The Doctor's Call

How to read your Bible . . . what you don't read your Bible?!?!? Look in the  content section at the front of a Bible and find the Gospel of John. Read one chapter each day until you get to the end of the Bible, after the book of Revelation and before the maps. Then go to the book of Genesis and don't stop until the book of Revelation. If you miss a day, that is ok, just pick up where you last read. The reading of the Bible is meant to be enjoyed. Like listening to a friend. 

"What is it that makes Christian faith unique among all the religions of the earth? It is not a big philosophical idea (though we've got some good ones, like the eternal Logos as a better explanation for the intelligibility of the world to human minds than any secular philosophy can offer). It is not a great ethical principle (though we've got some good ones, like the Golden Rule and the Ten Commandments). It's not even a story, for other religions have their mythologies. It  is the fact that our Story, while being every bit as suspenseful and dramatic and satisfying as any fiction, actually happened in History. As Dorothy L. Sayers said, Jesus is the only God with a date in history. As C. S. Lewis put it, Myth became Fact. Nobody knows when Krishna appeared as an avatar of Vishnu. But Jesus was born when Quirinius was governor of Syria. Christmas has its legends, but the birth of Jesus is not one of them. Like the Exodus from Egypt which preceded it and the Resurrect...

I wanted to take some time and write to you about some questions. There is a tension found in the Bible regarding the sovereignty of God and the human ability of choice. In the Bible there are two truths that stay in tension. God is sovereign and He knows the end from the beginning. If this were not true then prophecy and the book of Revelation would just be hopeful guessing. The other truth is that in the Bible men and women are always responsible for their choices, action and decisions. God responds to our choices and prayers in the time and space where we live, and that is very good. We must remember that God is not limited by time, space, dimension or anything else. He sees all time as the same, since He is outside of creation. So unlike humans, God is not limited.  Now there are some folks who want to overemphasize one or the other of these truths. The extreme on one side says that our choices do not matter, but that is not what the Bible says. Our choices always matter,...