In the spring of 2020, early in the COVID pandemic, most United Methodist churches temporarily suspended in-person worship services. On the first Sunday of the suspension, I decided to worship online with a large, out of state United Methodist congregation….
God is in the river
Recently my wife and I flew to North Carolina to attend the memorial service of our dear friend and former missionary colleague Eugene Ruble. Gene and Peggy served in Indonesia for many of the years we also were there as…
Did God protect Donald Trump?
Immediately after the horrific assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump, some people of faith began claiming God protected him. For example, Franklin Graham unequivocally pronounced, “God spared his life.” But that popular affirmation raises difficult questions, which even Graham…
A Matrix Thanksgiving: The red pill, the blue pill or… ?
“We’re thankful God protected us.” When I was in seminary in the early 1990s, Mount Pinatubo erupted, devastating Luzon, the largest and most populated island in the Philippines. In the 1980s, I twice had served as a summer missionary on…
Lessons from Birth of a Nation (the second one)
A few years ago a controversial movie with an even more controversial title was released about the life of Nat Turner, a 19th century Black preacher who led a slave revolt in Virginia. Birth of a Nation was an ironic…
Pew study offers some surprising insights to American views on suffering, salvation, heaven and hell
New research on American beliefs about some of faith’s hardest questions highlights both the nation’s biblical illiteracy and the chasm between what various Christian traditions teach. And it holds a few surprises about how people in the pew actually believe…
What if God is bigger than ‘omnipotent’?
“God is not omnipotent. There. I’ve said it.” I haven’t published the book yet, but my manuscript, titled The Power of the God Who Can’t: God Always Does Everything God Can Do, begins with those words. When the late Frank Tupper said…
Bouncing Into Graceland: Paul Simon, Frank Tupper, Southern Seminary and a ‘Scandalous Providence’
Frank Tupper’s view of providence is unflinchingly honest. We survive our personal Gethsemanes, not because we experience miraculous rescue, but because we are not alone: “Jesus has already gone through Gethsemane, a Gethsemane that we will never comprehend, and he stands with us in ours.”
Who will save your soul?
You know what they say: “Be careful what you wish for!” Truer words were perhaps never spoken when it comes to today’s Hebrew text from the book of Job. Today is week three of a four week series called, “Losing…