You may be asking, “What is MTD?” MTD stands for “moralistic therapeutic deism.” Sociologist Christian Smith of the University of North Carolina coined the phrase in 2005 to describe the basic religion of many teenagers in America in our day. ((“On ‘Moralistic Therapeutic Deism’ as U.S. Teenagers’ Actual, Tacit, De Facto Religious Faith,” Princeton Theological […]
There are No “Church of Christers,” and One Person is Not “a Church of Christ”
January 20, 2015 by · 3 Comments
We must think and speak in biblical ways (Philippians 4:8; 1 Peter 4:11). One important instance of biblical thinking and speaking is this: We must understand what we mean when we speak of the “church of Christ” (Romans 16:16). It may surprise some to learn that the designation “church of Christ” is not is not […]
Do Bible Topics Get Too Old?
January 7, 2015 by · Leave a Comment
Once in 1893, the great preacher and scholar, J.W. McGarvey, was preaching on baptism. ((McGarvey’s Sermons (Delight: Gospel Light, n.d.), 109-121.)) He began by noting that many people in his audience might think it strange for him to focus on a topic that religious teachers have covered so many times without producing a general consensus. If many preachers […]
Sony’s Leak and God’s Omniscience
December 4, 2014 by · Leave a Comment
In recent days, Sony Pictures’ computer network was hacked, apparently by a group calling itself the “Guardians of Peace.” ((Kim Zetter, “Sony Got Hacked Hard: What We Know and Don’t Know So Far,” Wired, http://www.wired.com/2014/12/sony-hack-what-we-know/ (2014).)) So far, the hackers have leaked about 40 gigabytes of sensitive company data from computers belonging to Sony Pictures, […]
Is it Possible to Love the Sinner and Hate His Sin?
November 19, 2014 by · Leave a Comment
The answer is yes. I have heard it said that it is impossible to love and hate at the same time. ((E.g., Cindy Davis, “Love the Sinner, Hate the Sin,” http://whosoever.org/v6i6/cindy.html)) It may be difficult to feel opposite emotions simultaneously, because we are finite in our emotional capacity. However, it is perfectly possible to intellectually […]
What the Devil Wants Us to Do
September 2, 2014 by · Leave a Comment
Dr. Thomas B. Warren, the great Christian preacher and philosopher, once preached a sermon about the various things that the devil desires for us to do and to become. I have adapted Warren’s remarks here, showing that the devil has a multi-layered plan for us: Initially the devil wants us to be atheists, because he […]
Walmart Hide and Seek
August 15, 2014 by · Leave a Comment
I used to dream of playing hide and seek in a huge store such as Walmart after all its employees went home, but I never wanted to hide in Walmart indefinitely. Last month, a 14-year-old boy did attempt to hide out in Walmart in Corsicana, Texas, and succeeded for a remarkably long time. CNN reports […]
Killer Priests
July 29, 2014 by · Leave a Comment
Hosea is known as the “deathbed prophet,” or the “weeping prophet of the North,” because he prophesied during Israel’s last days prior to Assyrian captivity. Hosea decries many heinous sins of the part of the Israelites, including widespread idol worship and fraudulence. These sins, breaking the covenant yet again, were already resulting in the people […]
A Christian’s View of a “Christian Worldview”
June 14, 2014 by · 2 Comments
I grew up hearing a lot of Bible-based sermons, but nothing about “worldviews”. I became a Christian without knowing that I even had such a thing as a “worldview”. I did not start hearing regularly about the so-called “Christian worldview” until I went to some conferences on education where there were many denominational folks and […]
Have You Been Vaccinated?
April 3, 2014 by · 2 Comments
Russ Douthat, columnist for The New York Times, wrote a column last week in which he sought to explain the social evils that result from the widespread “fading” of Evangelicalism in the Bible Belt and other heavily religious areas. For a while now, it has been a seeming paradox that heavily Evangelical areas have more […]