Presby-Musings

I recently read a blog post from a mainstream, conservative evangelical Christian blogger/author that leveled some damning accusations toward three authors/Christian thinkers, who I admire: Rob Bell, Donald Miller and Bryan Mclaren. All three of these men had once been included beneath the mainstream, conservative evangelical umbrella, but (according to this blogger) they had strayed from orthodox Christian belief and become "universalists," who believe that God lets anyone into heaven, not just those who follow Jesus. In our current culture, a Christian leader, pastor, author, theologian, etc. being labelled a "Universalist" by mainstream, conservative evangelical Christians is the post-post modern equivalent of being anathematized--a practice the early church fathers employed to rid themselves of heretics and people who had too much imagination when it came to Christian beliefs. I realize that I just oversimplified and caricatured the development of or...

When I was a kid and played sports, the only people who got trophies were the people who actually won something. Now everyone gets a trophy just for showing up.  But despite the love-fest of indiscriminate trophy distribution at my children's awards ceremonies, everyone knows who the star on the team is.  Everyone knows which team beat all of the other teams for the entire season, even when the league officials fervently avoided keeping score.  We may all want everyone to get a trophy and feel good about themselves, but we know that not everyone deserves one.  We also know that life isn't fair, and that sometimes even when we work hard, play hard, try hard and want something hard... it doesn't always go our way.  I've noticed that the kids who tend to perform better than their peers at sports, scholastics, you name it, also tend to complain about the seeming lack of fairness inherent in the "Everyone's A Winner" approach. Because we all know that n...

I've been thinking about theology lately.  More specifically, what sort of theology(ies) have both formed and informed my own.  Over the next few weeks I will be posting about these influences in a series I'll be calling, "Why I Am..." For those of you who are familiar with Brian McClaren's work, you will naturally assume that I am ripping off his book "A Generous Orthodoxy."  And you would be right.  Then again, there are no original ideas left, really.  Everything is a riff on an original.  At least that's what I'll tell myself. In this entry, I'll be relating Why I Am A Calvinist.   In a nutshell what I am calling Calvinism is probably better understood as Reformed Theology.  It is a way of understanding God that has it's foundations in the works of John Calvin, but also other of the famous Reformers from the 16th and 17th century.  What we know as Calvinism is grounded in five essential beliefs, known as the "Five Points...

If you have been watching the news lately, you may have seen that nearly forty people have died in Afghanistan as a direct result of an accidental burning of some copies of the Muslim holy book, the Qu'ran--including 4 Americans, who were murdered in cold blood in supposed "safe" zones.  There have been riots throughout the country in retaliation, and several bombings by the Taliban, who are using this to their own advantage. U.S. soldiers burned the copies because they contained radical messages written by inmates of a detention center.  The copies of the Qur'an were being used by the inmates to communicate with one another.  Hence, their disposal. President Obama has issued an official apology, which was read publicly by the Afghan president.  But since Afghanistan is a largely illiterate country, with little or no mass media---no one got the memo that we're sorry.  Many people, including a number of Christians, were angered that our President would apol...