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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Have you ever found yourself looking back on a time in your life when you were thoroughly enmeshed in something wrong, and now you hardly recognize the person you were then?
I didn’t know it, in fact I consciously rejected it, but the truth is that throughout those years, both in times of success and failure, God was up to something.
That all being said, come to think of it, I’ve never gone 24 seconds without sinning.
As I floated in the Gulf of Mexico, I spoke these truths, but it was not the waters or the heavens that needed to hear them.
Whatever numbers you want to plug in, ours must be greater than zero. We’re in a partnership with God, after all. We both do our part. We’ve got to meet the Lord halfway. If only he does all the giving, and we do all the receiving, the relationship is doomed to fail.
We like to define ourselves, and to have others see us and talk about us, based upon our accomplishments.
Who are we, really, but a bag of blood and bones, in which are mixed in bittersweet memories and the shards of shattered dreams and broken hearts?
You think the sower sowed his seed in you because he saw such good soil, such a good, generous, noble person.
Paul is on a roll. He's adding up all the things that can separate you from the love of God in Jesus Christ. And the total? Nothing, zilch, zero.
It was happening again. I sat across from my dear friend at one of our favorite restaurants. We were finishing our glass of wine and eating the end of the sushi when the waitress approached.
My life will be unwritten, erased by the hand of mortality. And fool that I am, I stand here threatening to snuff out the life of a woman caught in the act which I have acted out in my heart with a thousand women.
For it is His law I have broken, His office in which I have failed, His people against whom I have sinned. All is from Him, so all I have taken, I have taken from Him. All others against whom I have sinned, I have sinned because they are of Him.