Why Do Experts Get It Wrong?

October 13, 2020 by Joel Burns in meditations, Issues & Commentary

Have you ever wondered about the Pharisees? About what it must have been like for men so educated and pious to have their authority threatened by a blue collar nobody who eviscerated them every time there was an argument? To watch as the people whom you have dedicated your life to teaching and guiding cease paying attention to you and begin to focus instead on someone without even a hint of your pedigree, expertise or credentials? It doesn’t take much imagination to understand just how maddening it must have been. After all, what was all the training, study and discipline worth if any old carpenter from the backside of nowhere could just waltz in and turn everything upside down? Who did they think this fool must have thought He was?

But, here’s the thing: the Pharisees were wrong.

Would God Still Be Good?

September 21, 2020 by Joel Burns in meditations, suffering

The pain and trauma we will experience in this life is real and hurtful. We will not understand it all. But we must decide whether or not the goodness of God is an absolute of our existence or a judgment to be made based on our own personal experiences.

Be Not Rash

August 25, 2020 by Joel Burns in meditations

Christians who rushed to support BLM during the emotionally charged heat of the moment are faced with a dilemma: continue in their stated endorsement of a pagan and Marxist movement that explicitly stands in contrast to the commands of God or retract their hasty words of support. The choice ought to be an easy one but the entire situation might have been avoided if Christians had heeded the words of the Bible in the first place.

Be Slow To Speak

June 25, 2020 by Joel Burns in meditations

There is wisdom in silence. There is wisdom in waiting to make your judgment until all the pertinent evidence is on the table. There is wisdom in not jumping to conclusions. There is wisdom in not automatically trusting everything those with ideological agendas say you ought to believe.

Receiving Evil from God: Christ & COVID-19

March 25, 2020 by Joel Burns in meditations

You cannot read the Bible at face value and come away with the ideas that God has nothing to do with the current epidemic coursing through the world or that He never has anything at all to do with the difficulties that come into our lives. Only a Bible read through dense, thick lenses of wishful thinking and insistence on our own definitions of love and goodness can be made to reach that conclusion.