Blog
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Preparing an Abode for God: Christ’s Death as Decontamination
What if the best cultural translation of the concept of atonement is that of cosmic decontamination? And what if the biblical authors – Old Testament and New – wrote from the viewpoint that the world needed to be ritually prepared for…
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Hell Anxiety & Attachment Theory
If the gospel we’ve heard does not soothe our deepest fears of being punished and abandoned, but instead increases those fears, it’s not truly good news. For many, what we’ve been taught about Hell taps into our deepest fears about whether…
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Responding to the Social Justice Statement
John MacArthur, Justin Peters, Voddie Baucham and others have put out The Statement on Social Justice & the Gospel (#SocialJusticeStatement) today. We’re pretty saddened, but not shocked. Here are some thoughts for anyone else that feels like this is crazy. You’re…
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“You Sound Angry”
One of the most common pieces of critical feedback we receive about the show is that we sound angry. The recent Statement on Social Justice and our reactions to it got Nate and Tim into an hours-long discussion on the role…
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Paul’s Ethics of Relinquishing Power and the Letter to Philemon
Paul’s letter to the slavemaster Philemon reveals, if we let it, a window into Paul’s Christian ethics pertaining to power. To Paul, Christians wielding such social power over others must relinquish it in order to re-construe the relationship as one of…
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Power, Privilege and the Status of the Firstborn
The opening book of the Bible works hard to establish the theme typically dubbed the “reversal of primogenitor”. It is an indictment on the cultural assumption that the firstborn deserves supreme power and status. This theme is the seedbed for the…
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Paul, Power and Gender
The church gets Paul’s theology of gender wrong because it ignores his theology pertaining to power. And, the church ignores basic Christian theology of power in part because our mistaken theology of gender.
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Relinquishing Power: A Christian Minister’s Code of Ethics
Jesus said, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. It will not be so among you; but whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant,…
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Sexual Assault and Abuse of Power
Sexual assault almost always constitutes an abuse of some form of power. Typically it is men that assault women, leveraging physical strength and social power to do so. Often status, celebrity and/or a hierarchical power differential is used by the abuser…