I thought he was kidding at first. As we finished our meal, we left our spouses in the living room and stepped into his man cave. A talented woodworker, my friend showed me many of his creations, and then somehow our conversation drifted toward gender and sex roles: “When I get time, maybe when I retire,” he said, “I want … Read More
Why I Believe Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life, Part 1 of 3
When I was a sophomore at Lancaster Bible College, I had the privilege of taking a philosophy class from the school’s most gifted and popular professor at the time. For reasons I won’t go into here, I’ll just call him Bob. Bob had a gift for making difficult subjects like epistemology (the study of how we know stuff) clear and … Read More
What I Learned from John Stott, Part 2 of 3
Being at an evangelical seminary can be confusing. You’re constantly sorting through difficult exegetical and theological questions, as well as learning different denominational and historic understandings of various doctrines. The experience can leave you either, on the one hand, longing for the comfort of dogma (i.e. “Maybe I should become a Roman Catholic…”) or, on the other hand, desiring greater … Read More
How Bart Ehrman’s “Misquoting Jesus” Misses the Point, 2 of 2
Bart Ehrman is a first-rate scholar but he misses the point and it seems he should know better. At Princeton Theological Seminary, he was the student of Bruce Metzger (1914-2007), one of the highest regarded scholars of Greek, New Testament, and New Testament Textual Criticism in the world. In fact, Erhman dedicates Misquoting Jesus to Metzger and even helped update the … Read More
A Critique of Gothardism, Part 2 of 5
As an exercise in discernment, this series critiques the teaching associated with the Institute in Basic Life Principles (IBLP), Advanced Training Institute International (ATI), and specifically their founder, Bill Gothard. His teaching includes a myriad of distortions and this post addresses examples under the first two of six main areas (listed at the end of Part 1): the use of … Read More
How to Avoid Toxic Leaders and Churches
I was in Barnes & Noble the other day and picked up a copy of Time magazine’s commemorative issue on cult killers. Charles Manson was the cover poster child as you might expect. As I leafed through the periodical, however, the images that caught my attention the most were those of the Jonestown Massacre. “Of the nearly 1,000 church members … Read More