The Rambling Disciple

Abraham is easily one of the most important figures in all of the Bible. If you exclude all divine persons, the only other people you could even consider being as important are Moses, David, and Paul. He is one of the most referenced figures throughout scripture, and the covenant made between him and God possibly the most important. Although it may seem hard to believe, the story of Abraham is simply more inspiring than we normally think it is. One of the pictures we have of Abraham is the first monotheist in a world of polytheists. While the Canaanites, Egyptians, and Babylonians had their plethora of gods Abraham served YHWH God alone. While this is more true towards the end of his story, the truth is that isn't how it starts. It is almost a certainty that Abraham, back before God called him, was a run of the mill polytheist like everyone else. This doesn't in any way diminish his character or example. If anything, this only serves to make the story of Abraham and how God wor...

It's safe to say that these days most of us live inside an echo chamber. Most of the time our friends hold similar views to our own and we choose our communities often based on how alike we are on certain issues. Social media doesn't help this at all as the algorithms continually feed back to us things we already agree with. The echo chamber isn't a new phenomenon, but it has gotten increasingly worse in my opinion. As mentioned social media has played a big part in that, but so have things like cable news. There isn't a handful of common news sources that we must all share and therefore must at least try to be balanced. Now we can simply choose to watch the one that we like and already agree with. I know people who honestly can say they don't really know anybody that has significantly different political, social, or religious views than they do. Those that do often are at odds with their own family members, but their friend groups are largely homogenous in this res...

One of the greatest resources we have as Christians is the two millennia of faithful Christians that have gone before us. They span countless languages, come from many nations, and have lived on almost every continent (Antarctica being the obvious exception). These people have lived through persecutions, natural disasters, and cultural breaking points many times over and through it all their witness to Christ remained strong. Many Christians today don't have even the simplest understanding or appreciation of the history of their own faith. This leads to many negative things. History helps us see that Christianity and the Church are far larger than our own particular nation, culture, and time. We often get so caught up in our own particular culture war that we forget that the Church of Jesus Christ is not limited to America. In fact, most Christians in the world do not live in the USA! The question is how do we get over this hurdle? How can we better engage our own history in a way ...