Category: Faith Questions

  • “Your ‘amazing grace’ just seems too easy.”

    “Your ‘amazing grace’ just seems too easy.”

    Another standing-room-only day in the life of Christ. A crowd clogged every conceivable entrance of the house while he preached inside. Outside, a cir­cle of friends surveyed the scene. One of them was para­lyzed and needed desperately to be seen by Jesus. So love found a way. Imagine the wonderful com­motion, the delightful mess. Dirt…

  • The Need to Justify

    The Need to Justify

    In Eden, before sin changed everything, Adam and Eve knew only one heart condition. Their hearts were always and only at peace with the Creator. They also were at peace with his creation, and with each other. In absolute terms, everything was right in those relationships. God provided for their every need.

  • A Case Study

    A Case Study

    We read Genesis chapter 1 with jaw-dropping awe, scratching our heads at the intricacy and vastness of our universe and searching for a vocabulary to express our wonder. When words fail us, God provides the words of an inspired writer (Moses) to put creation’s super-miracles into perspective. Like the peal of a cosmic bell, Moses…

  • Predictable Patterns

    Predictable Patterns

    Big storms are common along the Atlantic Seaboard. Old salts call them nor’easters. In 1991, early in the last week of October, a nor’easter named Hurricane Grace skipped along the coast, skirting the Bahamas. By midweek a second cyclonic depression had slipped down the coast from Nova Scotia to join forces with Grace. Sometime on…

  • All the Church Cares About is Money

    All the Church Cares About is Money

    Mary broke her jar open, and along with it her tender spirit. Her perfume and her devotion poured out on Jesus’ head and pooled at his feet, overwhelming the room. He saw to the soul of what she did and was pleased. “She did it to prepare me for burial.”

  • Why Should I Believe the Bible?

    Why Should I Believe the Bible?

    Picture a seed drying on a sun­-baked sidewalk. Jesus tells a story about a farmer casting seed all around, letting it land wherever—in rocks, in weeds, in soil. For now, notice the kernel that lands on a hard, hard path. Birds come along and snatch it away before anything good can happen at all. If…

  • Why is There So Much Pain in the World?

    Why is There So Much Pain in the World?

    One of the “untouchables” of the ancient world is on his knees in front of Jesus. Then he’s face down in the dirt. The man has lep­rosy, a disease that not only dis­figures the sufferer but perhaps even worse, it isolates him from his community and even his own family and friends.

  • Isn’t Religion Discredited by Science?

    Which came first, the chicken or the egg? What makes that question so intriguing is the difficulty of imag­ining either a chicken that didn’t come from an egg or an egg that didn’t come from a chicken. So you come to this rather startling conclusion, once you think about it, that you have to look…