Posts by Truth and Life

The sin of unfaithfulness darkens the Pulpit. In his blog, Magnus Persson writes that God is not a tool in our hands.  He does not exit to serve our goals. It is the oldest temptation, making Him into our image, into our preferences. When we preach a preferred God we have become entertainers. We preach…

“We are beggars. This is true.” In her blog, Blessed Beggars, Heather Schulz tells us that those words had been written by Martin Luther on a scrap of paper found in his pocket after he died. Such is the cry of a destitute sinner. “Lord, help and save me, not because of righteous things I…

In his blog, Getting Over Your “Right Theology,” Luke Kjolhhaug writes that the lure of “being right” is intoxicating. There really is something exhilarating about thinking you’re right politically, theologically, or ideologically. It stirs up the blood of the Old Adam in us. The old trick of Gnosticism is that there is a key that…

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 Such a culture has been replaced by a “neosexual” revolution.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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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,…

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…