There are two elements of the Bible that makes it useful for people in living by faith: explicit statements about what is good and acceptable and what is wrong and undesirable; and principles that cover items that may not be explicitly addressed in the text of Scripture. Read more…

Book reviews aren’t my thing, but I just read a book that is one of the best tree shakers I have found. “So You Don’t Want to Go to Church Anymore” was published seven years ago, but I just found it a month ago. Read more…

I don’t blog about politics. This may look like I am, but read to the end. It’s more important than mere government. Read more…

Where I work a stop sign greets people, everyone, as they enter the site. A stop sign is common. It always means the same thing.

But the funny thing is many people drive right past it. Read more…

Many years ago I studied the book, “How to Be a Christian Without Being Religious” by Fritz Ridenour. It had more influence on me than I ever could realize. Though I do not intend to go through that book here, I do want to search out what this means in living for Jesus now. Read more…

Where do I start?

Just the other day I checked an online map service to get the travel time to a work site. It became a metaphor for the way some religious people act. In the case of my map search, despite every attempt, it placed my home address nearly an hour to the west. Even when I entered the address by postal code the programme changed it back to the wrong one.

So I turned to a different service. It put my start point in the right place, but the route choices were wrong. The fastest route showed as the slowest. The time totalled over an hour. In reality it took about forty-five minutes.

The only place for a Christian to begin a life journey of time or education or growing up rests upon the Bible. Some would start with an opinion, or a feeling, or a doctrine or even a denominational tradition. But when you start at the wrong place, whether by seduction of a lie or indiscriminate obedience to human authority, surely the route and timing must be wrong.

Read more…