Living Hope Blog

Deuteronomy 8:1-10

In this life temptation will come.  It is inevitable.  It is the very nature of the world.  But not every season in life and not every temptation is the same.  There are unique temptations that come in the difficult and desert seasons in life.  We struggle with things we are not able to overcome and over issues we feel are noble but don’t seem to bring anything but pain.  We feel as if God has abandoned us or may even actively be against us.  These are real seasons in life with God, and can be some of the most difficult, but God has some things to say about the temptations of the desert.

Though the language is stark, it is nonetheless true – God led his people in the wilderness and even tested his people through the trials they faced there.  Moses says, “And you shall remember the whole way that the Lord your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness , that he might humble you, testing you” (vs. 2).  In the desert God’s people faced some very real and difficult things, beginning with hunger and thirst.  Adding to the natural difficulties is the fact that God did the leading into the desert with a few things in mind for them including humility, obedience and testing.

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Romans 6:1-4

The freedom and forgiveness in the Christian life can sometimes be misunderstood as an excuse to continue in a life of sin and rebellion.  And what is true today, it turns out, was true in Paul’s day.  Paul had to confront the notion that if God’s grace is a good thing, then we need to continue to sin so God has more chances to display his forgiveness.  This idea displays a radical misunderstanding of what God does to the human heart, and, surprisingly enough, baptism proves Paul’s point.

“Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?” (vs. 3)

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The Casey Anthony trial has elicited a lot of powerful reactions from a lot of people, from the circus of the media coverage to the apparently shocking verdict of not-guilty.  Now, let the cultural assessment games begin.  Why were we obsessed?  Why (in the minds of many) did the jury let someone so obviously guilty go free?  What do we do with mothers and families that seem to be so negligent of their children and grandchildren?  One recent column provides an initial set of  thoughts on why we are so fanatical about, even angry at, Anthony.

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Does the God of the Bible condone and/or command rape? I asserted in my personal blog that I have been told as much, though no particular evidence has been produced to that end. In the comment section, I was told that in the story of 2 Samuel 11-12 God commands rape. Let’s see if that is true.

That section of Scripture tells the story of one of David’s most grievous sins – he takes another man’s wife as his own and arranges for the husband’s death. In response to this radical injustice, God sends the prophet Nathan into him to tell him what will be the consequences of his actions. As far as I can tell, the only passage that would be used to say that God commands rape here is 2 Samuel 12:11:

Thus says the LORD, ‘Behold, I will raise up evil against you out of your own house. And I will take your wives before your eyes and give them to your neighbor, and he shall lie with your wives in the sight of this sun.

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Christians have often been called “People of the Book,” and there is no doubt that recent technologies are changing the landscape of the printed book, so are there inevitable consequences for believers who are tied to the authenticity of and interpretive work done in a book?  Lisa Miller thinks technology may pose a serious threat to the very existence of the church itself.  She titles this piece, “How Technology Could Bring Down the Church.”

She has a point.  It appears that the more available the Bible has become both in print and in virtual form, fewer and fewer Christians read it any more.

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Romans 1:16-17

Paul has never been to Rome, but he is anxious to visit.  He is looking forward to encouraging the church and to proclaiming the gospel of Jesus Christ.  He hopes, more specifically, that there will be a harvest among his brothers and sisters in Christ and among the Gentiles.  Paul knows the gospel is powerful when it is shared among believers, and powerful when it is shared with people who don’t yet know and love Jesus Christ.  In fact, under no circumstances is Paul ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

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Romans 1:1-7

There is a lot we can learn about the Christian life from the way the apostle Paul introduces himself in his letters.  Though these sections often feel like simple boiler-plate, they contain far more than inconsequential pieces of information about Paul.  They become doors of insight into some of the goals of the Christian life.  They challenge us to be able to introduce ourselves in the same way with the same level of authenticity.

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Recently, I have been working my way through Paul Copan’s “Is God a Moral Monster?”  It looks to be a promising book, and so far he has tackled some thorny issues very well.  What I like about a book like this, is it is not afraid to take a close and honest look at some of the more contentious and difficult issues of the Christian Scriptures.  Let’s face it – in the climate of the New Atheists the OT has become a popular target and it is incumbent on Christians to at least deal with the challenges.  Not every charge leveled against the OT by the New Atheists is worth time and effort, but some are and Copan has taken up the task.

The first topic that really piqued my interest was the matter of Abraham being commanded to sacrifice Isaac.  In all honesty, that is a difficult passage to deal with.  God commands Abraham to sacrifice his son of promise, and Abraham essentially says, “OK.”

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LHC is currently going through a coordinated curriculum dealing with the spiritual disciplines of the church, and it is prompting me to think a little more closely about what they are, how we engage with them and what they do (and don’t do).

There are a lot of good definitions and descriptions out there about what they are, and I have compiled my own kind of simple description from several of them.  The spiritual disciplines are deliberate activities designed to put us in God’s way.

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Psalm 19:7-11

There are times when a passage of Scripture is so well known to us, that in reading it we may lose sight of the context or the passage that follows.  The opening praise of Psalm 19 is so catching it is easy to miss the lines that follow.  It is gloriously true that all of creation sings the wonder and praise of its Creator.  It is no less true that the law of the Lord is itself glorious.

This passage looks at the law of God the way we may rotate a crystal under a light.  With each turn we see a new facet, a new color emerges.  David rotates the law of God under a light and with each turn of phrase we learn something new and beautiful about the ways and precepts of our God.

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