Category Archives: Theology

Easter: So Much Bigger Than You Think

Posted on April 3, 2021 by salooper57

At Easter, Christians commemorate the resurrection of Jesus from the dead and celebrate what his rising means for people and for the world. Too often, though, this vast hope has been so closely cropped that the only thing left is an expectation of a soulish celestial existence following death.

This is far too narrow a view, which is theologically unsupported and biblically unsound. Resurrection is not just about getting into heaven. It is the pivotal event in God’s plan to save creation. It is not simply a way for humans to live again after they die, but to live for the first time as God intended: joyously, vigorously, lovingly, justly, unendingly.

In the Bible, resurrection is viewed as the doorway into the age to come. Most people in first century Israel assumed this to be true. What surprised them was the Christian claim that the resurrection had already begun in Jesus. Their astonishing news was not just that people go on living after they die – most everyone in the first century already believed that – but that the new age had arrived when Jesus rose from the dead. Continue reading →

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Getting Saved: An Old-fashioned Idea?

Posted on March 29, 2021 by salooper57

Isn’t that old fashioned? Nowadays, when someone starts talking about being saved, people cringe. Maybe it’s not racist or sexist but it sounds religionist—and that’s just as bad. Who are you to tell me I need to be saved? For that matter, who are you to tell me I’m not already saved? You are being discriminatory and narrow-minded.

Some people are offended by the idea – not to mention the assertion – that they need to be saved. And they’re offended even though they don’t know what it means to be “saved,” aren’t sure they want to be saved, and have no intention of finding out. They do have a vague idea that being saved is about getting into heaven and they have heard that not everyone is going to get in – and that offends them too. It is a cosmic violation of the Fair Housing Act!
Continue reading →

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What Is God Up To?

Posted on March 18, 2021 by salooper57

Romans 8:28 is one of the Bible best-loved verses. “All things work together for good to those who love God…” And yet things frequently don’t seem to work together for good. For example, let’s say you have been saving up for a better car for the last 18 months. The one you have now is unreliable and you finally have enough money to replace it. But before you do, you incur unexpected bills that wipe out all the money you’ve saved and then some. How does that work for good?

And that is nothing compared to what some people experience. How does a cancer diagnosis work for good? A tragic accident? How about a tsunami? The death of a child? The deaths of tens of thousands of children in war and famine? In what sense are any of these things good?

The answer is, they are not and the Bible never says they are. In fact, it says quite the opposite. These things are not good but God is. He is so wise, so capable, and powerful that he can make even bad things like these serve his people’s good. Continue reading →

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Is God an Angry Person?

Posted on March 13, 2021 by salooper57

Is God an angry person? Someone might object that even to ask the question is to denigrate the God whom the Bible declares “is love.” Further, is it not misleading to speak of God as a person? The Bible plainly states that “God is not human.” To refer to the Deity as a “person,” someone might argue, is to use overly human terms.

This second objection needs to be answered before the first can be addressed. Christian theology, unlike pantheism, understands God to be a person; in fact, to be “the” person. Humans, unlike some other created beings, are persons precisely because they were made “in the image of God” with the intention that they should in some sense become like God.

If God is then a person – albeit more than a person – one might further ask if he is an angry person. Indeed, this is precisely what many of the new atheists have asserted about the Christian God. Richard Dawkins, for example, described God as “the most unpleasant character in all of fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser…” He goes on like this with ten more contemptuously descriptive terms.

Before such a verbal onslaught, many of us cry, “Foul.” Dawkins descriptions ignore most of the biblical revelation and misrepresent what is left.
Continue reading →

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“Woke” Culture and a Righteousness of Our Own

Posted on March 9, 2021 by salooper57

In our day as in Paul’s, people try to establish a righteousness of their own. In fact, we live in what might be the most self-righteous moment in western history. So much of the impetus behind the “woke” movement is … Continue reading →

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A Vision for the Church

Posted on March 7, 2021 by salooper57

More than 20 years ago, a group of Lockwood leaders attended a conference together in the Chicago area. One of the keynote speakers urged church leaders to write a vision statement – what their church will look like as it conforms to God’s will for them. We came home and set about working on a vision statement.

Vision statements were all the rage back then. I know a pastor who undertook the same exercise and, when he was done, had a vision of a new church building, with a beautiful fountain adorning the grounds.

We had no vision of what the church building or grounds would look like. We had no vision of staff positions or programming. I’m not saying that God doesn’t give such visions; to some congregations he might but he did not give them to us. Continue reading →

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A God Veiled in Time and Space but Revealed in Christ

Posted on February 21, 2021 by salooper57

Second Time Around Sunday.

First published in the October 19, 2018 issue of Christianity Today.

But why would God want to hide? Is he just waiting to jump from his hiding place in quantum uncertainty and shout, “Surprise!”? Does he want to astonish us by the revelation that he has been here all along, working in our lives and our world, turning evil to good, and making all things serve his incomprehensible purpose?

Perhaps. God, as the Episcopal priest Robert Farrar Capon once pointed out, loves throwing parties: “Creation is not ultimately about religion, or spirituality, or morality, or reconciliation, or any other solemn subject; it’s about God having a good time and just itching to share it.”

Yet there is more to this than God’s love of a good party
Continue reading →

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Telling the Good News: Answering Tough Questions

Posted on February 11, 2021 by salooper57

“Religious people think they are better than everyone else. They are so judgmental. I don’t even want to be around them.”

How do you answer? You go back to Jesus. “I don’t know if you know this, but Jesus felt that way too. The people he liked to hang out with most were the ones religious folks looked down on. When they put them down, Jesus stood up for them.”

Jesus had a lot to say about that too. Check out: Matthew 7:1-6; Mark 2:13-17; Luke 10:3-37 (the story of the Good Samaritan); all of Luke 15; Luke 18:9-14.

Some people say, “You know, I’m just not the religious type.” Whenever someone says that to me, I always respond, “I’m not either.” They can hardly believe it. But then you can go on and say: “And you know what? Jesus wasn’t either.” Then you can tell them about Mark 7:1-13, where Jesus distinguished between religion and knowing and loving God. Religion wasn’t his thing, but he was all about God. You might go on to say that the Bible hardly ever mentions religion – that’s not what it’s all about.

Then you can ask: “What? Did you think Jesus was really religious or something?” You will get their curiosity up. Who knows? That may open the door for further conversations – either with you or with some other person God will send along.
Continue reading →

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Telling the Good News: Right Words, Wrong Life?

Posted on February 9, 2021 by salooper57

It is natural, when we are telling people the good news, to want to make sure we have all the right words – it makes us feel safer. But having the right words won’t help if we’re living the wrong life! A life with God that is authentic and satisfying is what provide opportunities.

I’ll mention three characteristics of that kind of life. (There are of course more.) First, it is genuinely optimistic. This is not a Pollyanna, turn a blind eye, kind of thing. This is a life of hope built on the certainty that God will make things right. God is so much a part of the hopeful life that it is inexplicable apart from him. If your life can be explained without recourse to God, you’re too much like everyone else.

The authentic God-filled life is also a connected life. Connectedness is largely missing in our society. Over the past few decades, social scientists have consistently found “slippages in self-confidence, growing regrets about the past, and declines in virtually every measure of self-reported physical and mental health … regardless of gender, age, marital status, and educational attainment.” This in one of the world’s wealthiest nations.

Studies have found that this unhappiness is rooted in a failure to connect. Here’s how one sociologist summarized it: “Americans over the past several decades became increasingly detached from family and friends …. There is indeed a large body of evidence indicating that social connectedness … has a powerful influence on self-reported health and happiness.”

It was God who said, “It is not good for man to be alone.” We understand that, but we don’t know what to do about it. Jesus does. He offers a connected life. If we are living that life, connected by dozens and dozens of threads to our church family, we will have opportunities to tell others the good news.
Continue reading →

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What Will Be Missing in the Future (According to the Bible)

Posted on February 3, 2021 by salooper57

There are other things that will not make it into God’s future kingdom. Revelation 21 and 22 mentions some of them. One, according to Revelation 21:1, is the sea. How could there be no sea?

It is important to remember that The Revelation belongs to an ancient (now extinct) genre of literature called apocalyptic, for which symbolism is its stock and trade. The symbols in Revelation are drawn largely from the Old Testament, which is the key to understanding them. One example is the sea. John says in verse 1: “And there was no longer any sea.”

This makes sense when we understand that in Old Testament symbolism the sea regularly represents chaos and evil. For example, in the Book of Daniel (which belongs to the same genre), the beasts that devastate the earth arise out of the sea. When John says that there will be no more sea, he is telling us that the source from which chaos and evil arise will be gone. There will be no more turmoil, disorder, and confusion. That is good news.

Look at verse 4: “There will be no more death.” Death is an intruder. It was smuggled into our world, our lives, and even our bodies through Adam’s sin. If you have been around for any time at all, you know The Book of Common Prayer is right: “In the midst of life we are in death.” But it is even worse than that: not only are we in death; death is in us. But through the resurrection of Jesus Christ our ancient enemy has already been defeated and at our resurrection it will be obliterated – expunged from the universe. That is good news! Continue reading →

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