Christianity was originally never understood as a set of teachings that one took on. Christianity was a power that took you up. It completely turned you inside out, transformed you from the inside. The classic example is the conversion of Paul. Paul...
Conversion is a radical change of life. And in its early days, Christianity grew through conversions. It spread so rapidly that it changed a hostile society completely. What does it mean to become a Christian? By looking at the conversions in Acts, w...
Christianity was born into a culture that was every bit as resistant and unsympathetic to its claims as ours is. So how did its message come into the lives of people and actually change them? In Acts, we have more case studies of conversion than any...
The biggest problem people have in believing in God is probably the problem of evil and suffering. In the Greek imagination, the voyage was a metaphor for your life’s journey, and a storm was a metaphor for the evil and suffering and tragedies that...
Christianity was born into a society hostile to its claims. And the claim that was most revolting to that society is also what our society sees as the most repugnant: the shocking claim that salvation is found in no one else. It’s critical to realize...
The culture in which Christianity was born was every bit as skeptical of the claims of Christianity as ours is. But the case for Christianity was made so strongly that skeptical people believed in numbers so great that it changed the entire Roman cul...
It’s a simple fact that in the Greco-Roman world, the claims of Christianity were found every bit as implausible, if not more, than people find them now. So why did so many people believe? Fortunately, we have a case study in Theophilus. How does a...
When the Jewish exiles got to Babylon, they found a huge city—hostile, big, brutal—and it was filled with other exiles, with different people groups and radically different views. Our culture is not so different. Liberals feel our country is so conse...
We’re not at home. We live in a world that doesn’t sustain or support the deepest needs of our hearts. Martin Heidegger (a fascist sympathizer) and Karl Marx (the father of Communism) were very different, prominent thinkers; yet, they both agreed tha...
In a culture where people really don’t know who they are and what life’s about—in a fragmented culture like ours—the fastest way to still feel good about ourselves is romance. It’s the ultimate philosophical narcotic. “I don’t know what life is abou...
In a fragmented culture like ours, identity formation is a challenge. We decide our own goals and standards, and we get our sense of worth from whether we can achieve them. Jeremiah shows us that there’s something profoundly disordered and sick about...
We live in a fragmented culture. There’s no consensus about the big questions of what’s right and wrong and true. Jeremiah is a prophet in this same situation—he lived and wrote in a fragmented culture. One of the challenges of a fragmented culture...
Jesus Christ says not just “I was resurrected,” but “I am the resurrection.” Present tense. He comes after his resurrection with his arms full of newness. I don’t know why we get into gift-giving at Christmas—I think we ought to be getting into it a...
We’ve been looking at the life of Jesus and we come now to the risen Jesus. At the end of the gospel of Luke, the risen Jesus does four things that change the lives of his disciples forever. And because he’s the risen Jesus, he can do the very same t...
The night Jesus was betrayed has a theme: darkness, night. Right in the middle of the passage, Jesus makes an odd statement: “But this is your hour—when darkness reigns.” What that must mean is the physical darkness is a representation of something d...
