Tulsa Oklahoma (OK)

Silver Spring Maryland (MD)

What The Bible Says Good Samaritan's Penny Pulpit by Pastor Ed Rice

What The Bible Says Good Samaritan's Penny Pulpit by Pastor Ed Rice

They might not even know you're there. When paranoia eclipses our witness, here's what to remember.This piece was adapted from Russell Moore’s newsletter. Subscribe here.Some colleagues and I happened to be meeting in New England this week, so we drove a little bit north to a small village in Vermont called St. Johnsbury, right in the line of the totality of the solar eclipse.Even before the sky darkened, I was mesmerized by the people gathering in the town square, each with a sense of anticipation and excitement over the shared experience. We ended up standing on the front lawn of someone’s house, eating sandwiches while we waited for the sun to hide. The homeowners sat on their stoop and were not only unperturbed by our camping out on their property but seemingly enjoying the chance to welcome people to their place.Several articles this week noted how the eclipse seemed to have the effect of bringing out kindness and connection, almost the way a natural disaster would, except in collective wonder instead of in common suffering or fear. Not only that, some studies are showing that this sort of neighborliness and openness is far more common than we think, eclipsed behind the maelstrom of division we see on social media and on cable news.Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen describe our sense that the country is hopelessly and irreparably divided as “America’s reality distortion machine.” Most people aren’t fringe-right Christian nationalists or fringe-left campus activists. Those fringes, though, are amplified not only by the nature of our media but also by the incentives of politicians to cater to the extremes.A couple weeks ago on my podcast, I asked social psychologist Jonathan Haidt some of the questions I’d received from listeners since the last time we’d talked, one of the ...Continue reading...

Aslan is fictional, but the real Lion of Judah reminds us that we're forgiven.Passing around the corner from the dining room table, I heard one of my sons reading aloud from C. S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. I stopped and listened, knowing how much those Narnia books have meant to me. He was in the middle of a line, speaking fast and about to move on to the next paragraph. I stepped out into his view and said, “Stop there; read it again. It’s the most important sentence in the book.”I don’t know that I would always say it’s the most important sentence in the book; I could make the case for at least a dozen options. But I would say it’s the most important sentence for us right now.Edmund had betrayed his siblings—goaded on by the White Witch and a taste for Turkish delight—and after an entire narrative leading the reader to despise the treasonous brat, Aslan, the lion and rightful ruler of Narnia, appeared and walked a sheepish and defeated Edmund back to the others.“Here is your brother,” he said, “and—there is no need to talk to him about what is past.”When a struggling young Christian comes to see me, it’s rarely because he or she wants to flout the holiness of a biblical ethic, as might have happened at the start of my ministry. Now, these tortured ones are actually trying to do their best in walking with Christ—confessing their sin, struggling with temptation, and seeking to live the life Jesus would have them live.These young Christians often assume that “real” disciples can track their progress in holiness as one does calories on a weight loss app. Instead, they find that (as is the case for everybody) the deeper they go in discipleship, the more they realize how ...Continue reading...

An excerpt from The Sacred Chain: How Understanding Evolution Leads to Deeper Faith.I sat by myself at one end of the boardroom, fidgeting with a few notes on the table in front of me. At the other end were about ten older men in suits and ties peering over their tables, arms crossed. It wouldn’t have been difficult for someone just walking in to determine which end of the room held the power.After my brief opening statement, the rest of our time was set aside for “discussion.” The two-hour meeting felt more like an inquisition. The first questioner hardly let the silence settle after I spoke: “Jim, I went to school with your father. We even went on a mission trip to Mexico together. I’ve known you since you were a kid. What happened to you?”I’ve replayed this scene in my head a hundred times, varying what I say in an attempt to get my accusers to stand up, shake my hand, and say, “Oh, now we see. That makes sense. Sorry for the trouble.” But every time it ends the same way: I have to give up my position as a tenured professor of philosophy and leave the college I’ve served for 17 years.My crime? Believing what 99 percent of those who have a PhD in biology or medicine believe: that human beings evolved over time and share common ancestors with every other life form on the planet. But this was a small Christian college, one of the places where evolutionary theory is deemed incompatible with Christian beliefs. And not just incompatible—evolution is considered dangerous. These men believed that hearing anything positive about evolution would make students doubt the Bible. If you can’t believe the creation account in the very first chapter of the Bible, their thinking goes, then why believe any of it?I do not believe ...Continue reading...

A Christian reconciliation group in Israel and Palestine warned that war would come. Now the war threatens their relevance.Just before sunrise on October 7, 2023, Salim Munayer’s wife, Kay, shook him awake at their apartment in Jerusalem. His cellphone was popping with alerts.“WhatsApp is going crazy,” she said.Munayer reached for his phone. His extended family was anxiously reporting hearing air raid sirens, not uncommon in Israel and often short-lived. But this time, the alarms kept blaring.It didn’t take long to learn what had happened: Hamas militants from Gaza were launching thousands of rockets into Israel. On the ground, they had breached the border and were massacring hundreds of civilians. Munayer had awoken to the bloodiest terrorist attack in his country’s history.He leapt from bed and ran to rouse his sons.Daniel Munayer, Salim’s second oldest, remembers his father storming into his room and shouting, “Daniel, it’s happening,” adding, “It’s war.”Daniel clutched his head. “Oh, Lord have mercy. Lord have mercy.”Salim, 68, is the founder of Musalaha, a faith-based peacebuilding organization that works to restore relationships between Israelis and Palestinians using what it says are biblical principles of reconciliation. Daniel, 32, is the executive director.Founded in 1990, Musalaha is the oldest and most well-known Christian peacemaking organization in Israel and Palestine. Its name means “reconciliation” in Arabic, and for more than three decades its faith-based approach has set it apart from secular peacebuilding groups.Neither of the Munayers was shocked that Hamas attacked Israel, though they never foresaw the sophistication and brutality of a rampage that murdered about 1,200 Israelis or the devastation of Israel’s military response ...Continue reading...

The eclipse is one of many failed apocalyptic expectations. What does Revelation have to say?Next week’s solar eclipse has stoked the flames of end-time speculations, once again whipping doomsday theorists into a frenzy.As the April 8 event will take place primarily over North America, some in the US are anticipating a great Day of Judgment complete with terrorist attacks, biological warfare, and nuclear meltdowns. According to alt-right conspiracy theorists, including some fringe evangelical leaders, this war will usher in a new world order in which Christ will return and America (alongside Israel) will rule the nations.This isn’t the first time apocalyptic predictions were based on impending eclipses—the same thing happened in 2017. But end-of-world interest seems to have increased over the last few years, as things like the COVID-19 pandemic, the war in Ukraine, and the Israel-Hamas conflict has meant nearly every region of the globe has faced some sort of calamity. These and other recent tribulations have led many believers to conclude that the end is near. In fact, a Pew Research Center study found in 2022 that over 60 percent of evangelical Christians in the US believe we are living in the end times.But while some passages in the Bible do link astronomical phenomena with “the end” (Matt. 24:29; Joel 2:31), doomsday prophets fail to explain why their biblical, global, and cosmic calculus often revolves around America. They further neglect the fact that an eclipse happens somewhere on Earth approximately every 18 months—and that these solar events have been associated with imminent doom for thousands of years without consequence.And yet, based on the Book of Revelation, end-time conspiracists are correct in one aspect of their eschatology: We are ...Continue reading...