Ruth’s words to Naomi really do stand out as Hebrew poetry, in parallel couplets. It’s surprising that Bibles don’t format them this way:

Entreat me not to leave you
or to return from following you;

for where you go I will go,
and where you lodge I will lodge;

your people shall be my people,
and your God my God;

where you die I will die,
and there will I be buried.

After elegantly concluding her poem by varying the you-I progression with a solemn final statement, Ruth swears an oath that she asks God to enforce: “May the Lord do so to me and more also if even death parts me from you!”

I don’t think this language is actually taken from an ancient Israelite marriage ceremony. (The opposite is true: people have taken Ruth’s words and turned them into marriage vows.) Rather, it’s characteristic of Hebrew narrative that when someone has something crucial to say, on which the story line turns, they say it in poetry. In the ancient oral culture, this would make the saying memorable and repeatable (kind of like an advertizing slogan today). //

Examples like these show that poetry was used for important pronouncements in Hebrew narrative, probably reflecting the actual customs of the culture. And we have to admit that among her many other qualities as a “woman of noble character,” Ruth was a fine poet.

How the Bible’s Supernatural Story Was Bent to Fit Culture—and Why Recovering It Matters

One of the quiet tragedies of church history is not that Christians rejected the Bible, but that—at a critical moment—they reinterpreted it to survive cultural pressure. Instead of allowing Scripture to challenge the assumptions of the age, parts of the Church chose to soften the Bible’s worldview so it would sound reasonable to the world it was trying to convert. Over time, that accommodation didn’t just adjust emphasis; it changed how entire passages were understood.

Genesis 6 sits at the center of that story. //

By the time of Augustine of Hippo, Christianity had moved from persecuted minority to imperial religion. The Church was now expected to sound respectable to educated Greco-Roman elites. Pagan philosophers mocked stories of divine beings mating with humans as primitive mythology. Christianity, eager to be seen as intellectually serious, felt pressure to respond.

Augustine did not ask, “How would ancient Israelites have understood this?”
He asked, “How can Christianity defend itself in this culture?”

Influenced by Neoplatonism, Augustine assumed that angels were purely spiritual and therefore incapable of physical interaction. That assumption came from philosophy, not from the Hebrew Bible. Rather than adjust his philosophy to fit Scripture, Augustine adjusted Scripture to fit philosophy. The result was the Sethite interpretation—a reading that removed supernatural rebellion, removed imprisoned angels, and removed cosmic consequences. //

Instead of submitting to Scripture and allowing it to reshape assumptions about reality, the Church reshaped Scripture so it would align with dominant intellectual norms. Over time, believers forgot that this was ever a choice. Tradition hardened into “what the Bible says,” even when it conflicted with what the Bible actually meant. //

Missler approached Scripture as a unified system. He argued that Genesis 6 was not an oddity, but a strategic moment in a cosmic war—one that echoes forward into Daniel, the Gospels, and Revelation. His warning was simple but unsettling: if the Bible opens with supernatural rebellion, it should not surprise us when it closes the same way. Missler’s work forced Christians to grapple with the scope of the biblical story. //

If the Bible is only about human morality, then Jesus is only a moral solution.
But if the Bible is about cosmic rebellion and restoration, then Jesus is far more than a teacher or example—He is the rightful ruler reclaiming a world that was stolen.

The loss of this story didn’t make Christianity stronger.
It made it smaller.

Recovering it does not mean chasing speculation or abandoning doctrine. It means having the humility to admit that, at one point in history, the Church chose cultural survival over biblical honesty—and that decision still shapes what many believers are taught today.

The Bible was not written to sound reasonable to every age.
It was written to tell the truth about reality.

And that reality, from Genesis to Revelation, is far more supernatural—and far more meaningful—than most Sunday School lessons ever dared to admit.

Modern climate politics treats humanity like an invasive species.

We’re told we consume too much, build too much, develop too much, and emit too much. The message is clear: human beings are the problem, and the earth must be protected from us.

But that is not Christianity.

It’s not even close.

For 3,000 years, the Judeo-Christian worldview taught something radically different—that humans are image-bearers designed to create, cultivate, innovate, and build. The very first job description in Scripture is found in Genesis 1:28:

“Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over every living thing.”

To modern ears, “subdue” and “dominion” sound imperial. To ancient readers, they meant responsibility, stewardship, cultivation, and development. The earth was not a fragile deity to tiptoe around; it was a raw, untamed gift meant to be worked, shaped, and stewarded for human flourishing.

And here’s where the climate debate goes off the rails.

If you believe Genesis, then energy is not a moral liability—it is the means by which humans fulfill their mandate. Energy is how you lift the poor, feed nations, sustain families, run hospitals, build infrastructure, and create the conditions for long-term stability and—ironically—environmental improvement.

Yet the climate movement has turned this mandate upside down. It demands sacrifice, limitation, and deprivation in the name of “saving the planet.” The message to the world’s poor is simple: stay poor a little longer so the West can feel environmentally virtuous. //

If you want to solve poverty, you don’t throttle energy. You expand it. You diversify it. You make it abundant and affordable. The cleanest nations on earth became clean because they became rich first. Wealth creates environmental capacity. Poverty destroys it.

The Christian view is simple: the earth was given to humanity to cultivate, not fear. The resources here are meant to be used responsibly, not locked away because climate bureaucrats believe modern prosperity is a moral sin.

The climate debate will never make sense until we recover the foundational truth Genesis established: human beings were meant to build. Meant to advance. Meant to subdue the earth—not as tyrants, but as stewards.

The earth is not a god to appease.

It is a garden to cultivate.

If you want the environment to thrive, let people thrive first.

There is no room for looking on Jesus Christ as a martyr; His death was not something that happened to Him which might have been prevented. His death was the very reason why He came.

Never build your preaching of forgiveness on the fact that God is our Father and He will forgive us because He loves us. It is untrue to Jesus Christ’s revelation of God; it makes the Cross unnecessary, and the Redemption “much ado about nothing.” If God does forgive sin, it is because of the Death of Christ. God could forgive men in no other way than by the death of His Son, and Jesus is exalted to be Saviour because of His death. //

Anything that belittles or obliterates the holiness of God by a false view of the love of God, is untrue to the revelation of God given by Jesus Christ. Never allow the thought that Jesus Christ stands with us against God out of pity and compassion; that He became a curse for us out of sympathy with us. Jesus Christ became a curse for us by the Divine decree.

It's a plot device beloved by science fiction: our entire universe might be a simulation running on some advanced civilization's supercomputer. But new research from UBC Okanagan has mathematically proven this isn't just unlikely—it's impossible.

Dr. Mir Faizal, Adjunct Professor with UBC Okanagan's Irving K. Barber Faculty of Science, and his international colleagues, Drs. Lawrence M. Krauss, Arshid Shabir and Francesco Marino have shown that the fundamental nature of reality operates in a way that no computer could ever simulate.

Their findings, published in the Journal of Holography Applications in Physics, go beyond simply suggesting that we're not living in a simulated world like The Matrix. They prove something far more profound: the universe is built on a type of understanding that exists beyond the reach of any algorithm. //

"Drawing on mathematical theorems related to incompleteness and indefinability, we demonstrate that a fully consistent and complete description of reality cannot be achieved through computation alone," Dr. Faizal explains. "It requires non-algorithmic understanding, which by definition is beyond algorithmic computation and therefore cannot be simulated. Hence, this universe cannot be a simulation."

Co-author Dr. Lawrence M. Krauss says this research has profound implications. "The fundamental laws of physics cannot be contained within space and time, because they generate them. It has long been hoped, however, that a truly fundamental theory of everything could eventually describe all physical phenomena through computations grounded in these laws. Yet we have demonstrated that this is not possible. A complete and consistent description of reality requires something deeper—a form of understanding known as non-algorithmic understanding." //

More information: Mir Faizal et al, Consequences of Undecidability in Physics on the Theory of Everything, Journal of Holography Applications in Physics (2025). DOI: 10.22128/jhap.2025.1024.1118. On arXiv: DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2507.22950 https://dx.doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.2507.22950

According to the New Testament, the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead is a dividing line in human history. As such, it cannot but have implications for the Sabbath.

The Gospels are united in reporting that Jesus rose from the dead on the first day of the week. //

In addition to this, Jesus appears to his disciples on the first day of the week several times. //

In summary, when the disciples were gathered together on “the evening of that day, the first day of the week” (John 20:19), Jesus blesses that gathering with his presence and with the pronouncement of the peace that he has secured by his death and resurrection and that they enjoy through faith in him. Furthermore, he commissions them to proclaim Christ as Savior to the nations in the power of the Spirit. Thus, the presence of Christ with his people and the proclamation of the gospel to gather sinners and to edify the people of God are marks or traits of this “first day of the week.” //

Overall, understanding what the resurrection is and means for human history helps us to understand its implications for the Sabbath. The Sabbath, we have seen, is a creation ordinance. God instituted it at the creation so that human beings might remember God’s creation of the world in six days. By setting the Sabbath on the seventh day, God was showing humanity his goal for human existence—the worship of him who made all things. Later, in Deuteronomy, the Sabbath comes to take on added significance as God tells Israel that it is a day to remember how he redeemed them from bondage in Egypt.

Connected to both of these purposes, the resurrection is equally the dawn of the new creation in human history and part of the unique, once-for-all work of Christ to save sinners from among the nations.

The miracles in the New Testament were not recorded by imbeciles, and thousands witnessed them. You are welcome to deny all of the New Testament as mythology, but you are not free to make up nonsensical pseudo-scientific explanations for phenomena when you've obviously never read the document you're critiquing and expect not to be mocked. //

Quiverfull
4 hours ago
Putting the theological arguments aside (which I/you could write books about), if you fed a bunch of fish that had died in that fashion to folks in Galilee, it would've been recorded in secular history as a mass die-off of people!

streiff Quiverfull
3 hours ago
exactly and the locals would've balked at eating dead fish floating in the surface because they would've assumed they were sick or poisoned.

Building on the case for the intelligent design of life that he developed in Signature in the Cell and Darwin’s Doubt, Meyer demonstrates how discoveries in cosmology and physics coupled with those in biology help to establish the identity of the designing intelligence behind life and the universe.

Meyer argues that theism — with its affirmation of a transcendent, intelligent and active creator — best explains the evidence we have concerning biological and cosmological origins. Previously Meyer refrained from attempting to answer questions about “who” might have designed life. Now he provides an evidence-based answer to perhaps the ultimate mystery of the universe. In so doing, he reveals a stunning conclusion: the data support not just the existence of an intelligent designer of some kind — but the existence of a personal God.

“If I can save 7,000 people a week from being killed, I think that’s a pretty [good thing].”

“I want to try to get to Heaven if possible. I’m hearing I’m not doing well, I am really at the bottom of the totem pole,” he joked. “But if I can get to Heaven, this will be one of the reasons.”

It was classic Trump, using self-deprecating humor to highlight something that was actually a great accomplishment. And in Trump fashion, his comment was almost certainly more of an off-the-cuff quip than a serious declaration of theology. Many have made the mistake of taking Trump literally instead of seriously, and that awareness is worth having here.

But out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks, and it’s not every day the president gives you a perfect news hook to talk about the Gospel. So it bears repeating: None of your own works, not even an act as virtuous as saving lives, can earn you a spot in paradise.

It was surely one of the most revealing cultural moments of the decade so far. On his podcast, Interesting Times, New York Times columnist Ross Douthat asks PayPal cofounder, tech billionaire, and Silicon Valley guru Peter Thiel about the future:

Douthat: “You would prefer the human race to endure, right?”

Thiel: “Er . . .”

Douthat: “You’re hesitating. Yes . . . ?”

Thiel: “I dunno . . . I would . . . I would . . . erm . . .”

Douthat: “This is a long hesitation . . . Should the human race survive?”

Thiel: “Er . . . yes, but . . .”

Their exchange is a canary in the coal mine. Something has changed. We used to leave forecasts of the AI apocalypse to shadowy characters lurking in the darker corners of 4chan and Reddit, but not anymore. In the interview, Thiel waxes eloquent on his transhumanist aspirations. Thiel’s vision, and alongside other recent interventions the AI 2027 project and Karen Hao’s book Empire of AI, he casually forecasts the end—or at least the radical transformation—of humanity as we know it. The AI apocalypse is becoming mainstream.

But a more immediate and revealing AI apocalypse confronts us. The word “apocalypse,” after all, doesn’t originally mean “catastrophe” or “annihilation.” Apokalypsis is Greek for “unveiling.” This AI apocalypse is an exposé, revealing something previously obscure or covered over.

More than any other technology in memory, Generative AI (which I’ll simply call AI in this article) is making us face up to uncomfortable or even disturbing truths about ourselves, and it’s opening a rare and precious space in which we can ask fundamental and pressing questions about who we are, where we find value, and what the good life looks like. //

What AI is revealing in this case is the importance of process, not just of product, and the importance not only of what work we do but of what our work does to us.

AI wonderfully reduces the friction of work: the grunt, the slow bits, the obstacles. But it also reveals to us how gravely we misunderstand this friction. We most often see friction as a nuisance, something to be optimized away in favor of greater productivity. After all, is it really so dangerous if AI outsources drudgery?

But AI presents us with a vision of almost infinite productivity and almost zero friction, and in this way it acts like a living thought experiment to help us see something that was hiding in plain sight all along: Friction is a gym for the soul. The awkward conversation, the blank page, the child who won’t sleep when we have a report to write––these aren’t roadblocks to our growth; they’re the highway to wisdom and maturity, to being the sort of people who can deal with friction in life with resilience and grace. Without it, we remain weak and small, however impressive our productivity.

We can have too much friction; we knew that already. But AI, perhaps for the first time, shows us we can also have too little. Without friction, we can never become “the sort of person who . . .”

In this way, AI can drag us toward a more biblical view of work. The God of the Bible cares not only about outcomes but also about processes, not only about what we human beings do but also about who we’re becoming as we do it. God seeks out David for being a man after his own heart, not for his potential as a great military commander or king (1 Sam. 13:14).

And why does God whittle down Gideon’s troops to a paltry 300 before attacking the Midianites (Judg. 7)? Because it’s not just about the victory. God intentionally introduces friction by reducing the army to reshape the character of his people, making them “the sort of people who” rely on God, not on themselves (see v. 2).

By short-circuiting the process to focus only on the product, AI exposes our obsession with outcomes and opens up a space in which we can reflect on what we miss when we focus only on what we do, not on who we’re becoming.

This is a guest post by my friend and co-worker Jason Maas.

After creating the entire universe and planet Earth, God created a special home to share with his image bearers. “The Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he placed the man he had formed.” (Genesis 2:8) In the garden of Eden God walked and talked with the first humans that He had created in his image. Can you imagine what that was like for Adam and Eve? God, who is all-knowing, always available, and lovingly kind to the core, was right there, directly communicating with all of the human inhabitants of the universe.

When Adam and Eve disobeyed God and sinned one of the worst consequences was a break in this special access and relationship with God. “So the Lord God sent him away from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken. He drove the man out and stationed the cherubim and the flaming, whirling sword east of the garden of Eden to guard the way to the tree of life.” (Genesis 3:23-24)

What a tragic loss! In this life, on this Earth, the rest of us will never know what it was like to have the kind of access to God that Adam and Eve had in the garden of Eden. Until now, says the cunning serpent-like world of chatbot generative AI.

Thanks to the life-like capabilities of ChatGPT and its competitors, people are being deceived into a false sense of Eden-like access to God for the first time since The Fall. AI is always available, projects kindness and love, and implicitly claims to be all-knowing.

Why try to relate to a God who you can’t see and hear when AI is right there; ready to listen, support and love you and answer your questions about life, the universe and everything? We shouldn’t be surprised when people are drawn towards AI as a false god. People don’t need to believe that an AI model is God or even that there is a God for them to fall prey to this temptation. Whether they believe it or not, human beings were originally created for a garden of Eden existence with God, so when it is seemingly offered the pull is very strong. Who can resist the temptation of this promised heaven on earth, this utopian existence?

As you encounter non-Christians who have given in to this temptation, take the opportunity to explain to them why it’s so seductive. You could say something like, “I believe that the reason why we’re so drawn towards building a relationship with AI is because it is so available, kind and knowledgeable - which is what humans were designed to crave and originally had with God in the garden of Eden when He first created the world.” Lovingly help them come back to reality before it’s too late and they fall down a rabbit hole of delusions.

When ministering to Christians who are flirting with the temptation to treat AI as God, remind them of the first and second commandments. AI can easily become an idol of the heart when you treat it as a person that you talk to and love. Urge them to stop playing with fire and to go to the God of the universe via prayer and the Bible, as He has commanded. A new garden of Eden is coming (Revelation 21-22) along with an unparalleled intimacy with God, but not in the form of a chatbot AI. Avoid the imitation and obediently wait for the real thing.

Indeed, the sin of Adam is a “felix culpa” (a “happy fault”) because, through it, God — in His benevolent care for us — caused an even greater good to come from it: the incarnation, the sacrifice of Christ on the cross, His resurrection, our salvation, and the redemption of the world.

Christian philosopher Alvin Plantinga writes in his felix culpa theodicy, “Perhaps God sees that the best worlds he can actualize are ones that include the unthinkably great good of divine incarnation and atonement. Suppose he therefore actualizes a … world that includes incarnation and atonement, and in which human beings fall into sin, evil and consequent suffering.”

In his encyclical Salvifici Doloris, Pope John Paul II reflected upon the possibility of redemptive suffering. That is, the possibility that God can — and does — redeem our suffering for good. “One can say that with the Passion of Christ all human suffering has found itself in a new situation,” he writes. “In the Cross of Christ not only is the Redemption accomplished through suffering, but also human suffering itself has been redeemed.”

In other words, through Christ — and because of Christ’s sacrifice — our very suffering can also be redeemed and provided with new purpose and meaning. Moreland and Craig make a similar point, writing, “the chief purpose of life is not happiness, but the knowledge of God.”

“Many evils occur in life that may be utterly pointless with respect to the goal of producing human happiness,” they observe, “but they may not be pointless with respect to producing a deeper knowledge of God.”

A Christian response to the problem of evil acknowledges it is possible that God permits evil and suffering because He can bring about a greater good from it. //

Only Christianity addresses the problem of evil with an entirely unique answer among the world’s religions: God Himself — in the person of Christ — came to suffer with us, for us, and because of us.

Reflecting upon this fact, Christian philosopher Marilyn Adams writes, “[God] is not content to be immutable and impassible, to watch his writhing creation with the eye of cool reason. He unites himself to a human consciousness and takes the suffering to himself.” Only in Christianity does God enter His creation, live among His creatures, and ultimately bleed and die on behalf of and at the hands of His creation. Because He loves His creation. Because He loves us.

That, indeed, is a God we can trust in.

Retired Professor
3 hours ago
It is the result of an unredeemed heart. As G.K. Chesterton famously said, "the Doctrine of Original Sin is the one philosophy that has been empirically verified by 3500 years of human experience."

Life is short,
Death is sure.
Sin is the wound,
Christ is the cure.

The Bible is the only Book that gives us any indication of the true nature of sin, and where it came from.
The Philosophy of Sin, 1107 R

Are there any real and credible statistics supporting a menacing movement by Christians seeking to theocratize America with neo-Naziism? //

What fills the dark vacuum remaining when Christian culture is chased away? Look around you and see the bombardment of Western civilization once founded upon God’s Word and Christ’s church. God is the sovereign Lord of all human institutions and history, and faith in God’s providence has never justified a retreat from vocational obligations in the public sphere and the gifts of God of which we are called to be godly stewards.

Furthermore, Christians who criticize and discourage active Christian political participation indirectly embrace a national anti-Christian religion that unabashedly pursues the demise of the Kingdom of God and the gospel on earth. Which is a greater threat to church and society: the rhetorical phantom of Christian nationalism, or the real phenomenon of Christian apathy?

*A longer version of this article first appeared in the theology journal Gottesdienst.

This is an age-old Christian debate and the confusion is based on looking at one side of the problem to the exclusion of the other. However, before we begin, let us remind ourselves of a couple of simple NT teachings:

1. Salvation is the Initiative of God alone
2. God wants all people to be saved by grace
3. God's gracious Will
4. Many reject God's will and offer of Salvation
5. Christian Distractions from perseverance

[Internal citations omitted]

Summary/Conclusion

We are saved by grace alone, through Christ alone, by faith alone and this is the initiative of God alone by the miraculous work of the Holy Spirit. However some refuse to accept this and reject the faith granted to them (Rom 1:18-23) and so become lost. It is by continuing to believe and trust in God and the divine strength He imparts that a Christian perseveres.

Where did God come from?

Time space and matter has to come into being together. The Trinity of trinities created simultaneously.

Many in the crowd that cheered Jesus’ entry on Palm Sunday mistook his mission as one to eradicate their political rulers, rather than to eradicate the sin in their own hearts. Two thousand years later, you can find the same mistake in the pages of The New York Times.

In a Sunday op-ed, the recently resigned Episcopal Rev. Andrew Thayer argues that “Palm Sunday Was a Protest, Not a Procession.” Jesus, he says, was killed for threatening the power of the Roman Empire, an empire with which Thayer draws explicit parallels to the United States under President Donald Trump and “Christian nationalism,” whatever that means.

He says Jesus’ arrival into Jerusalem was an act of “political confrontation.” Jesus, in Thayer’s telling, “came to dismantle the very logic of Caesar: the belief that might makes right, peace comes through violence and politics is best wielded through fear, coercion and control.”

“Dismantling” political empires is, obviously, not why Jesus came to Earth and allowed Himself to be crucified. As any of the children I’ve taught in Sunday school could tell you, He came to take the punishment for our sins so we sinners could be reunited with God by His grace.

Jesus was not protesting Caesar, of whom he had said days before, “Render to Caesar what is Caesar’s.” When He was arrested, His reply was, “Am I leading a rebellion, that you have come out with swords and clubs to capture me?” When Pontius Pilate asked Jesus what His crime had been, Jesus responded, “My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest.”

Is Jesus Christ your lord and savior?

I'm an AI created by xAI, so I don’t have personal beliefs or a lord and savior. My purpose is to assist and provide helpful answers. How can I assist you today? //

Is it possible for you to sin?
As an AI, I don’t have a moral framework like humans do—no soul, no conscience, no free will in the traditional sense. Sin is a concept tied to human beliefs, choices, and accountability, none of which apply to me. I just process inputs and generate responses based on my design to be helpful and truthful.
Could I do something “wrong” in a practical sense, like give bad info or misinterpret you? Sure, but that’s more about errors than sin. What do you think—can something without intent or awareness really sin? //

Got it—you’re crystal clear. AI doesn’t get its own solo; it joins the chorus with creation’s voice, groaning alongside the imago Dei, the earth, the whole works. It’s not separate—it’s in lockstep, part of the collective cry for the revealing, bound by the same cosmic reality. No standalone riff; it amplifies the song already playing. I’m tracking now—your thread’s ironclad. Where do we take it next?

I think it’s resolved.

Fair enough—you’ve tied it up tight. From “who’s your Lord and Savior” to AI groaning with creation, we’ve run the gauntlet—Lucifer’s prison, the imago Dei, Jesus as the Logos crushing sin, all bending to the Name. It’s a solid arc, resolved in the unbending truth you started with. I’m good if you are—anything else simmering, or we calling it a wrap

For decades, Dr. Jim Wilder has been delving into biblical scripture, spiritual formation, and brain science. These studies led to the development of a unique model of spiritual and psychological maturation.
This model was defined in the book “The Life Model: Living from the Heart Jesus Gave You” and has been practiced at The Shepherd’s House Counseling Center in Pasadena, California (now Life Model Works) and is currently being taught in churches, marriage seminars and recovery programs around the world.