In Defense of Pharisees - WHAT?!

I'm one of those people that has the urge to read 5 or 6 books at a time, and until recently, it's never been a problem to read the books quickly, and to keep the content in each of them straight.  Over the past few month's, my reading speed has slowed drastically.  I think it's largely because instead of reading books just to read them, I study them, and try to absorb as much of the content as I possibly can.

Right now, I'm reading a book called The Reason for God by Timothy Keller.  I just finished reading chapter 11 - Religion and the Gospel, probably my favorite chapter thus far.  It was a great chapter but there was one thing that does irritate me, and is something I see quite often:  the painting of Pharisees as the religious bad-guys of their day.

Better than a Hallelujah

Last week I was hanging out with a very dear friend of mine before he moved to Virginia for the summer with a group of people from my old church.  We were talking about several things and at one point we started talking about music and lyrics and such.  Most of it was music we listened to as kids and were embarrassed to admit that we may or may not still like these artists a bit!

For the most part we were talking about 90's CCM.  Artists like Micheal W. Smith, Steven Curtis Chapman, and Amy Grant.  I mentioned that Amy Grant has recently come out with another album and single.  The single, I've heard on the radio quite frequently, called "Better than a Hallelujah".  I was talking about how, if you would have asked me a few months ago what I thought of the song, I probably would have said that I whole-heartedly agreed with it.  Now, however, I'm not so sure.

Questions...

I've always been afraid to ask questions unless I was very confident in the subject I was asking about, and knew that the question would not be a "stupid question".  I'm not really sure why that is, but even in Sunday School when I was in early elementary school, the Sunday School teacher would use words like "salvation" and I had no idea what it meant, but felt like I should know, so I didn't ask.  As time went on, especially in matters of the church and theology, if I come across something I don't know what it is, I'm afraid to ask because there's a little voice in my head (Guess who it may be! ;)) that tells me "you've grown up in the church, you should know exactly what that is..."  So, out of fear of seeming stupid or uninformed, if I don't know what something is, it often stays that way.

I am hoping that this will change however. 

Nothing is not Spiritual: A response

Recently, via Twitter, a question was raised: What is spiritual?

One response was "everything is spiritual". I've heard of this concept before, but never in Christian circles, who, I thought the speaker was a part of, so I asked him to clarify for me, and he did so in a blog post shortly after.

I do understand better now what this person meant when he said that everything is spiritual, but I do not agree with him.

First off, when someone says the statement "Everything is Spiritual", in my head, I associate the statement with "Everything is God", or "God is in everything", which can lead to, among other things, nature-worship, mysticism and so on. I now know that is not what was meant.

Prayer-Yes, I'm still wrestling with it.

So, I've blogged on this topic before, and I've really nothing new to say guess, but I'm gonna say it anyway.

I wrote this at church this morning during the alter-call.

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I see and read about the importance and power of prayer all the time, I've experienced the power of prayer, but I still continue to doubt it. What I keep coming back to is this: God is sovereign; nothing I say or do will change what He's going to do, so what's the point of prayer other than conversing? (How ever that may happen...) I can understand the point of telling God of your troubles for the sake of giving it over to Him and be at peace, but as far as intercession, or personal intervention, does it really make a difference?

Christians and Homosexuality

I'm finding that the issue of sexuality is not quite as black and white as some people make it seem. Even as I used to think of it as. I'm not saying that the Bible unclear on the issue, or that the issue of morality or Biblical stances isn't clear, but, how the issues should be treated. Or rather, how the people should be dealt with or treated.

For the record, I believe based on scripture that any sexual acts outside of heterosexual marriage is sinful.

What is not always clear, at least to me, is how we should treat people with, for lack of a better term, deviant sexual behavior. Now, I'm no expert, but I have many many homosexual friends, some are Christian, and some are not. Those that are not Christian, know that I believe there is a difference between homosexual desires and homosexual actions, and that I believe homosexual actions are sinful, yet at the same time, I'm not going to think any less of my friends, or judge them in any way. I like to think that my Christian friends know different. My christian friends know that homosexual behavior is sinful, and that as a sister in Christ, I'm going to hold them to Biblical standards as I would hope they would do the same to me. Fortunately, my gay Christian friends are celibate or are otherwise not giving into homosexual temptations.