The Gospel Coalition published this article on February 10, 2023.
What exactly is lust? [ . . . ]
Category: Uncategorized (Page 2 of 4)
Christianity Today ran this as a “Speaking Out” opinion column on December 2, 2022.
I have seen this before. [ . . . ]
Fathom Magazine ran a revised version of this essay in their March 2023 issue.
The ball is merely an excuse. [ . . . ]
The Gospel Coalition published a version of this article on September 26, 2022.
Last fall I reached a saturation point of loneliness in ministry. I felt achingly, painfully alone. My body let me know it every time I was at church. For two months I could not focus on sermon prep, though preaching has been my ministry passion since the late 90s. Unable to function in my role, I took an emergency Sabbatical and quietly planned to walk away from the pastorate. [ . . . ]
When we talk about the early 2020s in decades to come, those younger than us may be surprised to learn that death never lost its sting, at least, not in the particulars. “A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic.” Allegedly Joseph Stalin said that, a man who created plenty of tragedies and statistics in his generation. As our generation’s horror—the COVID-19 pandemic—nears its statistic of a million deaths in the United States, this loss en masse has done nothing to inure us to the single serving stories of the end of life.
Yesterday we learned that Roger McGee, Minister of Music at Alexandria First Baptist Church, was released from the equipment keeping his body alive and into the glorious presence of Jesus. Or perhaps he was already there once his brain functioning ceased. I don’t know how it works exactly. We asked the same questions when Silvia Escamilla lay at INOVA Fairfax a month and a half ago on a breathing machine. Silvia, in her mid-30s, was there because of a brain aneurysm. Roger, in his mid-60s, was at a family cookout the Friday before Holy Week and had a choking episode. Now they—by which I mean their spirits, that intangible essence that defines them more than hair color, country of origin, or occupation—are with Jesus. [ . . . ]
Recently I learned about “sloinneadh” (pronounced SLO-ny-ug), the ancient Celtic practice of naming ancestors before battle. According to Alistair Moffat’s The Highland Clans, as the warriors stood in formation with weapons in hand, waiting for the enemy, they would recite their genealogies—I am Ian, son of Donald, son of Malcom, son of Kenneth, etc. In doing so they remembered that they fought not only for themselves on that day but in the shadow of all who had come before them, without whom they would not exist. The thought of my McAlpine, McMillen, Sinclair, and Sutherland forebears naming 20 generations of their own ancestry inspires me beyond expression.
This inspiration, sadly, was paired with deflation as I read Moffat’s book. I learned that much of what we think of as “Scottish” is more commercialized myth based on Sir Walter Scott novels than actual history. It’s unlikely that highlanders actually wore knee-length kilts or assigned particular tartan patterns to particular clans. The clans rarely got along and only occasionally laid down their violent rivalries to fight the English together. The history is a mixed bag. There is treachery and tragedy; noble causes and narcissistic power struggles. In short, they were imperfect people living imperfectly toward one another. Learning the fuller story deromanticized the vision of Scotland I had inhaled growing up in the American South. [ . . . ]
Religion News Service published this article of mine on January 26, 2021. I have shared a preview below. The full article can be found here.
I stepped into the pulpit on Jan. 10 feeling an extraordinary weight. Four days earlier, 11 miles from our church, some of those protesting the certification of the presidential election broke through glass, beat police with American flags and precipitated the first incursion into the U.S. Capitol building since the War of 1812. [ . . . ]
I wrote these articles for United? We Pray in December 2020. Below is the introduction. You can read the full articles here – Part 1, Part 2.
When I started researching teaching about the “curse of Ham,” I thought I was wading into a legitimate theological debate, a back-and-forth of exegetically and hermeneutically credible ideas. The more I studied, the more I realized that this was something entirely different: a story of self-delusion, how we embrace baseless Biblical interpretations—posturing them as objective exegesis—because they help us make sense of our world and ease our consciences. [ . . . ]
Staring into the waves, hearing their hypnotic crashes, I started thinking about my dad—about all the summer vacations we spent at the beach, about his sudden and unexpected death two years ago, about his impermanence against the permanence of the waves.
That’s when the thought crashed into my mind, uninvited: “Your dad is dead and the beach doesn’t care. And the beach will still be here long after you’re dead too.” And thus began my midlife crisis. [ . . . ]
Originally published at Real Clear Politics on July 24, 2020
I don’t know what I was looking for when I started researching my ancestry, but what I found was Merica. [ . . . ]
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