While the mainstream media often portray North American evangelicals as easily-led sheep blindly following the most notorious of television preachers, those in the know will recognize that a handful of British authors have been far more influential, including C.S. Lewis, Martyn Lloyd-Jones, John R. W. Stott and James Innell Packer, all of whom have now…
This past year has reminded me of the Book of Ecclesiastes, with its recurring theme of “Meaningless! Meaningless! . . . Everything is meaningless” (1:2). We have been stopped from much of our “chasing after the wind” to reflect. We wrestle with how to live in the time of COVID. Frustration Early on we were…
Remember the song “Tradition!” from the Fiddler on the Roof? Tevye sings the play’s theme of how to have balance in life in a rapidly changing and threatening world. Tradition gives structure and stability. Tradition forms our identity (being) and direction (doing). Christian Courier is a tradition, and this issue explores other traditions. Tevye says that, “without…
Lament. Lament is an old word we are hearing more. Lament is a prayer that expresses frustration with the world. The most common Biblical Psalms are laments. They address God with poetic depictions of struggles and usually a confession of trust and vow of praise and thanksgiving. They often seem to be written retrospectively, when one is out of the pit.
I had the opportunity to see Keesmaat and Walsh speak on their latest joint effort, Romans Disarmed, last fall. The medium-sized lecture hall at Community Christian Reformed Church in Kitchener was packed, with nearly 100 people in attendance. Every seat was full. People were sitting in the aisle, standing against the walls, in the gymnasium…
In the 1980s, in the midst of the controversies that lead to the formation of the United Reformed Churches, my wife said that it seemed that “these three things remain, faith, hope, and love, but the greatest of these is” truth as I see it. We need to return to 1 Corinthians 13 to see that it is in the context of church life, not marriage, that Paul says,
And as I long for God’s people from all nations to gather peacefully in praise of the Lamb (Rev. 7), I can have a foretaste of that glory by gathering with our newest members from Iran, along with our charter members from the Netherlands and everybody in between. Not just each nation but each individual has “peculiar treasures” that reflect the glory of the Lord.
I tried wrestling once in high school, and that was enough to know it was not for me. I don’t like wrestling, but I do it quite a bit. I wrestle with God. I wrestled on election day in the U.S. I wrestle with understanding my place in the world. We all wrestle.
C.S. Lewis once argued that realistic fiction might actually be the most dangerous genre of literature for Christians, including Christian children. As he pointed out, few children really expect to meet a dragon because of reading fantasy, but many may come to believe that getting rich through hard work is a primary human value after reading certain “realistic” fiction.
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