The words, "you're cursed" haunted his mind.
The more I seek God on my own terms, the deeper I am gazing at my own navel.
Thank God for heroes: they inspire us to be better, to help others, to live and work for the good of our race. And thank God for villains, too: they incarnate our shadow side, our nocturnal soul, the dragon within us that must incessantly have its throat slit on the altar of repentance.
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.
It is only when individuals are bound together in community that they become fully human.
What postmoderns see in modernism is a misuse of power through the control of dominant narratives.
Here is a lament I’ve written especially for victims of hurricanes. May it be for you, for your family, or for your church, a way to put into prayer the anguish of your souls.
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.