BIBLE ENRICHED SPIRITUAL TRUTHS: June 2019

Friday, 28 June 2019

PCA Sides With the Nashville Statement Over Revoice’s Approach

Evangelicals in favor of traditional marriage debate the place of LGBT identity in the church.

Faced with more proposals addressing LGBT issues than any other topic, the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) last night approved measures to affirm the Nashville Statement and launch its own study committee on sexuality.

The voting extended past midnight as pastors debated how their denomination could best clarify its positions, provide clergy helpful resources, and offer pastoral care for those raising questions around LGBT issues and same-sex attraction.

The decisions at this year’s PCA general assembly in Dallas follow months of controversy surrounding Presbyterian leaders’ involvement in Revoice, a conference featuring the voices of same-sex attracted Christians who affirm traditional beliefs around marriage and sexuality. The inaugural conference was hosted at a PCA church in St. Louis last July. Its second gathering was held earlier this month at another venue.

The Nashville Statement, a 14-point document released by the complementarian Council of Biblical Manhood and Womanhood in 2017, conflicts in part with Revoice’s approach, particularly article 7, which denies that “adopting a homosexual or transgender self-conception is consistent with God’s holy purposes in creation and redemption.” Some participants continue to self-identify as gay or same-sex attracted.

“Most of the Christians I know who describe themselves as ‘gay’ use the word in a similar way that Paul did when he called himself a sinner. They use the word not as a banner or as an identity, but as an honest recognition of their broken state as those affected by original sin,” wrote Christ Presbyterian pastor Scott Sauls, in a 4,700-word blog post urging his denomination against “unnecessary ...

from Christianity Today Magazine https://ift.tt/2YkrtiK

The Bible’s Impact on Human Rights

The ideas of human dignity and respect for all didn’t develop in a vacuum.

The Bible begins with the story of creation. God speaks the universe into existence. Within that story is the account of the creation of humankind. According to the Bible, above and beyond everything else God made, humans are special, his crowning achievement! The Book of Genesis records the moment when God decided to create human beings: “Then God said, ‘Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.’ So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them” (Gen. 1:26–27).

According to the Bible, humans are different because, unlike all the other creatures on the planet, we are created in God’s image. Everyone bears what Christian teaching calls the imago Dei—Latin for “image of God”—and therefore are often referred to as image bearers. For this reason, humans have worth; they have value over and above anything else in creation. When this notion is applied to ethics and human rights, it is revolutionary.

We are all made in the image of God. This is what makes our worth and our dignity inherent and inseparable from who we are, whether governments recognize human rights or not. We do not have rights because we deserve them; we do not have rights because we have earned them; we do not have rights because we are white or black, male or female, American or Chinese. We have rights because each of us is made in the image of God and therefore has inherent worth and dignity.

Yet this truth hasn’t always been self-evident or widely believed. ...

from Christianity Today Magazine https://ift.tt/2FE2SOT

The Bible’s Impact on Human Rights

The ideas of human dignity and respect for all didn’t develop in a vacuum.

Yet this truth hasn’t always been self-evident or widely believed. ...

from Christianity Today Magazine https://ift.tt/2FFV4vR

The ‘First-Century Mark’ Saga from Inside the Room

My reflections after eight years of silence.

When one of the world’s top Greek scholars at a top university spread “first and second century” New Testament manuscripts on top of his office pool table, my colleague and I about fainted.

Surrounded by classical busts, Egyptian funerary masks, and a pile of medieval binder fragments, we stood mesmerized in the office of Dirk Obbink at Christ Church, Oxford. The “First-Century Mark” saga began. It’s still playing out.

Over the last eight years, we learned that much was not as it seemed. There seemed to be a manuscript fragment of a gospel dating to the first decades of the church. Not quite. The manuscript seemed to be for sale. It wasn’t, really. Now the world knows there were four early gospel fragments “for sale,” and at the helm was an esteemed professor, transitioning these days into a sort of Sir Leigh Teabing of Da Vinci Code lore.

Like the Harry Potter “moving staircase” at Hogwarts, filmed across in the Bodley Tower viewable from Obbink’s window, what was to unfold over the next several years would seem illusory for outside scholars and became sensationalized in the press. The sudden appearance of these was dizzying even for the experts and owners, temporary and otherwise.

Scott Carroll and I, the two founding scholars for the Museum of the Bible, were there—we thought—for another research discussion. These were always enjoyable though long visits. As we were about to leave Obbink’s office, he stood and said, “I have something you two might like to see.” He pulled out a manila filing envelope and opened Pandora’s Box. He showed us four papyrus pieces of New Testament Gospels identified as Matthew 3:7–10, ...

from Christianity Today Magazine https://ift.tt/31Yy98M

Let the Women’s World Cup Get Political

When athletes become advocates around hot-button issues, Christians need not retreat.

All the reasons that we love following sporting events become even more enticing when the game is played at the highest level of competition and on a global scale.

This month’s FIFA Women’s World Cup brings the excitement and emotions of tournament play, wrapped up in the paradoxical feeling of watching games in which we act as if everything is at stake for us when in reality, very little truly is.

The US Women's National Soccer Team (USWNT) has taken center stage, advancing into the quarterfinals; three more victories and the USWNT will maintain its title of best women’s soccer team in the world. Even Americans who otherwise don’t follow soccer feel a sense of pride and patriotism watching our team dominate on the field.

The players wearing the American flag on their jerseys also have distinct views about the nation they represent—what they see as the values most important to take a stand for, draw attention to, and speak out about.

Twenty-eight members of the USWNT have joined in a lawsuit arguing that the US Soccer Federation is in violation of the Equal Pay Act, since the women’s team makes a fraction of the men’s team, even though they play more games and have drawn in more viewers in recent years.

Megan Rapinoe, considered the “heart and soul” of the US squad, does not participate in the national anthem, in solidarity with former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick. Additionally, the team has offered their support of LGBT rights, with many of the USWNT players and coaches themselves belonging to LGBT communities.

Overall, the USWNT has not been shy about sharing their views—they follow a long legacy of American athletes who use their platform to address major issues. ...

from Christianity Today Magazine https://ift.tt/322Ng11

Thursday, 27 June 2019

Go Ahead. Hire That Housekeeper.

The Christian case for getting domestic help and doing it well.

It’s summer now, and as often happens with a change of seasons, our family is swept up in a new flurry of activity. That means the physical living space of our home hovers on the verge of neglect. No matter how many tip sheets I read or gadgets I buy, one of the perennial enigmas of modern living for me, and probably most women, is how to keep up with the housework.

In her recent memoir, Women’s Work: A Reckoning with Work and Home, former Los Angeles Times international reporter Megan Stack wrestles with her own expectations of what it means to keep house. Both Stack and her husband, Tom Lasseter, were working in Beijing when they became pregnant with their first child. Stack had planned to quit her work with the Times and write from home once the baby was born while Lasseter continued his career as a foreign correspondent. The only problem was that she hadn’t anticipated the exponentially larger volume of work it would take to run a household with a child. The obvious solution was to get more help, so they hired a full-time ayi who cooked, cleaned, and took care of baby Max.

Stack and Lasseter spent years in China and later India and during those stints abroad always had a least one domestic employee. For Stack, these years were about more than just getting the help she needed for her (eventually two) kids. It was about turning her home into a workplace and “enmesh[ing] myself in a web of women’s work—as worker, employer, and beneficiary, all at the same time. My own work rested on the cornerstone of another woman’s labor,” she writes.

But it wasn’t just trading one woman’s labor for another. The women Stack hired lived in deep poverty, working for pennies on the ...

from Christianity Today Magazine https://ift.tt/2J8DNMS

One-on-One with John Lindell on ‘Soul Set Free’

“There are a lot of people in the church who are trying so hard, but if we don't understand grace, we can't give what we don't have.”

Ed: How did your own experience with God’s grace lead you to write Soul Set Free?

John: I'm a very disciplined and competitive person by nature. When you are that way, you have a tendency to do all of life that way. That was true in the way I was walking with Christ. Couple that with the fact that I was saved in a church that has roots in the Holiness movement, so there was a strong emphasis on doing things: reading your Bible, praying, going to church, do these certain things and don't do these other things.

There’s nothing wrong with these tools for discipleship, but somewhere along the line, the tools for discipleship became the rules for discipleship. When that happens in any person’s life, it becomes burdensome and diminishes joy, which is certainly not God's plan.

When a person understands grace by more than just definition, but truly understands not only what God did but why he did it and how it works, it is very liberating. It was that way for me, a very life changing journey, and so my prayer for this book is that people would experience that freeing of their soul and the liberty that God intends.

Ed: You talk about the story of the prodigal son, but it's not just about the prodigal son; there was another son who was not a prodigal, and he stayed home. He kept the rules, was decent and honorable. Yet didn’t he also need to learn something about grace?

John: That older brother didn't understand grace and his need of grace. There are a lot of people in the church who are trying so hard, but if we don't understand grace, we can't give what we don't have. There are many Christians who struggle to give grace to those who don't know Christ or to those who are far ...

from Christianity Today Magazine https://ift.tt/2ximG5z