We Used to Call It ‘Rasslin.’

      There’s real wrestling and there’s fake wrestling.  One is Greco-Roman and the other is TV.  There’s a difference between the two.  The first is slow, tedious, tense and tiring.  It takes controlled emotion and strategy.  It is not something that draws advertisers since the general public is not drawn to its slow action.  The second is fake wrestling, showmanship extraordinaire,…

When He Turned on the Light

       Sometimes I wake in the middle of the night, and I have that feeling of edginess, the edginess of our aloneness.  That is, it is as if the Lord was getting my attention by the inner night the outer night implies within.  Last night was one of those inner moments of darkness when He chose to wake me to experience that inner sense of darkness into which He pours His light.  In this…

Google, CRT and Reality- A brief Critique

       “The basic tenets of critical race theory, or CRT, emerged out of a framework for legal analysis in the late 1970s and early 1980s created by legal scholars Derrick Bell, Kimberlé Crenshaw, and Richard Delgado, among others.  A good example is when, in the 1930s, government officials literally drew lines around areas deemed poor financial risks, often explicitly due to…

When Words Are Weapons      

       For instance, ‘systemic’ is a word with an ulterior motive.  Put the word systemic in front of something and you have an invisibly invented strawman that can’t be proven or disproven.  It is the latest jargon used to incite restlessness and distrust.  Here’s the kicker.  It’s used to accuse, fuse, ruse and re-use, not to correct but infect, to convict. addict and conflict groups of…

Idolatry Spelled Out---The Heart

       We’ve started with a general overview of idolatry.  It needs a bit more detail.  Why not follow the path Jesus takes when He explains His way to live?  Given that we are images of God with a mind, heart and spirit, the Lord Jesus gives us this path to take, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul and strength (Deut.6:5, Mt.22:37).”  Heart, mind, soul and…

The Power Over Idolatry

       Idolatry has many forms.  It is a wandering vagrant begging for a handout, a siren luring the unsuspecting on the reefs of social acceptance, a trophy promising inner fulfillment, a false hope dressed in a lottery ticket, a beard offering the look of masculinity, the diet to be more attractive, the gurus offering inner peace and self-worth. …

The Core Problem

       There is a thread, a theme, a deep concern that traverses Scripture,---idolatry.  It is the gravest of offenses.  Idolatry is misplaced worship.  Worship is to give worth to something.  Idolatry is self-worship as opposed to worship of God.  The first letter in idolatry is I.  I have more worth than God. I consider my worth exceeds that of God.    It starts with the assumption that I know and…