Archive for category: Musings

Jesus was not spared the temptation to become all-powerful. 

Tim Alberta starts his thought-provoking book The Kingdom, The Power, and the Glory, by quoting the following words recorded in Luke 4:5-8 (KJ21):

And the devil, taking Him up into a high mountain, showed unto Him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time.

And the devil said unto Him, “All this power will I give Thee, and the glory of them: for this has been delivered unto me, and to whomsoever I will, I give it. If thou therefore wilt worship me, all shall be thine.”

And Jesus answered and said unto him, ‘Get thee behind me, Satan! For it is written: “Thou shall worship the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve.’”

These words should not be interpreted as Jesus ruling out the exercise of power. He only rejected the type of power that Satan offered to him. At the end of this Musing, you will read about the type of “power” that Jesus taught and lived out. But it will take us a while to get there. I start by reflecting on the type of “power” that is rampant in our tribalistic culture. 

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In the past 25 years, 40 million persons in America (15% of the USA population) who self-identify as “Evangelicals” have left the institutional church. Why is that? And is there a way to “bring them back?” In in their excellent book The Great Dechurching, Jim Davis and Michael Graham, with Ryan P Burge, wrestle with these challenging questions.

In this relatively brief Musing, I cannot adequately address the plethora of helpful insights, backed-up by much data, that is presented in this very informative book. Therefore, what follows will focus primarily  on my understanding of the authors’ reflections on “Belief,” “Belonging” and “Behavior.”

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My desire to understand the truth about all aspects of our world is insatiable. After 40 years of serving as a teacher and academic administrator at four Christian liberal arts colleges, I formulated a description of higher education at its best in just three words: “Conversations Seeking Truth.”

But the goal of uncovering the truth about any given contentious issue has fallen on hard times because of a strong tendency to gravitate toward one of two unacceptable extremes: relativism and tribalism.

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Numerous Christian churches, and their denominations, are being torn apart by an inability to orchestrate respectful conversations among members who strongly disagree regarding human sexuality issues. This is especially true for the issue of same-sex marriage, where the major disagreement is between those who hold to a “traditional” view of marriage (God intends for marriage to be reserved for a man and a woman) and a “non-traditional” view (God will bless a same-sex marriage where the partners make a covenant commitment to love each other for a lifetime).

I will now point my readers to a splendid example of how one church, Covenant Christian Reformed Church (CCRC) in Sioux Center, Iowa, under the leadership of their Senior Pastor, Joel Kok, has modeled a redemptive path in the midst of this current vitriol. My hope and prayer is that this story will inspire many other Christian churches, and their denominations, to replicate the redemptive approach exemplified at CCRC.

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In his compelling book The Last Politician, Franklin Foer asserts that “Politics is … an ethos that requires tolerance of competing truths” (pp. 3-4). He portrays President Biden as tolerant of “competing truths,” which leads to Biden resorting to “old-fashioned politics: deal-making andcompromise.”

Since the words “deal-making and compromise” have fallen on hard times. I will attempt to explain how I believe President Biden is using these words as an expression of his tolerance of competing truths.

I don’t believe that the words “competing truths” mean that here are “alternative facts” about a given issue or situation; a non-sensical idea perpetrated by Kellyanne Conway. There is only “one truth” about the issue or situation at hand. To be sure, only an all-knowing God has a complete grasp of that truth. And the fact that I am not God presents a considerable challenge.

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