Theology, opinion, fiction, and the occasional limerick.
One of my favorite missionary stories is from the early Middle Ages. It concerns a monk intent on converting nearby Germanic peoples. He discovered that these people venerated a certain large tree, called “Thor’s Oak”. One fine day our hero walked up to it and, in the sight of the entire village, proceed to chop…
There’s a Saturday Night Live sketch that I saw in 2016 and have never forgotten. I remember commenting at the time to a friend of mine…words to the effect of “if Americans get a hold on what that sketch really means, it will change the political landscape of this country.” I have no idea if…
Today is Brazilian Father’s Day, and so, despite the fact that my father is not Brazilian, it is a sufficiently auspicious occasion, I think, to warrant a rare Sunday post. In the summer between my third and fourth grade, my father accepted the call to a new pastorate, which meant moving to a new town…
If there is one thing that unites our fractured American society today, it is the universal acknowledgement that Jeffrey Epstein was human scum. Upon his arrest, there was great rejoicing across the social and political spectrum, as there was outrage at his “suicide”. And now, with the arrest of his accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell, hope springs…
Several years ago a former student of mine wrote from college to tell me he was reading Romans, and having a hard time following Paul’s sequence of thought. I made an attempt to break it down for him, and this was the result. Introduction There is no better book of the Bible than Romans to…
Of late I’ve had a number of people on social media ask me about the “current situation” in Brazil – and by this they mean either the pandemic or Antifa-like riots, or a combination of both. Then this weekend the internet blew up after John MacArthur’s Grace Community Church announced plans to recommence services, in…
Recently, in one of my largely ill-advised descents into Twitter-land, I came across the following tweet: Which three letters get white Christians more uptight? Which three letters have been most preached against? KKK or BLM? — Brian Dye (@visionnehemiah) July 15, 2020 Now, there’s a lot to unpack here, but the part that got my…
It was somewhere towards the end of 1995, and I was sitting in the dorm room at the Cariri Baptist Seminary in Crato, Brazil, shooting the breeze with my college roommate. Inevitably, our conversation turned towards marriage. My friend, a studious individual with an accomplished academic career ahead of him, said “If I were to…
People and societies act on presuppositions – basic facts that are held to be self-evident and thus immune to questioning. And while presuppositions vary from culture to culture, there seems to be at least one universal, foundational principle in this modern world: that God, if He exists, is not at all interested in what we…
The following story is an embellished retelling of something that actually happened to me. Enjoy! “Never walk the streets of old São Luís alone at night.” This piece of advice, frequently given, came to my mind late one Friday as I walked the streets of old São Luís. Alone. At night. I had been invited…