This is the beginning of a book that is in-progress titled Salvation by Being Good. I have published several chapters as blog posts which are listed at the end of this article. Any work of this nature which is a…
Category: Beyond Evangelical
Being an Evangelical should lead us beyond being an Evangelical. How so? Evangelicalism was an answer to the Catholic Church’s claim to God-ordained, infallible authority to interpret the scriptures on our behalf. The Evangelical mantra is Sola Scriptura: only the infallible scriptures have authority, not churches or people. This was an effort to take the church back to its pristine origins before thirst for power and control got a hold of the church’s leaders. In the beginning, and for several hundred years, there was no bible. Nobody agreed about what writings were considered authoritative and it didn’t matter because they relied on God, not on a book that didn’t exist yet. Though these early Christians turned the world upside down, the lack of scripture brought with it problems (the reason half the New Testament was written), but that’s the reality of the early church. To continue the Protestant Reformation, and get beyond Evangelical and back to the “faith once and for all delivered to the saints,” (as the bible calls it) we need to believe like they believed, and believe and live like Jesus Christ believed and lived.
Salvation by Being Good
Let’s put this salvation issue as succinctly as possible: If God judges based on a person’s faith, then a good non-believer goes to Hell. If God judges based on conduct, then a good non-believer is saved. If the latter is…
God Really is Just – Justice Demands Forgiveness
In my hundreds of conversations about Salvation by Being Good there are two objections that are raised almost every time. One objection that I have already addressed in a previous blog post is that no man can by his own…
There Are None Righteous – Except For Everyone Who Is
A group of young men from the local Baptist megachurch were at Starbucks having a Bible study. As they broke up and were preparing to leave I told them I was writing a book on salvation and asked if they…
Scriptures That Teach All Men Will Be Judged by Their Conduct, Not Their Belief
On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” “What is written in the Law?” he replied. “How do you read it?” He answered:…
Loyalty to “God’s Chosen People” Does Not Mean Running Palestinians Into the Ground
What some of my Christian friends believe to be loyalty to “God’s Chosen People”, many of us Christians see as a cruel trashing of everything we believe Jesus stood for. The comments from Christians to Pres. Trump’s tweet about withholding…
The Doctrine of the Trinity is Not Orthodox
Many Protestants accept the idea that it was the Church that opted to be Trinitarian. This is a myth taught in numerous seminaries and pulpits. If that’s you – stop! It wasn’t the church that decided to define itself as…
Standing With Israel: How Bad Theology Duped Us Into Supporting Terrorism and Oppression
From Benjamin Corey’s blog: Not many days go by without seeing some sort of “Stand with Israel” image pop up into my Facebook news feed. And, each time it does, my heart grieves over the fact that so many of…
Just Who Has the Itching Ears?
I know the topic of salvation raises concern like no other because it hits at something foundational to our Christian faith and what we believe gives us a right to call ourselves Children of God. Recently someone I only slightly…
Embrace the Doubt – Follow Jesus
What if we didn’t know which books of the bible should be in the bible? What if we didn’t know whether Paul’s writings in the bible are inspired to the point of being exactly what God wanted him to write?…