Serving the High Plains
Serving the High Plains
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“Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions.” (Psalm 51:1) This is the first line of King David’s confession of sin after the Bathsheba incident. I’ve mentioned previously that the basis of his hope is the steadfast love of God (as opposed to anything in himself). Now, though, take a look at that last phrase: blot out my transgressions. The Hebrew word there for blotting out is the one you would use for wiping somethi...
Find a way to remember this time. It’s historically unusual. In the span of five short years, we’ve witnessed the beginning of a brand new religious movement, its meteoric rise to national prominence, and it’s abrupt flame-out. Of course, I’m talking about the conspiracy theory called QAnon. Despite some protest to the contrary, QAnon is an undeniably religious phenomenon. Embarrassingly, its ranks were swelled with Evangelical Christians, who would never knowingly adopt a different faith,...
Living in fear of what evil men may do is just as idolatrous as falling down in front of a statue. So what does it say about us when our churches are filled with fearful people? It says we’re not being very honest about our faith. To claim faith in Christ, and then live in fear of something else, indicates that our true object of worship may be other than what we confess on a Sunday morning. If this is confusing, it may help to remember that the word “fear” often appears in our Bibles as a syn...
What do Christians mean when we say that humans are created in the image of God? Ask 10 theologians and you'll get 11 different answers. What does “the image of God” mean in our lives? It can't have anything to do with our physical appearance, since the Bible reveals God as an invisible spirit, without body, parts, or passions, as our Presbyterian friends say. Other things are proposed though, that supposedly separate humanity from the lower animals and reflect something of our divine origin. Is...
Hold on to your hats, Bible readers: There's a huge sense in which the physical boundaries of the biblical Promised Land are not important. Now, in one sense, they mattered greatly because they were the measure of God's faithfulness to his people, to his own promises. At a definite point in the history of Israel, they could see from the writings what God had said he would give them, and then look around at the boundaries of the land they were standing in, and say, “Yep. God did exactly what h...
The whole world waits for the certification of our presidential election. American Christians, even many I respect, are suspended in fear about who will be set over them. This is understandable for the world, but shameful for a believer. For us, it betrays a frightful failure to grasp the importance of the ascension of Jesus Christ to “the right hand of God.” Since we haven’t considered what that means, it becomes nothing more than a statement of abstract faith, with no real ability to save...
“Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions.” — Psalm 51:1 Almost a year had passed since the beginning of his affair with the wife of one of his most valiant soldiers. King David spent that time avoiding the thought of his sin, and manipulating circumstances to cover it up. Maybe it would go away. It, however, did not go away. That's not what our transgressions do. Rather than fade with time, they fester. At last,...
The idea that when Jesus showed up on the Earth, he brought the kingdom of God with him, is oddly controversial, even among Christians who say they've at least skimmed through the New Testament. When it is suggested that the kingdom is here, and that its appointed destiny is to fill the world, it's not uncommon to get these words quoted back in argument: “My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting, that I might not be delivered over t...
The book of Judges is a thrill-ride. It's filled with the stuff of great storytelling: courageous heroes; despicable antagonists; amazing miracles; thrilling acts of valor; love and lust; honor and revenge; and, a faithful God acting in righteousness throughout. It's also a tough read, because, for all the excitement and heroism, it manages to descend from its high points to some disastrous pits, with ugly portraits of human nature. There's no happy ending to be found in Judges. (That will come...
“Pastor, God never instituted a particular form of government in the Bible!” Actually, he did. When God took ownership of the nation of Israel, the form of government that appeared in his law was radically minimal. In fact, it was founded upon individual self-government, in accordance with divine, moral instruction. When that self-government failed, causing actual monetary or physical damage to a neighbor, then there was a system of appeals courts that could hear cases and pronounce ver...
This might make me seem terribly unspiritual, but there’s a point. For years now I have been a fan of the sport of Mixed Martial Arts (MMA). One thing I’ve picked up along the way is that some of the best fighters don’t look very threatening at all. In fact, it’s often the opposite. The clean-cut guy with the “Dad-bod” could snap you in half if he wanted. The fighter with the mean face, tense as a coiled rattler on his way to the cage, may in fact be as tough as he looks. But, oddly, the...
Dad delights the family by bringing home a new board game. Excitement grows as it’s unwrapped. There’s a stack of special cards, some dice, and a strangely decorated spinner wheel. The board is unfolded and Dad puts pieces on some of the spaces. “But, Dad,” says one observant child, “We don’t know how to play this game.” Dad waves a hand. “Don’t worry about that. We’re just going to have fun and play fair.” “Well ... are you going to tell us the rules?” He says, dismissively, “Who needs rules? L...
Have you read the New Testament enough to wonder at how the church depicted there looks so much different from your own? I have. It’s not comfortable. Decades ago, my pastor told me, “If Jesus Christ showed up in our worship service, he would vomit.” I’ve come to believe, to borrow a phrase, that man was not far from the kingdom of God. Read the New Testament and highlight the places that seem to show a local congregation meeting together. Note the instructions that are given to churche...
At the risk of ruining the illusion, I’m going to break the fourth wall and share a secret. It’s my own secret, but I’m not alone in it. That is, just because I’m serving as a pastor, that doesn’t do anything to fill me with special powers or some kind of mutant intellect. Sure, I do my best to study, as the Bible says, to show myself approved. You’re also supposed to do that, though. I strive to pay attention to the world around me, and compare what I see to what the Scripture says I ought to s...
One thing preachers are good at is stating the obvious, about five weeks after everyone has already realized it. Here’s my contribution: If we are not careful, this moment in our history will go down as a period of extreme hopelessness. “Hope” ought to be a great word, but it’s one we don’t really understand. In our current, cultural landscape, “hope” is often seen as an admission that we’ve been defeated, for all practical purposes. We say, “Well, all we can do now is hope.” This is a...
If God is so kind and patient, why does he need to have some innocent man die naked on a cross to forgive our sins? If God is really as loving as you say, why not just forgive sin and be done with it? He wants us to forgive each other freely, right? We don’t get to demand the shedding of blood in exchange for forgiving offenses against us, so how’s God get away with that? A really merciful God would just let these things go, without making anyone die. Maybe you’ve heard such objections, or wo...
Sometimes the best thing to do is walk away. Stop throwing pearls to the swine, as Jesus said. When the arguments have all been had, and everybody’s made their points a million times, maybe a peaceful split is not the worst answer in the world. That was the thinking of the signers of “The Declaration of Independence.” All efforts at reconciliation had failed. It was time to go. They declared their intention to secede from the authority of King George III. Of course, the tyrant branded that...
File this under, “If I had a nickel for every time…” I have stressed that the Bible does not teach the people of God to shut up and do what they’re told, if the civil government is telling them something. Rather, we should be willing to submit ourselves to human authorities, up to the point at which their directives are in opposition to God. (Those are very different stances to take.) In fact, the Bible is filled with stories in which the heroes were the ones offering varied forms of resista...
You’ve probably been confronted with those hypothetical, impossible, moral quandaries that force you into having to choose between two horrific options. Which child would you save? Do you bring the 60-year-old man into the life raft with you, or the 20-year-old, pregnant addict? Or, your bomb shelter can accommodate three more, so which of these five do you invite? As one preacher has pointed out, the people posing these scenarios get really irritated if you say something like, “I’ll get out o...
When the weather is nice, you can live in a house founded on sand. It’s when the rain falls, and the ground trembles, that you are forced to consider whether sand was the best building material. (See the DIY home improvement tips from Jesus in Matthew 7:24-29.) The COVID-19 virus has brought a big storm. What is important to us? Whom do we think has the best shot at saving us? The disturbing thing, for me, is the number of people whose lives have been captured by fear. Bible readers that we a...
In his letter to the pastor and people in the church at Thyatira, Jesus describes himself as, “the Son of God, who has eyes like a flame of fire.” (Revelation 2:18) It’s a strange way to start a letter. You need to know who’s writing to you, Thyatira. He’s the one with blazing eyes. However odd that sounds, it was what they needed to hear. Sometimes the Lord’s people conveniently forget things. We’re pretty good at remembering the comforting, kind things he has done. We sing songs about that st...
You’ve heard the old joke about the dog who loved to chase cars until the day he caught one. This may speak to why God has allowed Christianity to dwindle in the West, if not always in numbers, certainly in influence. If we began to walk in the promises of God, and took hold of that advancing kingdom Christ inaugurated, frankly, we wouldn’t know what to do with it. One of the most glorious passages in the entire Bible is in Daniel, chapter seven, where the prophet writes: “I kept looking in th...
“Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.” I would guess this line is repeated in prayer about a billion times a day, all around the world. It’s repeated by believers, who finally come to the “amen,” and then try to figure out how to live in a world that is inevitably going to get worse and worse. It’s likely that those who have noticed the jagged-edged irony there, have settled on some rectifying idea like this: Well, see, we don’t mean this Earth right here. We mean...
Search online for the definition of tyranny and you’ll have pages of dictionary entries in an instant. Words like “oppressive,” “cruel,” and “unfair” will be littered throughout those definitions. However, another word, one that might surprise us, is also prominent there. That word is “arbitrary.” A tyrannical rule is not only a malicious one, but is fundamentally unpredictable. The random use of force to get his will is the mark of a tyrant. He will have his people walking on eggshells because...
Today, I rise in defense of the idea that God does indeed care who wins the football game. It’s not that God has a favorite team. It’s not that God grants victory to the team that prays the best or has a believer for a coach. Jesus isn’t wearing anyone’s jersey. With all that said, God still cares about wins and losses. The reason they matter is each game involves a whole bunch of people who were made in God’s image. The Bible says that God cares about the smallest details of all of those ima...