To start with, I want to endorse Jeff Dunn’s recent rant on iMonk. He said this: “Jesus is not a self-help guru. He is not interested in you becoming a better person. He could not care less with you improving in any area of your life. Because in the end that is your life. Yours. AndContinue reading “Chapter Two of the Christian Life”
Category Archives: Damaris Zehner
The Forgotten Deadly Sin
Many of you are probably familiar with C.S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity. His chapter on “Sexual Morality†has some analogies in it that have struck me for some time. With your indulgence, I will quote what Lewis has to say then go on to make my point. Lewis compares our sexual appetite with our appetite forContinue reading “The Forgotten Deadly Sin”
Difficult Scriptures: The God Who Smites
God loves us. We learned that in Sunday School. So how do we explain God smiting people? I’m thinking of four incidents, three in the Old Testament and one in the New. In each case people were struck down, usually with death, once with leprosy. The Bible is very clear that judgment was from GodContinue reading “Difficult Scriptures: The God Who Smites”
The Touchstone
I have a question I’d like all you InternetMonks to tackle. It’s this: Is there any absolute standard of good and bad in the arts? By arts I mean music, writing, painting, sculpture, architecture, and dance at least, and I’m willing to include other disciplines if you like. And by absolute standard I mean theContinue reading “The Touchstone”
How The Whole Town Threw Us A Wedding
Editor’s Note: We typically run a classic post from Michael Spencer at this time on Saturday afternoon. But this essay from Damaris Zehner is just too good to postpone. Â We will have a classic post from Michael again next Saturday. For now, enjoy one of the best feel-good stories I have read in a longContinue reading “How The Whole Town Threw Us A Wedding”
Salvation Stories
What is salvation like? Not, What is salvation? What is it like? Comparisons, though incomplete, are good. They enable us to comprehend things we’ve never seen or experienced; they enable us to generalize and categorize. They underlie almost all human understanding of God, whom we can’t experience in the same way we do created things. Continue reading “Salvation Stories”
A Jesus-Shaped Challenge
A passage from Michael Spencer’s Mere Churchianity: Finding Your Way Back to Jesus-Shaped Spirituality struck me as I was reading it recently. I’m going to offer it to all you faithful denizens of the Internet Monastery to consider. Here’s a simple example. Think about yourself if you had just spent three years with Jesus. HowContinue reading “A Jesus-Shaped Challenge”
IM Book Review: Sacred Pathways
One Size Fits None Review of Sacred Pathways by Gary Thomas We’ve all held up ridiculously sized articles of clothing and scorned their boast that one size fits all, from Linda Hunt to Shaquille O‘Neal. We know that clothes should be made in different sizes. We accept that not all medicine is suitable for allContinue reading “IM Book Review: Sacred Pathways”
Filled with Passionate Intensity
Does anyone else cringe when they hear the over-used word “passion”? What’s your passion? — “I have a passion for — something.” “I’m so passionate about that.” I don’t think these people know what they’re really saying. Bear with me here. I’m launching into a history of the word from its origins to its modern usage.Continue reading “Filled with Passionate Intensity”
Old Books and New
We all had fun recently listing our favorite novels for Jeff Dunn. The lists included many excellent, inspiring books, and some that were odd, amusing, or horrifying. The majority of them were written since 1900. It’s natural that when we read for pleasure we would read contemporary books, particularly novels, that use modern dialects andContinue reading “Old Books and New”
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