As a gardener, I’m notorious for only planting what can be eaten. My family, however, is fond of pear-less pear trees. They are called “ornamental pears.” They have nice white blossoms, but they have been carefully bred not to produce any fruit. Ornamental fruit trees have become quite popular. So have ornamental Christians.

Our culture is poorer for having segregated some useful ideas into a religious ghetto, isolated from society’s mainstream. One such concept is salvation. For most Westerners, the word “salvation” conjures up images of sweating American preachers in tent revivals. But “salvation” is simply the noun form of the verb “to save.” Continue reading “Salvation is a secular concept”

The originator of “Method acting,” Russian theatrical director Constantin Stanislavsky (1863–1938), taught his actors not to ask, “How should I position my eyebrows, hands, and mouth to express this line?” but rather, “If I had a domineering father, an ambitious wife, and coarse underwear, how would I express this line?” Continue reading “The Stanislavsky Method of Biblical Interpretation”

More than anyone else, I guess, I’m concerned for people who seem to have no motivating force in their lives. They remind me of marionettes without a puppeteer. In the hands of a master, nearly every string of a marionette is taut, ready for action, ready for movement. In the bottom of his box, every string of a marionette is slack, not only unmoving but unready to be moved. People who are empowered by the Holy Spirit seem ready to respond to their master’s slightest motion, without the slightest warning.

It’s good to claim the Bible’s promises, but most of them are conditional: either explicitly conditional, (“If we confess our sins” I John 1:9) or implicitly conditional (“and the peace of God… will guard your hearts” Phil. 4:7)

A Bible promise for which we have not met the conditions is not a Bible promise that applies to us. Continue reading “You are not in the Bible.”