Issue
Who Am I?
Vol. 24, No. 5 • Sep/Oct 2015
When you walk into almost any store, you’re immediately overloaded with sights, sounds, smells, and various things to touch. This barrage on your senses is hand-picked for one goal: to make you spend more. Here’s what’s going on. No matter what type of store you walk into’from the Apple store to Wal-Mart’you’ll find all types […]
All Articles (13)
Are You Really in Control?
When you walk into almost any store, you’re immediately overloaded with sights, sounds, smells, and various things to touch. This barrage on your senses is hand-picked for one goal: to make you spend more. Here’s what’s going on. No matter what type of store you walk into’from the Apple store to Wal-Mart’you’ll find all types […]
The Good Shepherd and the Death of Autonomy
Somewhere in the protracted frenzy of my preparation for the California bar exam, one of my professors gave a piece of indelible essay-writing advice: ‘Be a sheep! Don’t try to stand out. Don’t do things your own way. Stay with the herd.’ He meant, almost counterintuitively, that by avoiding the temptation to express my unique […]
How Does God See Me?
A Michigan woman lost her gym membership earlier this year after voicing complaints about the presence of a man in the women’s locker room. The brouhaha ignited over gender’the man used the woman’s locker room because he self-identifies as a woman. Planet Fitness cancelled Yvette Cormier’s membership because she violated the organization’s gender identity nondiscrimination […]
The Bondage of the Imagination
When people first hear about the doctrine of the bondage of the will, it almost always strikes them as a dark teaching. When I myself was first handed some books on predestination in my youth, I remember seeing the supporting verses and thinking, ‘This looks like it is probably true, and if it is, I […]
Scandal and Shame in the Church
Skandalon is a word dear to the first-semester Greek student’it literally means ‘stumbling block.’ To English speakers, scandal connotes a lewd CNN headline or a story from the next church over. Scandal is engrossing and lets us shake our heads in superior disgust. We would never do anything so icky and dumb. The Greek student, […]
Caitlyn Jenner and American Religion
There is a distinctly ‘American Religion’ that transcends creeds and denominational labels, crossing the conservative and liberal divide. It is an American version of the Gnostic heresy, as demonstrated by many noted sociologists of religion, and especially Harold Bloom’s The American Religion: The Emergence of the Post-Christian Nation (Simon & Schuster, 1992). Olympic gold-medalist Bruce […]
Theology
Explore All
50 Difficult Theology Questions Answered in 50 Minutes
Pastor Adriel Sanchez joins producer Aaron Simon to answer some of the most common questions about Christianity.
What Is the Ordo Salutis? Explaining the Reformed View of Salvation
“The basis of our justification isn’t our sanctification, but Christ’s righteousness..” How are Christians saved? The Ordo Salutis, meaning “order of salvation,” describes the order by which Christians receive salvation. Pastor Adriel explains why it serves as a helpful tool in understanding the differences between Protestant and Catholic traditions.
Help! Saved but Still Sinning
Sanctification isn’t effortless. The act of dying to sin implies spiritual battle and life-long war against sin. Living unto righteousness implies costly, intensive labor that daily says “no” to sin and “yes” to Christlikeness. So what do we do when we fail yet again? How can we overcome feelings of failure, defeat, and self-loathing when we sin?
God’s Gift of Rest to You
Nobody really knows what to do with the Sabbath anymore. A frequent point of contention between Jesus and that group of ultra-religious elites was what was lawful or unlawful to do on the Sabbath. Even a quick perusal of the Gospels reveals how common this conflict was. From healing the man with a withered hand […]
