The gospel partakes of what has been called the “scandal of particularity.” This particularity is sometimes embarrassing to Christians who want to be sophisticated and tolerant, but the specificity is essential to the gospel. Christianity is not a vague cosmic optimism, a utopian vision of everyone loving one another, a formula for success and happiness, […]
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Author: Rick Shrader
Ashamed of the Gospel
Ashamed Of The Gospel What the world expects of Christians is that Christians should speak out, loud and clear, in such a way that never a doubt, never the slightest doubt, could rise in the heart of the simplest man. Albert Camus1 The above quote from a well-known unbeliever is an amazing admission of […]
Lying – The Denial of God’s Reality
Truth forever on the scaffold Wrong forever on the throne Yet that scaffold sways the future, and Behind the dim unknown Standeth God within the shadow Keeping watch above His Own ~James Russell Lowell, The Present Crisis Not long ago, in a prophetic way, the Boston Globe reported, “In our culture, it is not […]
Loving The Unlovely
I suspect that many of us, in our quest after holiness, have imagined that being filled with the love of God would flood our consciousness with a kind of contemplative rapture, or a sense of infinite satisfaction. That is why many have developed a ‘holiness’ turned inward instead of outward; mystical instead of practical; self-centered […]
Technological Symbolism Over Substance
Postmodernism’s pragmatic instrumental view of language is why image is everything in our culture. Language is not neutral but a tool by which those in power or in control of the media can manipulate and construct reality.1 Timothy Phillips and Dennis Okholm I believe it was Confucius who said, “When words lose their meaning, people […]
Christmas Missions
Hail the heav’n-born Prince of Peace! Hail the Sun of Righteousness Light and life to all He brings, Ris’n with healing in His wings. Mild He lays His glory by, Born that man no more may die; Born to raise the sons of earth, Born to give them second birth. Hark! the herald angels sing, […]
Those Biblical Oxymora
The Christian optimism is based on the fact that we do not fit in to the world. . . I had been right in feeling all things as odd, for I myself was at once worse and better than all things. The optimist’s pleasure was prosaic, for it dwelt on the naturalness of everything; the […]
Great Is Diana Of The Ephesians
Sirs, ye know that by this craft we have our wealth. Moreover ye see and hear, that not alone at Ephesus, but almost throughout all Asia, this Paul hath persuaded and turned away much people, saying that they be no gods, which are made with hands: So that not only this our craft is in […]
The Middle Road Of Discipleship
Our union with Christ means a separation from the domination of the sin nature because of its crucifixion. But it also means a resurrection to newness of living (Rom. 6:4). Throughout this section not only is death taught but also our resurrection. The truth includes not only the fact of separation from the old but […]
And They Sang A New Song
I saw in my dreams that just as Christian came up to the cross, his burden loosed from his shoulders and fell from his back and began to tumble till it came to the mouth of the sepulcher, where it fell in and I saw it no more. Then was Christian glad and lightsome and […]