When It’s Hard to Believe That God is With You

The people who need the most to hear the news of Immanuel – that God is with them – are the people who have the least reason to believe that he is. When you live in relative comfort, it’s easy to believe in Immanuel. God is with us? Well, of course he is. The...

The Myth of the Rugged Individual

Do you know who invented the light bulb? If you said Thomas Edison, then you are only partially correct. The real story is more complicated. Other inventors had been making various forms of incandescent light bulbs for more than 80 years before Edison started working...

Is the New Testament More Important Than the Old?

Imagine that you and a friend decide to go see a movie, but you misread the schedule and arrive an hour into the film. Would you still go in and watch the last half of the movie? Of course not. No one jumps into the middle of a movie and expects to understand what is...

What the Bible Really Says about Slavery

It is almost universally accepted that the Bible stops short of outright condemnation of slavery and can even be considered to be somewhat accepting of it, even though Christians today almost universally accept that slavery is an intolerable evil. For example,...