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Category: Practical Theology

  • Reflections on Controversy

    Rather than push ahead with other topics, once again it seemed like it might be better to ruminate a bit over the dialogue that I had with Pelagian7 over the weekend. You can read the comment string here if you would like, as it will make sense of the following commentary on it. For starters,…

  • Further Thoughts on the Gospel

    It was inevitable that while reading Michael Horton’s follow up to Christless Christianity, titled The Gospel Driven Life, I would run into more thoughts to enhance the post from yesterday. In it, Horton captures the idea of 1 Corinthians 15 in an more overarching manner and describes it as this: The Good News is that…

  • Idolatry: Pharisees (C)

    [This post is part of the Idolatry series] Of all the musings on idolatry up to this point, this one that hits rather close to home for me personally. So while in some other instances I have been pointing out problems from the outside in, this one comes quite frankly from the inside out. It was while…

  • Idolatry: Pharisees (B)

    [This post is part of the Idolatry series] In following the last entry, we can now try to connect the dots to a potential manifestation of modern day Pharisees. To answer the question that ended the last post, regarding what symbol of our tradition gets functionally worshiped,  my contention here is that for us today, this is…

  • Idolatry: Pharisees (A)

    [This post is part of the Idolatry series] We closed the last idolatry post with a telescopic view of idolatry in both the nation and the Christian church specifically. With this post, we are going to hone in more specifically on the Christian church and an idolatry that generally slips by unnoticed. The next step then following…

  • Idolatry: Slowly Going The Way of the Buffalo

    Some of you might possibly remember an album by the band MXPX that bears the same name as this blog (minus the idolatry part). It was released back in 1998 and for me was one of the albums I learned to play guitar to. The title comes from a slang term referring to “selling out.”…

  • Idolatry: The Sickness in Your Soul

    [This post is part of the Idolatry series] A close friend of our family had continuing health problems during my last year at home before I moved to Dallas. She was generally always cheerful, but had slowly turned less so as she became sicker and sicker, and there was little to no explanation why. Finally, during some…

  • Idolatry: An Introduction

    [This post is part of the Idolatry series] Before going too much farther, I should take a moment to give credit where credit is due. Props Most of the things I pointed out about Waking the Dead in the previous 4 part “Myth of the Good Heart,” were not necessarily my own private assessment of the book.…

  • The Myth of the Good Heart: Theology B

    [This post is part of the Idolatry series] The chapter in Waking the Dead entitled “The Heart of the Matter” is, as a whole, a bad attempt at confronting the idea that our hearts contain elements of evil even after conversion. After creating a straw man caricature on pgs. 61-62, Eldredge promptly knocks it down, but then…

  • The Myth of the Good Heart: Theology A

    [This post is part of the Idolatry series] In researching and writing the last post, it was at times very perplexing, like trying to untangle a gordian knot of philosophical ideas embedded deeply into a text. I go back and forth trying to decipher how explicitly John Eldredge has absorbed the conglomeration of ideas that are present…