Articles

Romans 8:28 “We know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.”

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For churches that take the Bible seriously, doctrine can be dangerous. Where theology is appreciated and taught, the hazard is not vagueness, compromise, or fellowship based on the lowest common denominator; it’s just the opposite. When people begin to take doctrine seriously (which we all ought to), they may also become rigid and demand too much of others—and sometimes even of themselves. In other words, we risk making essential what is actually nonessential.

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Contemporary Western society is filled with a spirit of discontent. Yet we must admit that for many of us, discontentment isn’t a societal problem; it’s personal. Whether it comes from who we are or what we do or don’t have, a lack of contentment gives birth to all manner of vices, from the envy that begrudges what others achieve to the covetousness that desires what others possess.

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Christians are not free from pain in this life. Pop theology may try to tell us that with enough faith, we won’t face heartache or feel crushed by sin and its effects. But the Bible disagrees. The truth is that it is not possible to always live at high tide. The waters inevitably recede, and sometimes we must retreat to the harbor and wait on God to bring the tide back in.

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When the topic of biblical stewardship and finances comes up, what is one guiding principle that quickly comes to mind? The most common answer is almost certainly tithe. And yet, for a word that is so common in the language of church life, there’s a good deal of misunderstanding about what it means. So let’s clear up some of the confusion by looking at what the Bible teaches about tithing and the Christian’s relationship to it.

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Many in the church today feel marginalized by the wider world. Being a Christian often doesn’t have the same cultural capital it once did, and antagonism—even hostility—toward Christianity often puts us on the defensive.

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By all accounts, the Cleveland Orchestra is one of the finest symphony orchestras in America—indeed, even in the world. Founded in 1918, the orchestra’s music has amazed listeners and impressed the toughest critics across the globe for over a century.

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Talk of the devil or demons inevitably evokes images and ideas from popular culture and folk religion. Whether the mention of Satan conjures an image of a red, cartoonish, pitchfork-wielding monstrosity or a good-looking, smooth-talking deal maker, we all have preconceptions about him.

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What does it look like to become a Christian? For some, it’s easy to answer this question by reflecting on their personal experience of salvation—something every believer should do for encouragement from time to time. But others don’t have a frame of reference that allows them to answer with any real sense of confidence.

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Refusing to eat the special diet assigned to them seems a strange place for Daniel and his fellow young Jewish exiles to draw a line. But in the Old Testament, one of the distinguishing features of God’s people was the rules they followed about what they would and would not eat and drink. Dietary choice for God’s people was not just an external manifestation of nothing much; rather, it was an external outworking of their deeply held convictions about what it meant to belong to God.

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