Podcast: Gospel in Life

If we look at Jesus Christ, at the case for Jesus being who he said he is, there are five things to see. First, there was a man who claimed to be God. Second, he apparently did miracles. Third, he got the people closest to him to believe he was God. Fourth, after he was…

In John 5, Jesus heals a lame man, and then he begins to teach about himself. He makes some astounding claims, and the people challenge him. “Why should we believe you?”  In the context of Jewish jurisprudence, if a claim was made, you had to have two or three corroborating witnesses. Jesus responds to the…

You can’t talk publicly about Christianity unless at some point you get down to say, “Well, what is it?”  There’s great consensus that 1 Corinthians was written just 20 years after the death of Jesus Christ. So when Paul says he’s summarizing the message the Corinthians heard and believed before this, he’s talking about something…

We all have very strong moral convictions about what we think is right and wrong. And in a pluralistic society, we need to find ways of sharing our beliefs and being honest about who we are in a way that’s respectful and promotes peace. One of the ways we can make for a more civil…

To become a mature society in which we’re able to talk about faith, we also have to be able to talk about doubt. We don’t get much help here from either religious people or secular people. Religious people tend to see doubt as a bad thing. And secular people tend to think perennial doubt is…

We live in a pluralistic society, so we must ask this question: how can people be true to themselves and still get along? No matter who you are, if you care about the social fabric, that’s a huge question to answer.  My goal is to show Christians how they can be part of the solution….

It’s very common for people, even those who want to live the Christian life, to feel they have to check their brains at the door if they’re going to believe. Often, we hear this basic approach to the Bible: the gospels were written down after years of legends, so we don’t really know how much…

We live in a culture of choice. In our individualistic culture, our place and our parents and our social location don’t determine everything that we can do. We have some choices. Choices! What does that mean?  That means we’ve never needed wisdom more than we do now, because wisdom is the ability to make wise…

We live in a culture in which there are more choices than there ever have been. But you can be incredibly good, moral, and knowledgeable and still make pretty stupid choices.  Wisdom is knowing the right thing to do in the 80 percent of choices that the moral rules don’t directly apply to. What you…

There are choices everywhere, just zillions and zillions of choices. And if you don’t make good choices, it can be very destructive. Bad choices blow up on you. Every choice is like a fork in the road, and once you make it, you really can’t go back to where you were.  What does it take…