Current Events

RECOMMENDED: Ferguson, Empathy, & Hope by Jefferson Bethke

Kirk E. Miller

Wise words from Jefferson Bethke on the Ferguson situation.

Here are some tweets for context and more wise comments.

Unfortunately, Bethke started getting attacked for that tweet.

For example… (below) Yet Bethke responds with insight into the situation that I wish more within evangelicalism had.

He concludes,

RECOMMENDED: A Decision in Ferguson: How Should Evangelicals Respond? by Ed Stetzer

Kirk E. Miller

Read this article by Ed Stetzer: A Decision in Ferguson: How Should Evangelicals Respond?

Here are some of my thoughts (originally shared via Twitter) that I’d like to share with you.

New York Times, you had one job.

Kirk E. Miller

Last year the New York Times had a major journalist oopsy as they described the Christian holiday of Easter as a celebration of Christ’s “resurrection into heaven.”

Um, no. That doesn’t even make any theological sense. Easter is not the celebration of Christ’s ascension, if that’s what you were trying to describe. We do believe and celebrate the ascension. But we don’t conflate it with the resurrection.

Well, this year, they’ve done it again. Recently they described the Church of the Holy Sepulcher as the place “where many Christians believe that Jesus is buried.”

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J. Gresham Machen’s “Christianity and Liberalism”–Continued Relevance for a Continued Liberalism

Kirk E. Miller 2 Comments

As contemporary Christian continues its debate over homosexuality and (so-called) same sex marriage, my mind keeps drifting back to one of my favorite books of all time, Christianity and Liberalism (originally published in 1923) by J. Gresham Machen, one of my favorite authors of all time. (See my review of this book here.) This ‘Christian’ position in support of same-sex marriage as Christian is merely one manifestation of an ever present liberalism to which Machen’s words are as relevant as the day he originally wrote them.

If you haven’t yet read this book, please do yourself a favor and do so immediately. But in the meantime, allow me to share with you some snippets that I think exemplify this current relevance.

Machen

On standing for and proclaiming the truth.

The type of religion which … shrinks from “controversial” matters, will never stand amid the shocks of life. In the sphere of religion, as in other spheres, the things which men are agreed are apt to be the things that are least worth holding; the really important things are the things about which men will fight. (1-2)

The things that are sometimes thought to be hardest to defend are also the things that are most worth defending. (8)

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