The battle of ideas is over. We no longer live in an age of reason but an age of narratives. The battle of stories is just beginning. While the church wrestles with the ship’s wheel and tries to navigate this new current, we need faithful pastors to give us our bearings. David Murray proves an […]
Wednesday, 14 December, 2022 by Stephen Roberts
It often feels like the church is dividing along political lines. When we declare a church to be conservative or liberal, we are often not referring to theological stances (as J. Gresham Machen did in his classic Christianity and Liberalism), but to political ideology and cultural stances. Those who try to hold these parties together […]
Tuesday, 01 November, 2022 by Stephen Roberts
While in seminary, I often distinguished between those who read John Calvin and those who read Calvin on the john. For some, theological reading is a matter of business; for others, pleasure. It certainly hasn’t helped that many of our greatest thinkers lost their charm as soon as they applied pen to paper. The uninspired […]
Monday, 24 October, 2022 by Stephen Roberts
I keep a strict code of conduct on my Facebook feed. Well, maybe not so strict. I ask that all comments be charitable. If people can’t be decent, they can’t comment on the feed. Sadly, I delete more comments from Christians than non-Christians. Why is this? It’s not that Christians always behave worse than non-Christians. […]
Monday, 04 July, 2022 by Stephen Roberts
The recent exposure of hundreds of cases of sexual abuse and cover-ups within the Southern Baptist Convention is only the most recent dramatic example of such behavior within the church. David and Nancy French exposed similar abuse and cover-ups at Kannakuk Camp—one of the most popular Christian youth camps in the country. While it seems […]
Friday, 17 June, 2022 by Stephen Roberts
Intro: A Season of Repentance In our last piece, we reflected on how we succumbed to the fears and idols of our age. One of the casualties in the Age of COVID is the need and joy of repentance. There is always need for repentance—sin is that treacherous. Over the past two years, however, our […]
Wednesday, 11 May, 2022 by Stephen Roberts
Intro: Considering the Problem In March of 2020, COVID-19 hit American society with the force of freight train. Both the economy and the education system were shut down, and left with the ensuing loneliness, mental health plummeted and at-risk behaviors soared. The church suffered the same whiplashed effects as the rest of society. In general, […]
Wednesday, 20 April, 2022 by Stephen Roberts
How do you write a review of books dealing with pornography without highlighting the toll that pornography has taken on modern society? One recent perusal of The Drudge Report caught two headlines dealing with porn—one on French attempts to ban certain websites and another on how porn diminishes sexual performance. Protestations of pornography are no […]
Wednesday, 23 March, 2022 by Stephen Roberts
There is no more timely issue for a theologian to address than “fear,” surrounded as it is by the frantic and hyperbolic rhetoric of our culture. Some are living their lives in fear of COVID-19, we are told, while others are living their lives in fear of revisionist history within our education system. It is […]
Wednesday, 16 February, 2022 by Stephen Roberts
Open Relationships: The Next Big Trend I once led a discussion about love with a group of young adult soldiers and spouses. What does true love consist of? Everyone quickly jumped to the issue of honesty—a persistent point made by our Orphan Generation. But what about faithfulness? Not a single member of that conversation said […]
Wednesday, 12 January, 2022 by Stephen Roberts
Don’t let the religious preference on their dog tags fool you—like American society, the vast majority of soldiers are not practicing Christians. Yet even if, say, 80% of soldiers are not Christians, some 80% of soldiers will go to their chaplain in their hour of need. Compare this to mainstream society, where struggling people rarely […]
Friday, 26 November, 2021 by Stephen Roberts
For over a year, my son and I were on a roll. For the first time since reading the big three (Lord of the Rings, Narnia, Harry Potter), we had found a lengthy series that captivated the imagination: Percy Jackson. It opened up the worlds of Greek and Roman mythology to my son with a […]
Monday, 18 October, 2021 by Stephen Roberts