Tried With Fire

For your listening pleasure, this is 4th movement of Symphony No. 5 in D major/D minor, Op. 107, also known as the Reformation  Symphony by Felix Mendelssohn . The theme of this movement is taken from "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God." This work was composed in 1830 in honor of the 300th anniversary of the Presentation of the Augsburg Confession .

Domestic abuse is one of those problems that is rarely addressed in the church. While we know it exists out there, we prefer to believe it doesn't take place in the Christian home. Why the discomfort? I think one reason is because of this question: What if the marriage ends in divorce? These are three possible camps regarding divorce among Christians that I am aware of: No divorce for any reason whatsoever. Divorce only for adultery and possibly abandonment. Divorce for adultery, abandonment, and abuse. I stand firmly in the third camp. For an in-depth defense of this position from scripture and church history, I would refer you to these lectures by Pastor David Dykstra (ARBCA). They are worth your time, and I would do them a disservice if I tried to duplicate his seven talks in one blog post. Rather, I am going to offer two hypothetical scenarios with the hope that you will consider how your position on divorce determines how you respond. Scenario 1. A man in your co...

A letter to the editor from a male mechanical engineering student at Eastern Washington University recently went viral. This letter was addressed to the women in his engineering classes and highlighted the subtle discrimination toward women in this field of study. One statement was of particular interested to me because my experience was more like that of this male student: I did not, for example, grow up in a world that discouraged me from focusing on hard science.  I grew up in a Christian family with several female scientists including my mom. I studied chemical engineering and computer science in the 80's when women were beginning to break into these previously male-dominated fields. I don't recall any derogatory attitudes. The course material alone was sufficient to weed out students from the programs regardless of their gender. After grad school, my first manager and client contacts were women. So based on my limited observations, I don't think discouraging g...

There is a real spiritual “presence” of Christ with the hearts of all true-hearted communicants in the Lord’s Supper. Rejecting as I do, with all my heart, the baseless notion of any bodily presence of Christ on the Lord’s table, I can never doubt that the great or­dinance appointed by Christ has a special and peculiar blessing attached to it. That blessing, I believe, con­sists in a special and peculiar presence of Christ, vouch­safed to the heart of every believing communicant. That truth appears to me to lie under those wonderful words of institution, “Take, eat: this is My body.” “Drink ye all of this: this is My blood.” Those words were never meant to teach that the bread in the Lord’s Supper was literally Christ’s body, or the wine literally Christ’s blood. But our Lord did mean to teach that every right-hearted believer, who ate that bread and drank that wine in remembrance of Christ, would in so doing find a special presence of Christ in his heart, and a special revelation of...

It's my turn at Out of the Ordinary today in which I write about my favorite event of the Protestant Reformation,  Martin Luther's trial at the Diet of Worms, and a lesson from his example. Read the post  here . Unless I am convinced by the testimony of the Holy Scriptures or by evident reason-for I can believe neither pope nor councils alone, as it is clear that they have erred repeatedly and contradicted themselves - I consider myself convicted by the testimony of Holy Scripture, which is my basis; my conscience is captive to the Word of God. Thus I cannot and will not recant, because acting against one's conscience is neither safe nor sound. God help me. Amen.