Idolatry

We live in an image-obsessed culture – everything we do is captured in images: photographs, drawings, videos, and TikToks. Images and images and images and images. They help us think. They help us learn. They help us better understand ideas and concepts. ‘I’m just a visual person,’ some will...

Catharine Brown – Cherokee Missionary and Teacher When Catharine Brown arrived at the Brainerd School, the missionaries thought she wouldn’t last long. Beautiful and proud, she carried herself with gravity and reticence, as it was fitting for the daughter of an influential family. Would she be able...

The Cure for Unjust Anger Jonathan and James welcome Brian Hedges to the podcast. Brian is the lead pastor at Redeemer Church in Niles, MI and is responsible for breathing new life into one of the works of John Downame, a 16th century Puritan who was known as a “physician of souls.” In The Cure for...

In Anthony and Cleopatra (3:2) Shakespeare described it as the “ green sickeness”. In Othello, he called it the “ green eyed monster ”. Immanuel Kant described it thus: “inherent in the nature of man, and only its manifestation makes of it an abominable vice, a passion not only distressing and...

“As long as he believes in something, that is what’s important.” With those words the man in front of me simultaneously dismissed the authority of God and justified a younger relative who had embraced an animistic system of belief. For the older gentlemen, it was the act of believing in something...

Mikael Agricola and the Reformation in Finland Like Primoz Trubar in Slovenia, Mikael Agricola was a Protestant reformer who had to develop a language before he could spread the gospel. From Farmer to Bishop Born around the year 1509 in a small village on the southern coast of Finland, Agricola (...

But the L ORD of hosts, him you shall honor as holy. Let him be your fear, and let him be your dread. – Isaiah 8:13 My dearest Theophilus: We live in a soft age. Our idols are soft and so our fears too. In the old days our idols were hard. Literally. Made of stone. Made of wood. Sculpted and carved...

To interpret is to identify the meaning or significance that the thing has which we interpret. Humans interpret. We do not choose to interpret; interpretation is unavoidable. But we do choose how we interpret and thereby what our interpretation will be. Furthermore, interpreting is a perpetual...