Beyond Ourselves

A culture that regards sex in the manner ours does, no longer values the holy foundation on which society is built. Such a culture has been replaced by a “neosexual” revolution. This neosexual revolution harkens back to a post-1960’s shift in human sexuality, towards a more individualized  view of sex. Sociologists call this a shift…

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The Holy Maker

Concerning the Christian life, what does it involve? It involves becoming holy.  Most would say that involves doing good works. But Jesus tells Paul to “turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God, so that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified…

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Sex Before Love

With Valentines blowing in the air, and our celebrating our wedding anniversary, I thought it timely to rethink love.  A penis can enter a vagina long before love happens or ever will.  The sense one gets from reading the Scriptures is that the event of sex follows love.  Scripturally defined, marriage is a covenant bond…

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A Name Above All Other Names

The seasons come and go as do the seasons of our lives. That is a wonderful metaphor for the distinct phases of life, youth as spring, adulthood as summer, autumn as maturity and winter as the time for facing mortality which my wife and I are now facing.  Steven Paulson wrote a blog entitled What…

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Thoughts on gatherings

In spite of all that might be said of family gatherings, they hold an important place in the Christian nurturing of relationships. We all spent this last Thanksgiving Day in various ways, alone, in grief, quietly around a table of two. At our last gathering for Thanksgiving Day, our youngest granddaughter, an accomplished violinist, accompanied…

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Until the Day Comes

It’s fall, football time when friends tailgate outside stadiums to eat food and find fellowship together.  The Word of God speaks to us of a fellowship that prepares for the feast in heaven. The writer of Hebrews reminds us of this.  Do not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing,…

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Captive to the Truth

In the past few weeks Donavon Riley has written two articles on how congregations abuse pastors and how pastors abuse congregations.  Riley refers to himself as a husband, father, and a Lutheran pastor who writes for a number of organizations. Articles like this catch my eye because as a pastor and psychotherapist, these two articles…

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Jesus Christ makes it possible

I am writing this blog for the benefit of generation Z and the millennialists—those who grew up at the time when words became what we wanted them to mean. The point I want to make with them is that there are words given to us that carry their own meaning from within them. The word…

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The Holiness of God

It’s fall where we live in the pines and wherever we walk, we walk on cones and needles, a take on the expression, walking on pins a needles—a metaphor for waiting for something bad to happen like having to rake up these pine cones and needles, put them in barrels and haul them to the…

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The Christian Church on earth

In a time when nations and people are in the throes of destroying each other a quick review of the solidarity of the Christian Church on earth and in heaven forever is in order. The Holy Christian Church on earth is the communion of saints, who believe in the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of…

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