March 2013

Hearing God’s Voice

Leave a Comment / "The Bible" on History Channel, Essential Tenets of the Reformed Faith, Lent, Spiritual Disciplines / By /

Yesterday, in my review of The Bible: Episode One, I mentioned the voice of God as quiet and young-sounding. Noah, Abraham and Moses unmistakably heard God’s voice and distinguished it from their own inner voices. Consequently, they gave great weight to the message they heard. Sarah needed a little convincing—I mean, if your spouse came home and said, “God spoke to me today, and we’re moving to a place he will show us when we get there,” what are you going to say? “Are you feeling all right? Are you having delusions?” It’s just not the sort of thing one […]

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“The Bible”—All About the Promise

Leave a Comment / "The Bible" on History Channel, It All Started in the Garden, Teaching, Theological Reflection / By /

Last night’s opening installment of Mark Burnett and Roma Downey’s The Bible on the History Channel was alternately inspiring and curious. For a skeptic like me, who believes that commercial television has a poor track record of rendering of the Scriptures faithfully, there were many pleasant surprises in this production. A few missteps, too, but all in all I give it a positive rating while observing with interest some of the editorial choices. It is the making of those choices that interests me as a Christian educator and Presbyterian teaching pastor. If I were to design a curriculum to unveil

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“The Bible” in Ten Hours

Leave a Comment / It All Started in the Garden, Lent, Teaching / By /

As an educator, sometimes curriculum writer, Bible teacher, and Presbyterian pastor, I am always on the lookout for new ways to bring the Story alive. “Bringing the Word to Life” is more than a blog title, it is my calling and life purpose. So when I heard that Survivor producer Mark Burnett and “angel” Roma Downey were releasing a five-episode television miniseries The Bible, gratitude and skepticism vied for the upper hand. Do I dare hope that we might get a truly authentic version of the Bible’s story on the History Channel? Let me declare my skepticism openly at the

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Is “The Right to Marry” the Real Question?

Leave a Comment / Marriage Definition, PCUSA / By /

Thesis promoted by the President of the United States: Same-sex couples should enjoy the same rights as heterosexual couples, and therefore, should be given the constitutional right to marry. What follows sounds like boiler-plate language shared with Presbyterians who have engaged in this debate for several years. The president himself said, in his 2nd Inaugural Address of all occasions, that everyone should have the right to marry the person they love. This argument, if it can be called that, is as wrong for the American people as it is for Presbyterians who believe the Scripture is the only rule of

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