R. You ask a very common question. God can act in any way God wants to save people. After all, God is God! However, the only way to salvation we are told of in Scripture is through belief in Jesus Christ. Jesus himself says, “No one comes to the Father except through me.” (John 14:6).… Read More »
Q. Why are there so many denominations of Christian faiths?
R. A great question. Almost from the beginning, while we as Christians have agreed with each other on the big things (Jesus rose from the dead), we have disagreed about the details (How, exactly does this free us from sin?) This is one of the reasons we have four different Gospels in the canon. Each… Read More »
Q. Why did God make suffering?
R. Read Genesis 1-2 again. You’ll note that the creation God created was not just good, but very good! Animals, humans, plants all coexisted peacefully. God was so close to us he used to walk through the Garden in the cool evening breeze (Gen. 3:8). Suffering is not present in this good creation. Suffering comes as… Read More »
Q. Why do people let teenagers have access to guns and kill so many people?
I wonder… As we live in the aftermath of yet another mass shooting at an American school, I ask for a point of personal privilege this month as we diverge from the questions from Doubting Thomas Sunday 2017. Q. Why do people let teenagers have access to guns and kill so many people? There… Read More »
Q. What is the Holy Trinity?
R. A great question and one appropriate for the month in which we will celebrate Holy Trinity Sunday (May 27). The understanding of God as Trinity exists from the earliest days of the church and their attempt to figure out who Jesus was as the Son of God. There have been many attempts to explain… Read More »
Q. Who is right; science or religion? I’m not implying that I don’t believe, I’ve just gotten confused before.
R. This is a pretty big question. Also, right about what? Most Lutherans believe that science and religion are looking at the same kinds of issues from two different perspectives. The ELCA teaches that: “Science and technology are expressions of the human responsibility to learn and predict, imagine and invent for the sake of… Read More »
Q. Does God believe in us if we believe in him, but don’t go to church all that often?
Not only does God believe in you, God believes in you even before you believed in God. See, God knows you. From the moment God “knit you together in your mother’s womb” (Psalm 139). There is no place you can be that God is not. As the apostle Paul says in Romans 8:38-39, “nothing can… Read More »
Q. Being in healthcare I have been with several people as they drew their last breath. All (more or less) are different. Several stare as if looking. Others smile as greeting. Some cry as mourning. Thus, I often wonder: What happens the moment I die? As a Christian? As a non-Christian? In the twinkling of an eye?
The short answer is, we don’t know exactly what happens when you die. I have seen some of the same things that you mention. Is there something going on there beyond just physical reactions of the body to death? Scripture doesn’t tell us much about that. What scripture points to in both the Hebrew Bible… Read More »
“A sower went out to sow…”
The Parable of the Sower Mark 4 is the first parable that Jesus tells in the Gospel of Mark. The agricultural themes present are ones that the hearers of the day, both Jesus’ audience and the audience of the author of Mark, would have recognized. There are a number of things we could focus on… Read More »
Introduction to the Gospel of Mark
The Gospel of Mark is the shortest of all the gospels. It can be read in about two hours. As such, it is fast paced, like an action movie. You’ll see the word immediately used 27 times in Mark. The underlying word in Greek is used another 15 times but translated differently. Pay attention to… Read More »
