I have been following Jesus, albeit imperfectly, for about 60 years! It was during the period from about October 1961 to September 1962 that I decided not only that I believed in Jesus, but I was willing to follow him in my life. Since that time in a reformed evangelical church, I’ve come to think […]
There’s a lot of talk about faith deconstruction. Is it dangerous, dishonest and leads to warmed over Buddhism? Or does it release people from toxic religion?
Questioning the faith you have grown up with can be a scary time. For some people it is a relief, but for many it feels like undermining their reason to live. Some people bury the questions and doubts, and hope they’ll go away. But too often, the doubts remain, taking away our peace and making […]
My journey, and maybe your journey too, in understanding the Old Testament and learning to appreciate it and understand the obvious problems.
How does a twenty-first century christian cope with reading the Old Testament, with all its brutality and difficult to believe stories? Should we just grit our teeth and try to believe it’s all good? Or take the easy way out and dismiss it as fairy tales that have passed their use by date? There is […]
A review of “The Exodus” by Richard Elliott Friedman and “Exodus for Normal People” by Peter Enns. Two books shine light on the truth (and legends) of the exodus of Moses and the Israelites from Egypt. Well worth reading.
The second book of the christian Bible, and of the Jewish Tanakh, tells of the second millennium BCE exodus of the Israelites from Egypt and their travel to the Promised Land of Canaan. The Exodus is one of the key events in Jewish religious history and christian belief. But did it actually happen? Did 2 […]
A review of “Has Archaeology Buried the Bible?” by William Dever, and an assessment of how this informs a christian understanding of the Old Testament.
Most christians have been taught to reverence the Bible. This has been especially true of Protestant christianity. The Reformation was built on the doctrine of sola scriptura (by scripture alone). And when conservative christianity felt threatened by evolution, liberal theology and modernist thinking in the 19th century, it developed a statement of “the fundamentals”, one […]
Faith deconstruction and reconstruction What do you do when your faith in the Bible is rocked by difficulties and anomalies you find there? This page looks at some of the difficulties that lead to people questioning the Bible, difficulties that seem to be too pervasive and fundamental to ignore. But these difficulties don’t need to […]