For All It's Worth

"For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sin."  - Colossians 1:13-14 "Due to the sin in the Garden, two kingdoms stand antithetically to one another, a contention that will pit God against all that is in opposition to his rule.  But note that this antithesis is not between earth and heaven, the body and the soul, or the visible and the invisible, but between God and Satan, between God and the kingdom of sin and death"  - Michael D. Williams, Far as the Curse is Found: The Covenant Story of Redemp tion (69). In thinking a little bit more about evil in the world and our response to it, I wanted to look at the larger picture of evil in a biblical sense with respect to God's kingdom.  First, we see in Colossians in Paul's prayer that it is the Father who has rescued us from the dominion of darkness.  This dominion of darkness is the rule and reign ...

Recently I have been re-reading N.T. Wright's excellent work entitled Evil and the Justice of God.  Wright has written a number of books for the larger public in the past five years that has dealt carefully and biblically with issues such as christian character, the resurrection, the christian life.  This book, however, focuses not on the philosophical questions regarding the problem of evil and its consequential questions concerning the nature of God, but focuses more acutely on the matter of evil in the world, how the bible deals with evil, and finally what we should do about it.  In the opening chapter of his book, Wright says, "The Christian belief, growing out of its Jewish roots, is that the God who made the world remains passionately and compassionately involved with it....No: for the Christian, the problem (evil) is how to understand and celebrate the goodness and God-givenness of creation and, at the same time, understand and face up to the reality and seriousnes...

I have just read through a book by John MacArthur entitled T he Jesus You Can't Ign ore. MacArthur's focus is to look at the way Jesus primarily dealt with the professional scribes, religious people, and "self-righteous religious peddlers of plastic piety" (1). As he gets into the book, MacArthur notes that we often softened Jesus' message by only looking at those upon whom he had compassion, while dismissing those whom he confronted with the truth. Part of the benefit of MacArthur's book is that he situates the message of Jesus within the context of Jewish thinking during the time of Jesus. In looking at John 3 and the conversation with Nicodemus, MacArthur notest that "to a typical Pharisee, what Jesus was saying to Nicodemus would likely have come across as highly offensive....Let's face it: the idea that the entire human race is fallen and condemned is simply too harsh for most people's tastes. They would rather believe that most are fund...

Toddlers love books!! Shouldn't we all say that about ourselves? I do believe so. Yet, toddlers (my Rylee included), love to be read to. They enjoy talking about the pictures in the books, sounding out the animal names, etc. When Rylee was born a good friend of the family gave us a large picture book by Richard Scarry. Many of you know Richard Scarry through the anthropomorphic animals riding in silly cars and doing things that normal humans doing (except that one scene where a group of pigs go out looking for some ham). Anyway, I cannot help but love his books also. His book entitled, Richard Scarry's Cars and Trucks form A to Z is a piece of sheer wonder! In this title, all of the animals are riding in cars that best relate to their character and their overall stereotypes. My favorite is the bananamobile. Can you picture a gray bearded monkey in a red baseball cap riding in a banana shaped mobile while eating a banana and tossing the peel casually to the side. Ing...