Before I cover the sections in John Walton’s book, The Lost World of the Israelite Conquest where he discusses (1) how the Bible depicts the Canaanites (i.e. their identity), and (2) how the Mosaic Law relates to the Canaanites (i.e. their fate), I feel it is necessary to lay out my own understanding of the…
In my previous post, I began to address the controversial topic of the Israelites’ conquest of Canaan as depicted in the Book of Joshua, by means of beginning a book review of John Walton’s latest book, The Lost World of the Israelite Conquest. I began by briefly discussing two of Walton’s fundamental points in the…
Mass genocide. Ethnic cleansing. An ancient form of colonialism. Cruel, superstitious, fanatical, barbarous war criminals no different than Nazis. That’s the ancient Israelites and their conquest of Canaan for you, and that’s the God of the Bible for you. How could anyone in their right mind think the God of the Bible to be worthy…
One of the most controversial and contentious issues in churches today has to do with the role of women in leadership roles. I grew up in an Evangelical culture in which all the leadership roles were filled by men, but at the same time there were women exercising “leadership” roles in areas of church life…
A few months ago, when Eugene Peterson, in an interview with Jonathan Merritt, said he would perform a same-sex wedding if two gay members in his congregation asked him to, the Evangelical world thought the world was coming to an end, and Progressives Christians exploded in celebration on social media. Peterson was called a heretic…
In my previous post, I critiqued the recent Evangelical statement known as The Nashville Statement regarding biblical sexuality in general, and homosexuality and transgenderism in particular. My criticism of it came down to basically this: although many of its points did, in fact, reflect the historical Christian position on a number of things, it was…
It was almost two weeks ago that I started seeing Twitter and Facebook posts about something called The Nashville Statement—a 14-point declaration on biblical sexuality by a wide coalition of conservative Evangelical leaders. It was met with choruses of condemnation by various progressive Christian leaders and LGBTQ groups alike, and was labeled as bigoted hate…
Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, and Daniel Dennett have made a killing in their recent media blitz over the past 10-15 years. Nevertheless, I find many of their claims are just a preposterous and baseless as those of Ken Ham, for they too are ultimately biblical literalists who hold to an Enlightenment-based worldview. The…
For most of today, while my son was at school, I worked on writing this “Part 3” of my thoughts related to the Charlottesville tragedy last week. But then, after watching the news tonight, I decided I wasn’t going to use anything I had written. Here’s why. We Don’t Want Healing It occurred to me…
In my previous post, I focused on what I felt was the biggest obstacle we face in this country when it comes to addressing our current racial divisions (not to mention other contentious social issues): we’ve made partisan politics our religion, and we are so intent on defending out ideological turf, that we absolutely refuse…