Award-Winning, Bestselling Christian Author
Christians didn’t start teaching that God expected a 10% tithe of income until the mid-1800s; there are no sermons on tithing before then. Tithing became a fundraising technique after the American government stopped supporting churches with tax …
I DO NOT WANT SOME CHRISTIANS covering my back. I don’t want them coming to my rescue. I don’t want them helping me in a crisis. They will not cover my six. They will run from my attackers. They will hide in a crisis. They are reliably unreliable and …
PEOPLE ROLLED THEIR EYES at me when I suggested we read out loud all 16,000 words from the Gospel of John. I wasn’t sure I liked the idea either. I was sitting in the once-a-year meeting that leaders in my Sunday morning Bible study class have to set …
At God’s command, the prophet Isaiah named one of his sons Maher-shalal-hash-baz. That’s Hebrew for “swift to plunder and quick to spoil,” prediction of what invaders would do to the Jews of Samaria. We can only hope they gave the boy a nickname. …
EXTRA GOSPELS ABOUT JESUS exist. But they’re not in the Bible. For good reason, most Christian scholars say. Take the Gospel of Thomas, probably written about a hundred years after Jesus. At least that’s when scholars of the day started criticizing …
JEWS WEREN’T THE FIRST people on record to pitch the “one God” idea, some scholars say. Egyptians were. At least they are the first with archaeological evidence to back them up. About one hundred years before many Bible experts say Moses led the …
Pharisees weren’t talking about Judas when they asked Jesus’ disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with such scum?” (Matthew 9:10-11 NLT). They were talking about Matthew, the tax collector. Jews considered them collaborators with Rome since taxmen …
OOPS. I forgot to write today’s blog article. It’s pushing 8:30 p.m. as I write this, and the article posts at 6 a.m. I haven’t eaten supper yet. The wife left three hours ago for her job as a night-shift nurse. So it’s just me and Buddy the Dog. And …
GRINDING TREE STUMPS or lying on a beach. That was the vacation question this summer. I chose to grind tree stumps on a stretch of rolling hills where Mom lives, in an Amish-built house on what used to be a Christmas tree farm. It’s not that I’m a …
When Jews of the Exodus returned to their homeland, they didn’t all live in what is now Israel. Three groups lived in what are now parts of the Arab countries of Jordan and Syria. They owned not only the West Bank, which is disputed today by Jordan …
I ADMIT IT. I’ve got some humans in my extended family who could not possibly live far enough away from me. Tell me I’m not alone in this. I just spent a week visiting none of them. Instead, I visited family whose company I could not possibly enjoy …
FUNNY HOW FOLKS can read the same sentence in the Bible and come away with opposite ideas about what to make of it. I got a taste of that last week when someone tripped over a couple of old blog articles I wrote back in 2013 and posted the links in a …
