When I was kid, I learned all about Jesus’ miracles from boards covered in flannel. An old Egyptian woman named Anna would use tiny—also flannel—cutouts of biblical characters to painstakingly illustrate the story of Jesus raising Lazarus, walking on water, or feeding the five thousand. This was great because watching Anna stick the fuzzy characters to blue board taught me the basic stories of my faith. The unfortunate side effect was that after a while, […]
So, sexual attraction is a powerful force. If you are like me, you grew up in the church being told this, and that as a result, sexual lust was to be avoided like the plague and feared as dangerous as an inescapable labyrinth. And there are many who can testify to the powerful vice-grip that lust can be. However, I was also raised that physical attraction is good. It is celebrated in the Songs of […]
Welcome to part 2 of a look at the blogs that make up our blogroll at the bottom of this site. You can check out part 1 here. (The Two Cities has not received any financial considerations from the authors of these blogs, though donations are always accepted). The objective here is simply to point out some resources you might enjoy or find beneficial. In no particular order: Ben Witherington (www.patheos.com/blogs/bibleandculture/)–Witherington is Amos Professor of […]
What I want to discuss here is controversial. Additionally, what I want to address is not novel. Here is the thought I’d like to ‘think aloud,’ so to speak, in the provocative world of the blogosphere: Is 1 Corinthians 14:33b-36 original? I should say up front that my focus is not on Complementarianism vs. Egalitarianism per se. There are Egalitarians and Complementarians who take 1 Cor 14.33b-36 to be original, yet each have different interpretations about […]
The story of Noah and his ark is one that will never lose its ability to captivate young minds. When I was a child, I regularly reenacted the scene in our bathtub with plastic figures (unbeknownst to my parents, who were paying the water bill) and shared the story with my friends. But then something terrible happened: we all grew up. Some simply drifted away from the congregation, consigning the fanciful tale to the naïveté of their […]
What’s So Great about the Church? Opinions about the nature or the need of the church abound. You may have heard someone say that the church is only one generation away from extinction. I suppose what is meant is that in a generation, it is possible for the church or a denomination to abandon Christ and his teachings. This is not a fictitious threat. If you look at the letters written to the churches in […]
I have always found the spiritual life intimidating at best. How do I ascend to those vast heights of knowing God when I live, not exactly in the Valley of the Shadow, but at least on the Plain of the Ordinary? I am often rendered immobile in my spiritual walk by a haunting complex which does its best to convince me that holiness and knowing God are out of my reach because the road to […]
“What is the meaning of life?” The age old question, if asked of myself, or many a believer, will likely result in a prompt answer along the lines of “the Gospel,” “the worship of God,” or “to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever.” But “What is the purpose of today?” is a question that I don’t always have an answer for. Let me rephrase that- I’ll likely have an answer. The matter is really […]
The image to the left is an artist’s rendering of what Saint Patrick may have looked like. At least that’s what it would seem many people today think. Like any good capitalist society, America has reduced St. Patrick’s Day to it’s most commercially friendly form. Not unlike Christmas, the actual meaning of the holiday is long lost. Similar to Cinco de Mayo, Saint Patty’s Day is a celebration of some of the things a particular […]
There is a town in Northern Uganda named Gulu. To get there from Kampala—Uganda’s capital—our bus traveled about 200 km, cutting through lush tropical jungles and eventually emerging into the dryer terrain surrounding Gulu. After nearly two weeks in Kampala, I thought I knew a lot about Uganda (a very arrogant assumption to begin with), but just a few minutes in Gulu proved me wrong. The city, its people, and its struggles were different. The […]
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