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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Jesus is the anti-Cain: a giver, not a taker.
This is an excerpt from “All Charges Dropped! Devotional Narratives from Earthly Courtrooms to the Throne of Grace,” written by Haroldo Camacho (1517 Publishing, 2022).
“There,” the Queen said, “That’s so much better than talking, isn’t it?”
God’s goodness spoke a promise of peace and mercy to the bewildered, a promise that rings out to this day.
At the heart of The Idiot is Dostoevsky's confession of faith and the confession of all Christians.
The world hates Jesus because he comes to lead us to love and forgive all, including our enemies.
The only solution to free will is the announcement from a preacher that the Father forgives us for Christ's sake.
Jesus does not put us on trial and make us pay for our own sin, but he, himself, is put on trial in our place.
Our Judge (the one who can condemn us) has become our Advocate (the one who doesn’t condemn us) because he is also our Substitute (the one who takes our condemnation).
Scott Hall may not have been a theologian or a preacher but for me, at that moment he might as well have been.
The world we inhabit is wrong in so many ways, and a holistic approach to this “wrongness” traces its cause both to sin itself and to the effects of sin.
At its heart, this is what Deacon King Kong is all about: the paradox of Jesus carving his victory out of the last thing we expect, not our triumphs but our defeats.