Former evangelical pastor and author Joshua Harris and his wife recently announced their separation. This is sad because separation / divorce are always sad I think. We don’t get into and develop relationships with the hope or expectation that they will erode, degrade, fall apart, or even become hostile, harmful, and damaging. In a perfect
Tag: sin
How Understanding the Gospel Affects One’s View of Homosexuality
I began to respond to a comment my cousin Jeremy made in response to my recent blog “The Surprising Reason I’m Not Celebrating Homosexual Marriage“. He says: Doug, I really like your approach, but it’s hard to draw a line between what the Bible teaches, and what we think it teaches (i.e. our interpretation). You
Worrying About Giving the Appearance of Sin Is Not Biblical
I’ve addressed this before but it has come up again. I think it’s worth revisiting. The idea that Christians should avoid appearing like they might be sinning is (in my impression) a widely held belief among conservative evangelicals. Since this is my background, I was surprised to discover not too long ago that this idea
Problems With Focusing on Sin
I once heard a preacher in a sermon briefly mentioned the corresponding dangers of legalism and license (or sometimes referred to as libertinism). The latter is the fallacy of thinking we have freedom to act any way we choose because of God’s grace and forgiveness. It seems as though this preacher understood legalism to be
Secret Church Review and Problems of Focusing on Sin
Secret Church is an annual event put on by David Platt and his church in Alabama. The event is promoted widely and simulcast to groups meeting across the U.S. and world. Some friends of mine had participated before and organized a viewing locally this year. So I joined them. It was scheduled for a single
Sins
I’ve talked a lot about homosexuality since it is a hot topic in our culture. However, it certainly isn’t the only sin in the Bible, nor even one of the most mentioned. So I decided to go through and review some of the “sin lists” in the new testament1. These lists all sound fairly similar,
Shrewd as Snakes: Holiness vs. Love
I really resonated with a video Dale Fincher recently shared on his blog. I feel like he captures a lot of what I try to communicate on my blog. I don’t believe I was ever really in fundamentalist circles, but I have been in the neo-reformed type of groups Dale mentioned, and most of my
The Appearance of Evil
At the end of church last week, we somehow got onto the topic of not giving the appearance of evil or sin. We didn’t have time to really get into it last week, so we talked about it this week. It seemed like a good topic to discuss. After all, it is biblical, right? Do
The Unforgivable Sin
Recently in church someone asked if there is any sin which God won’t forgive. There is one sin which Jesus said will not be forgiven (Matthew 12:31-32, Mark 3:28-30). The exact sin and meaning of this has been debated. However not long before this, one of the churches I’m a part of read over this