Craving Answers, Craving God

A common urban myth about Christian origins sometimes gets passed around when people talk about the Bible is that no one can really know what the Bible says since the translations we have now are just translations of older translations. The Bible says that all of scripture is “breathed out” by God, but does this mean that our English translations can equally lay claim to this divine origin?

Chuck and Aaron ta...

The Bible teaches that at the end of this current age, when Jesus returns, God will finally and eternally judge all people. But what is the actual basis of that judgment? What does it have to do with our lives right now? And how can we know where we stand?

For Protestants who believe that salvation is by grace through faith alone, it may come as a surprise that every time the final judgment is described in Scripture, it ...

In Mark 10:15, Jesus says that anyone “who does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it.” This text has been misunderstood in different ways through the years since Jesus has said it. One listener who had grown up with the King James Version (which translates this verse, “whoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, he shall not enter therein.” The word “a...

Justification is one of the most important words in the Bible because it’s one of the most important aspects of humanity. The quest to find a reason for one’s existence - in other words, “to justify” oneself - is irresistible.

In a culture which separates the “secular” from the “sacred”, Christians sometimes reduce justification to be a religious or moral issue: we can not ...

While the Bible acknowledges that anger can sometimes be righteous—specifically when its target is evil and injustice—hatred is generally forbidden. Jesus calls his people to do good to their enemies and love those who hate them.

However, this creates a tension: sometimes God himself is described as hating those who are opposed to him. How can hatred be wrong if God himself hates?

Three Ways to Understand Di...

Unbelievers sometimes critique Christian faith for being subjective—based on unprovable personal opinions. In response, some Christians have tried to argue that their beliefs are actually objective and based on provable evidence. However, both the accusation and the defense stem from a modernist perspective that incorrectly prioritizes "scientific" viewpoints over all others.

This distortion hides the reality that ...

The level of damage a Christian leader’s moral failure causes is almost incalculable. Because much of a pastor’s ministry is explaining God’s Word to his congregation, his words necessarily begin to carry something of a divine weight, and as a result the Christian pastor represents God. The level of trust a congregation must have in its pastor means that the damage caused when a pastor betrays his congregatio...

Finding it difficult to believe in a God who orders the destruction of human life is not a new phenomenon. Many have found it hard to square what the Bible says about God’s love with what it says about His violence.

But if we are intellectually honest, the question shouldn't be whether the God of the Bible conforms to our personal standards of right and wrong—but whether He is the real God. If He is true, the...

Many biblical texts teach that Jesus gives his people “eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand.” But the Bible also warns Christians of the possibility of apostasy, encouraging followers of Jesus to stay on guard against an “evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God.”

How can it be true that Christians cannot fall away and al...

Some Christians worry that their Christianity is only theirs because they grew up in a Christian home. But is this a weakness, or a strength? We’re used to thinking that an idea must be individually chosen to be legitimately one’s own, and this taps into a valuable scriptural assertion–that the human individual either does or doesn’t have a relationship with the God of the universe, and that individual ...

The apocalyptic fears many have surrounding Artificial Intelligence (AI) evoke a dystopian image of robots someday ruling the world and turning humans into their slaves. But on the other hand, the dreams some have of a utopian paradise in which computers have advanced to the point where humans no longer need to work, all problems have been solved by the power of advanced computing, and a sort of millennial golden ...

What does an experience of the Holy Spirit actually look or feel like? Within the Christian tradition, there is often a sharp divide in how this question is answered. Some believe the Holy Spirit frequently acts independently of the Bible, providing direct instructions for specific life situations. Others maintain that the Spirit speaks exclusively through the written Word of Scripture. However, a closer look at the New Testamen...

The word Paradise is used infrequently in the Bible. Jesus tells the thief on the cross that they will be together that day in Paradise, and Paul says in 2 Corinthians that he had a powerful out-of-body (maybe!) experience in Paradise. Paradise is a Persian word describing a cool, relaxing garden in an arid climate, and it looks like Jesus is using this word to describe the intermediate state to promise the thief on the cross ...

Those who have not grieved deeply are often disturbed during the holidays by those who have, since the latter sometimes seem to refuse to participate in the jollity of the season. This notion—that the joy, lights, and merriment of Christmas ought to raise the spirits of those who have lost loved ones—betrays a shallow view of grief, which cannot be alleviated by mere happiness.

In addition, Christmas is frequ...

Everyone knows that it’s not possible for a virgin to get pregnant. Many have considered this impossibility as the open-and-shut reason for disbelieving in the biblical teaching of the virgin birth of Jesus. Others though, have seen this impossibility as the whole point of the story: if God exists, and he has decided to become a human being in order to save the world, then doing something radically impossible to make tha...

This episode is a sister to Episode 126: Israel and Palestine. Many depictions of Muslims in the West picture Islam as a religion of violence, and in a post-9/11 world, it’s certainly not difficult to believe that this is true. But while there is certainly violence in its past, the vast majority of Muslims share with other humans a deep desire for peace and safety.

For Christians, being on guard against this false ...

Many Christian church bodies in the United States have presidents or bishops that function as administrative heads or public faces of that particular church. But none of these quite matches up to the role of the Roman Catholic Pope—the Bishop of Rome. Does not having a single, strong authority open the door for theological and practical innovations in a church? This has not turned out, in practice, to be the case; single...

Many Christian churches avoid talking about biblical election - the teaching that those who are believers have come to faith because God chose them - because it seems exclusive and non-egalitarian. How can God love everyone but only choose some? But in the Bible, the historical foundation of this doctrine is God’s choice of Israel to be his chosen people - not so that they could have a special status but so that they cou...

It might be easy when visiting a church to think that the pastor is in charge. But many times once you get involved in that church and see behind the curtain it becomes apparent that other groups hold the power. What all of these churches have in common, though, is the temptation to find in the world the template for their governance structure. But what the Bible teaches is that the power God gives individuals or groups in the...