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In: Bible and Theology, Faith, God's Character, God's love, Suffering

Once a little girl lived with a cult that kept her locked inside, chained to her computer all day, hungry and naked. She couldn’t do any serious study. In fact, she couldn’t do anything but play games online. In her favorite game, she got to be a farmer and grow beautiful fruit trees. She figured out how to work the game so at least some trees were in bloom or ready to harvest at all times. Finally, the police came and freed her from the cult’s hands. After many scary, confusing days, one morning, her greatest dream came true. A farmer took her home toRead More →

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Part One I have little patience for debates over inconsequential matters. Too many debates on the Internet come down to questions with all the relevance of, “How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?” At first blush, the question of whether we need to thank God for everything or in everything seems to be nitpicking about a single word. As I wrote in the previous article, we are called to thank God in every circumstance but not necessarily to thank him for literally everything that happens to us. The difference between the two is far from trivial. There are four pastoral and/orRead More →

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In: Bible and Theology, Faith, God's Character, God's love, Grace, Lament, Legalism, Suffering

By Adam Graham Thankfulness is important.  We recently celebrated Thanksgiving in the United States. We have much to be thankful for, particularly those of us living in the United States. We are clothed, housed, and well-fed, with luxuries that many kings would not dream of. Yet, there’s a trendy teaching that we need to be thankful for all things, including bad things. Yes, if we accept this, if our mothers have passed away, we must thank God that our mothers have died. One source of this teaching is Sarah Young’s popular devotional Jesus Calling. She writes her devotional as if Jesus himself is talking toRead More →

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In: Bible and Theology, Faith, Sin and Holiness, Suffering

Came across this gem while editing an unpublished novel I hadn’t worked on in two years. In context, it was said by a member of an oppressed fantasy race about literal oppression by visible enemies who kept them comfortable, providing them everything but freedom and weapons to defend themselves with, and “culling” folks who made a fuss or when they became worth more dead than alive. Their people did have the ability to run outside of their enemies’ borders and settle in the wilderness, but such freedom would be hard, so they rarely did so long as they were comfortable in their oppression. Most ofRead More →