Forsaken, Or Felt Forsaken?
My last post on the cross focused on two questions: 1) Did God kill Jesus on the cross, and 2) was Jesus damned by God on the cross? This post seeks to answer another question: Was Jesus truly, objectively forsaken by…
Category Reformation21
A Shallow View of Singing
Shallow worship music has received a lot of well-deserved criticism. The very fact that worship has been industrialized, marketed, and filtered for Instagram is disconcerting. There are bright spots in modern worship—thank you Gettys and friends—but, too often, songs are…
Dwelling Among Those Who Hate Peace
Dear Christian, if the events of 2020 haven’t caused you to realize this world is not your home, I’m not sure what will. In my own state, the stay at home restriction was at long-last lifted only for a city-wide…
8 Reflections on Racism and Riots
I’m neither black nor white. I’m brown, or Asian American. And I’m a Christian; therefore, I want to address racism and rioting from a biblical point of view. Here are some thoughts on these issues: 1. There’s only one race…
Review: Bavinck’s Theological Epistemology
Nathaniel Gray Sutanto. God and Knowledge: Herman Bavinck’s Theological Epistemology. T&T Clark, 2020. Hardback. 208 pp. $115.00 There’s nothing business as usual with studies in Herman Bavinck with more translated works available and as the secondary literature continues to grow.…
Theological Flavors
In the previous post, I described the Lord’s Supper as soul food and spiritual drink for God’s people. This means the sacrament is much more than a symbolic rite; it’s a spiritual participation in the body and blood of Jesus…
Our God Cannot Change
In our changing world, people want to know that “Some Things Never Change.” Perhaps capitalizing on this desire, Disney’s popular movie Frozen II features a song bearing this title. The song conveys a message that our hearts long to believe.…
Can We Talk about Death?
It’s time to bring back the phrase memento mori (“remember you must die”). Socrates taught that the proper practice of philosophy is nothing other than preparing to be dead. Stoics emphasized the value of living with death on the brain —…
How to Delight in Serving Your Church: Read the OT
In the thirty minutes after Sunday school and before morning worship, our congregation talks, drinks coffee, and nibbles muffins at long white tables in the fellowship hall. Before the pandemic forced us into social distancing, this was a predictable part…
Curbing Our Complaints: Lessons for the Church in the Desert
If the nation of Israel thought that they were going to step foot immediately from the shores of the Red Sea into the lush boundaries of the Promised Land, they were sorely mistaken. Instead, they are met with decades-long of…