Alētheia

  Yesterday I shot myself in the finger with a nail gun.     Yes, it hurt. How could it not? It didn’t go all the way through, but I did feel it hit the bone. Later in the evening as I was downing ibuprofen for the throbbing pain I had pause to reflect on something remotely (and I emphasize remotely) similar. Being as it is Easter weekend, we celebrate the resurrection of Yeshua.    Though my thoughts last night were not so much on the resurrection as they were on his crucifixion I reflected on how I felt by the quick penetration of a nail into my finger and how minuscule that pain was compared with having a nail, the size of a railroad spike going through my wrist, which is what Yeshua would have experienced. And that pain was compounded by the beating he had had previously, and the whipping that left his back in shreds of flesh not to mention the crown of 3” long thorns pressed hard into his head. My pain was fleeting and minuscule. His pain was excruciating a...

  Recently I had a discussion with a friend about the music where I attend worship services. “I could never go there,” she said “without a band or choir it just wouldn’t be entertaining.” I believe persons who make such statements have completely missed the point of attending “church.” While we should be edified and uplifted by our worship, it is not our purpose to be entertained in church. When we are entertained we reduce God to nothing more than an excuse to listen to a performance. God never intended his house to be an entertainment venue. He intended his church to be a place of worship and reverence to him. The New Testament instructs us to gather every Sunday (Acts 20:7) to worship him in prayer ( I Cor. 14:15, Acts 2:42; 12:5), singing songs and psalms and spiritual psalms one to another (Eph. 5:19, Col. 3:16), to remember the death, burial and resurrection of our Savior Jesus Christ by partaking of the Lord’s Supper (I Cor. 11:23-29), to give to the church ((I Cor. 1...

   I was reading a blog post today by a person in the church of Christ who seems to have a difficult time with many of the songs we sing in our worship to God today ( click here for a link to the post in question ). Now I'm not saying every song in our song books (which are written by men and not by God like the Bible is) is Biblically sound, but I do take exception with the author of the post in that he/she seems to be very narrow minded and fairly uneducated when it comes to prose and poetry which is what most hymns are.   For instance the author points out in one of the examples ("Lamb of God" - #176 in Songs of Faith and Praise ) that the words "The humble King they named a fraud And sacrificed the Lamb of God" indicate it was the crowd who did the actual crucifixion of Christ and it was a sacrifice. Now any person who has read the Bible knows Pilate gave Christ over to be crucified and he definitely was not a "sacrifice" from the Jews to God. T...

  As a Christian I am often erroneously criticized as a hate-monger because of my beliefs on subjects such as homosexuality. "How can you call yourself a Christian when you hate homosexuals?" - a question that has been put before me more than once. My simple reply is that I don't hate homosexuals, I hate the sexual act that is homosexuality and as a Christian I love all men and women. In God's eyes any sexual act outside the bonds of marriage between a man and a woman is a sin. So trying to be like Jesus, I hate the sin and love the sinner, be it heterosexual affairs or homosexual affairs.   In fact, you can not be a true Christian and stand idle or condone those who are practicing homosexuals or those who engage in any sexual relation outside the bonds of marriage.   Paul, in the book of Romans, instructs Christians to not condone or approve of those involved in any sinful practice, including homosexuality. In Romans 1:26-27 Paul exposes those who are homosexua...

  I was despaired watching an episode of the Tim Allen comedy Last Man Standing.  This particular episode dealt with the church they attended and how the attendance was falling off because the services weren’t entertaining enough.   It is sad indeed that people feel church is a place to be entertained. I often hear things like “I go to this church because they have a great band,” or “the preacher there is really entertaining.” Somewhere along the way people have decided our purpose for going to church is to be entertained. But what does the Bible say our purpose should be?   Nowhere in the Bible does it state that our worship should be “entertainment.” Isaiah 43:7 tells us we are all created for God’s glory. Further along in verse 21 God says He creates us for the expressed purpose of proclaiming Him to the world. We are told in Philippians 2:12 to work out our salvation in fear and trembling. In James 6:10 the Scriptures say to “Humble yourselves in the sight...

     An aunt of mine posed the following question on her Facebook page – “ if one is not a Christian, how do they RIP?” Her question, in reference to an abundance of people who use that acronym to note the death of someone (especially celebrities), echoed misgivings I’ve had in my own mind when acknowledging deaths. After all, just wanting to go to heaven or wishing someone to go to heaven just isn’t going to make it so. Sadly there is a great epidemic of failure to understand the truth of the Bible in our country and the world today.   The Bible is very specific about what is necessary for men to gain entry into heaven. It takes much more than just being a “nice person.” Consider Matthew 7:13-14 that says “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.”   In other words there will be more...