Sins We Blame on Others
June 26, 2008
My friend Ben Reaoch, a pastor in Pittsburgh who frequently attends our church planter network meetings, has a challenging and convicting post on the Desiring God blog, listing 12 sins that we regularly blame on others. Here are the first two; read all twelve, and ask God to search your heart:
1) Anger
I wouldn’t lose my temper if my co-workers were easier to get along with, or if my kids behaved better, or if my spouse were more considerate.
2) Impatience
I would be a very patient person if it weren’t for traffic jams and long lines in the grocery store. If I didn’t have so many things to do, and if the people around me weren’t so slow, I would never become impatient!
Genocide and Forgiveness
April 11, 2008
Fourteen years ago, the genocide in Rwanda was at its height. See this link for a fascinating account – in the New York Times of all places – of the impact of the Gospel on reconciliation and forgiveness between perpetrators and relatives of victims. Here’s an excerpt: Words spoken by Jean Baptiste Ntakirutimana to the man who murdered his mother:
By the time he started explaining how he killed her I partly lost consciousness. I prayed to God to give me His spirit to revive me and give me more strength to continue, as I felt it was His mission I was on. Miraculously I felt warmth from my head to my feet, I felt like a big rock melting from my chest and my head. I felt very refreshed, cleaned up my tears and carried on the conversation tremendously relieved from my whole being. I then told him that I have personally been forgiven all my wrong from God and that it is in the same spirit that I was coming to him offering him pardon myself. Then it was like a huge veil off his face he started smiling with a lot of words of gratitude. He started holding my hands and telling me many other things I couldn’t expect about himself and the reality around the genocide. He agreed to go and see other people for whose family members he killed.”
Thanks be to God for His inexpressible gift!
The Reason for God
March 7, 2008
A review of The Reason for God by Tim Keller
Have you ever heard statements like these?
- “How could there be just one true faith? It’s arrogant to say your religion is superior. . . . Surely all religions are equally good and valid for . . . their particular followers.”
- “I won’t believe in a God who allows suffering.”
- “The Christians I know don’t seem to have the freedom to think for themselves. I believe each individual must determine truth for him- or herself.”
- “There are so many people who are not religious at all who are more kind and even more moral than many of the Christians I know.”
- “I have . . . a problem with the doctrine of hell. The only god that is believable to me is a God of love.”
- “My scientific training makes it difficult if not impossible to accept the teachings of Christianity.”
- “Much of the Bible’s teaching is historically inaccurate.” “My biggest problem with the Bible is that it is culturally obsolete. Much of the Bible’s teaching (for example, about women) is socially regressive.”
How do you respond? Are there good answers to such questions? And once you’ve tried to answer such questions, how do you move the conversation away from these peripheral issues and to the Gospel itself?
Tim Keller has been a pastor in Manhattan for almost twenty years. As he reaches out to unbelievers and hosts Q and A periods after sermons, he hears such statements and questions again and again. In a new book, The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism, Keller answers these questions, and then presents Christ as compellingly beautiful and the Gospel as rationally coherent. Read more
