"Sandy doesn't give me the time of day," said Allison. "I bet she's heard bad stuff about me and that's why she doesn't talk to me." If people aren't warm and cordial to Allison (not her real name), her assumption is that they dislike her. Allison is insecure. We tend to sympathize with insecurity, but do you see the problem here? Allison failed to give Sandy the benefit of a doubt. She assumed Sandy purposefully snubbed her the way a vindictive junior-high girl might. She assumed Sandy listens to gossip. Yet Allison did not tell Sandy Continue Reading
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What You Should Know about God’s Other Emotions
What's the first emotion that comes to mind when you think of God? If you said "love," there's a good reason. 1 John 4:8 says, "Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love." But is it possible to jump too quickly to the "love" part, to the exclusion of God's other feelings? Do we realize he has other feelings? We can sometimes do our Heavenly Father a disservice by seeing him as a jolly grandfather, patting us on the head and filling our pockets with candy, content to send us on our way and forget about the hard work of shaping our characters. The clever Continue Reading
3 Unhelpful Responses to False Prophecy
This article first appeared in The Christian Post. The Church at large is reeling from more and more exposure of sin in the lives of its leaders, whose greed, sexual immorality, abusive behavior, and lust for attention have left many weary and wary. Photo by Mic Narra on Unsplash In the charismatic world, the list of problems includes failed “prophecies” from those claiming to speak for God. It’s no wonder that even many continuationists have become gun-shy about the supernatural. To be clear, by “continuationists” (more commonly, charismatics), I mean those who believe the Holy Continue Reading
Are Egalitarians and Liberal Feminists Basically the Same?
In a recent Bare Marriage article, author and blogger Sheila Gregoire describes how complementarian Matt Chandler moved the goal posts to make egalitarianism sound extreme by putting it on one end of the spectrum, patriarchy at the other end, and complementarianism in the (allegedly reasonable) middle. Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay In truth, male rule (patriarchy) and female rule (gynarchy) occupy extreme ends of the spectrum, with equality between men and women smack dab in the middle. However, since complementarians consistently present their view as the only legitimately Continue Reading