When I was growing up, the only people I knew who observed Lent were my Catholic friends, who honestly, didn’t know or care much about Jesus in their daily lives from what I could observe. I remember they had to eat fish for lunch on Fridays in the school cafeteria. I once asked a friend […]
Faith’s Grand Paradox About Your Doubts: Love Trumps Information
Ken Wytsma’s most recent book The Grand Paradox, addresses many of the tensions believers and non-believers feel toward the Christian faith. Ken is founder of The Justice Conference coming up June 5-6 in Chicago and is also the author of Pursuing Justice. Tensions within the Bible and Christianity abound. Many of these tensions push people […]
An Agnostic and a Druid on Church in a Bar, Free Beer
We’ve been doing church in a bar, buying a free drink for first timers. Here’s an unsolicited blog comment I received this week following our 2nd time doing The Upper Room. Check out ChurchAtTheLoft.com if you’d like to come join us on a Tuesday night. This post was written by an agnostic who came to […]
Believing Jesus died on the cross for your sins will not save you
Romans 6:23 is one of the most common verses used in evangelism: For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord. (NLT) It’s a key feature on the Romans Road Bible tract and in general serves as a summation of the gospel message […]
What Does the U-shaped ن Arabic letter mean on Facebook and Twitter?
You might be seeing the Arabic letter ن popping up on friends’ Facebook and Twitter profile pics and have been wondering what it means. ن is the Arabic letter for “N” and was spray painted on all Christian property to be seized by ISIS militants in Mosul, Iraq. The “N” stands for the Arabic word […]
2 Unexpected Ways Believing in Hell has Reinvigorated my Faith
I grew up in a church tradition that really emphasized hell as a motivation for accepting Christ’s forgiveness of our sins. In fact, my own salvation decision as a young child was highly motivated by this. I no longer see overemphasis on hell (often an exclusive emphasis) as biblical or effective in bringing true heart […]