Serious About Scripture

Mentoring and motivating Christ’s people to live his words

Miss Hockingfield’s Waterloo

James, the youth: Why is Christ not beautiful to some people? Brockton, the older, and wiser: Because without eyes they cannot see. James: You mean such people are incapable of knowing Christ’s beauty? Brockton: Incapable because they are without desire; without desire because they are incapable. Miss Hockingfield’s story explains. It was “Art Museum Day” at Bussby Elementary, and Miss Hockingfield was ecstatic. She was a lover of beauty, an aficionado of all things lovely. It was on this day…

I Go Because I Like the Music: Really?

You could put the entire teaching about church music in the New Testament in a paragraph or two. Add to this teaching those spirited illustrations of corporate singing in heaven displayed in the last book of the Bible, when angels and throngs of people fill the air with thundering six to eight line choruses. When it comes to intentional instruction about music, however, there are really only four passages in the New Testament: Speaking to one another in psalms and…

God Above All Governments

You may disagree, but I believe biblical history and subsequent Christian history demonstrates that radical internal holiness, godly enthusiasm to follow Christ, and courageous truth-inspired faith in him regardless of the societal externals or the diffidence and even hatred of those around us, do more to accomplish the will of God in the world than the seating of any government over the people. The government may or may not support the Christian viewpoint. It did not in New Testament days…

If God is Good, Why Do So Many Bad Things Happen?

My visit to the small apartment of an Asian couple in the Chicago suburbs was disturbing. Here was a man who had innocently gone to work one day, but was caught in the crossfire of a gunfight. He was paralyzed from the neck down. What do you say to a man like that? “If God is all-powerful and is also good, why is there pain in the world?” The question is among the most difficult to answer, especially when we…