rebelling against low expectations
Intimacy. Love. Covenant. All words that can be used to describe…romance? Well, yes, but that’s not what I’m going to talk about here. I’m going to talk about a relationship that gets painfully neglected in Western churches but which may be the one most important relationship in our entire lives: friendship. Why is friendship so important? Well, for one thing, it’s important because it...
I’m not in a particularly good mood right now. In fact, if I had enough energy I’d probably be throwing stuff. But I don’t. I was doing math all day. I really haven’t had enough sleep the last few nights. And I’m lonely. I’m used to being lonely and tired. I’m used to the sky being grey. The sky’s always grey in New York. But it’s Friday and Friday’s supposed to be a good day. Friday’s the...
This is the final part of a three-part series on coolness and godliness. In this post, John looks at what it means to be cool according to God’s idea. View Part 1 or Part 2. “For to set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God’s law; indeed, it cannot. Those who...
This is the second part of a three-part series on coolness and godliness. In this post, John looks at how being cool according to the world’s standards is detrimental for the Christian. Next week he’ll examine what God thinks about it. In my last article I laid out what being cool is according to the world. I said that when I was a tween I craved it. But now, I’ve started to become it...
This is the first part of a three-part series on coolness and godliness. In this post, John looks at how the world and contemporary culture idolize coolness. Next week he’ll examine why that’s so bad. Cool may be the single hardest word to define. That’s not because we don’t know what it is, but because it’s all around us. We practically breathe it, and what makes it more...
“What is Christmas if there never was a Savior wrapped, in a manger? What is Christmas without Christ?” Kutless asks this in their song, “This is Christmas.” My answer is, The American Christmas. Everyone is celebrating Christmas today (my atheist neighbor, the spiritualist who hangs out downtown, even the Buddhist monastery near the church where I take piano lessons). The...
rebelling against low expectations
