tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-73097182024-03-14T02:05:34.630-06:00Every Thought CaptiveReflections on the contemporary church, culture, Christian philosophy and doctrine.Phil Steigerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14948892557259431751noreply@blogger.comBlogger683125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7309718.post-63630819937105402882016-03-01T17:20:00.000-07:002016-03-01T17:20:07.182-07:00Thinking By Dismissing
Source
When I read articles like this I shake my head and wonder
if the author sees what she has done. On those occasions in the past when I was
grading papers like this, I sent them back to students with the demand that
they argue ideas instead of impugn those they disagree with. The article I read
was an opinion piece in our local paper, The Gazette, and is titled, “Sinking Feeling America Phil Steigerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14948892557259431751noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7309718.post-61644161738319542922016-02-27T07:18:00.000-07:002016-02-27T07:18:21.774-07:00Preaching from Whose Heart?
“Son of man, prophesy against the prophets of Israel, who
are prophesying, and say to those who prophesy from their own hearts…” Ezekiel
13:2
What follows this divine introduction is not good.
Self-proclaimed prophets have been running about gathering crowds with the
ever-popular message, “Peace! Peace!” and God has had enough of it. They speak
the speech of prophets, but have only been Phil Steigerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14948892557259431751noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7309718.post-51692401697779805802016-02-16T17:06:00.002-07:002016-02-16T17:06:36.361-07:00Bonhoeffer and the Word of God Incarnate
"It is wrong to suppose that there is so to speak a Word
on the one hand and a Church on the other, and that it is the task of the preacher
to take that Word into his hands and move it so as to bring it into the Church
and apply it to the Church's needs. On the contrary, the Word moves of its own
accord, and all the preacher has to do is to assist that movement and try to
put no obstacles in Phil Steigerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14948892557259431751noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7309718.post-15263879093958287782016-02-15T19:08:00.001-07:002016-02-15T19:08:24.048-07:00Economic Issues are Moral Issues and Should Be Treated as Such
Arthur Brooks, The Conservative Heart: How to Build a Fairer, Happier, and More Prosperous America (New York: Broadside Books, 2015)
246 pgs.
Arthur Brooks, the President of AEI, contends that Conservative economic and
political policies will do the best good for the poor when they are implemented,
but that they are unlikely to find wide appeal because Conservatives are bad at
getting theirPhil Steigerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14948892557259431751noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7309718.post-27469963802146198512016-01-14T17:40:00.000-07:002016-01-14T18:32:35.992-07:00On Worshiping The Same God
A friend of mine helped me think though some issues
regarding whether Christians and Muslims worship the same God. The issue is
currently a hot potato in some circles because of professor Harris, her
comments regarding wearing a hijab, and Wheaton’s reaction. It seems to me that
the simple understanding of the issue is that Christians and Muslims (and all
other worshipers of drastically Phil Steigerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14948892557259431751noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7309718.post-40190120212320419562016-01-09T11:06:00.003-07:002016-01-09T11:06:48.864-07:00Correcting the Scoffing Fool
Proverbs 9:7-8 “Whoever corrects a scoffer gets himself
abuse, and he who reproves a wicked man incurs injury. Do not reprove a
scoffer, or he will hate you; reprove a wise man, and he will love you."
Our first reaction to a passage like this ought to be a
self-reflective question like, “How do I respond to correction and reproof?” I
should begin by wondering about myself instead of Phil Steigerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14948892557259431751noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7309718.post-5590558433644684462015-12-10T09:55:00.000-07:002015-12-10T10:09:46.829-07:00At Advent May We Never Fail To Be Thankful
Trafalgar Square Tree
While preparing for Advent this week I ran across this beautiful story I had never heard before. Every year Norway sends a tree - a huge tree often groomed for years - to England to say thank you for their role in preserving and liberating their nation during WWII. For years they waited under tyranny for their freedom to come, and once it did they have never failed to Phil Steigerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14948892557259431751noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7309718.post-19841208428875751102015-12-08T16:36:00.000-07:002015-12-08T16:36:14.503-07:00Links with Little Context
Stream.org
Bedeviled by my Wife's Dementia
By Douglas Groothuis
"Through these trials, Becky struggled to write and edit. As her health declined, each work became more difficult than the previous one. After writing two books, she labored for four years co-editing a major work on the theology of gender, contributing a long and carefully argued chapter. That was the last thing she wrote for Phil Steigerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14948892557259431751noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7309718.post-25781217142605253102015-12-07T18:32:00.000-07:002015-12-07T18:32:36.988-07:00Like a Tree Planted by Streams of Living Water
What a cacophony of pressures is
the pastor’s life! What a job exposed to the conflicting expectations of people
whose whims and moods change! What a vocation where many of the best-selling
authors write books about “leadership” and volunteer management as though they were writing a manual for an international conglomerate of toothpaste makers, and
simultaneously the prophets warn against Phil Steigerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14948892557259431751noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7309718.post-45283176160080740382015-12-05T12:48:00.001-07:002015-12-06T07:11:21.716-07:00One of the World's Great Cataclysms Produced Two of its Great Authors
Joseph
Laconte , A Hobbit, A Wardrobe, And A Great War: How J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S.Lewis Rediscovered Faith, Friendship, and Heroism in the Cataclysm of 1914-1918
(Nelson Books, Nashville, TN, 2015). 235 pgs.
I read a
lot of books. I read a lot of history, theology, biography, and philosophy. I
cannot remember the last time I wanted a book to be longer that it was, but
that is what happenedPhil Steigerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14948892557259431751noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7309718.post-58189876805522946812015-12-04T18:57:00.001-07:002015-12-04T19:01:00.274-07:00Opposing Evil is Hard. Sometimes, Very Hard.
If I name something as evil, a necessary corollary
is the moral duty to oppose it.
When you name something as evil, that label
comes with necessary moral obligations. Because of the very nature of evil,
when you call something evil you are saying that it ought to be opposed where
it can be, stopped when it can be, and that you will oppose and stop it where
you have the ability to do soPhil Steigerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14948892557259431751noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7309718.post-76378713860230078532015-11-30T15:27:00.000-07:002015-11-30T15:27:00.806-07:00The Pastorate: Both Local and Universal
My hometown
suffered some recent tragedies entirely uncharacteristic of our self-image.
Whether it is a little self-deceiving to believe it, we still see Colorado
Springs as a sleepy, small town with lots of churches and conservative
Christians (though in reality we are well over half-a-million is size, and
mostly unchurched). With two “mass” shootings in the last two months, we are
forced Phil Steigerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14948892557259431751noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7309718.post-29318268033891374882015-11-30T13:22:00.000-07:002015-11-30T13:22:10.242-07:00Consent as a Moral Category - Is It Enough?
[This
post was inspired by a short Facebook conversation in which an individual
appealed to "consent" as the kind of trump card in a conversation
about sexual ethics. Further reading and research has led me to the discovery
that he was not a cultural outlier. Many now observe, and I concur with this
conclusion, that the only agreed upon category for sexual ethics is consent.
Violate that, Phil Steigerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14948892557259431751noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7309718.post-79317256686096057812015-10-06T17:29:00.000-06:002015-10-06T17:29:51.215-06:00What Does It Mean To Politicize an Issue? And Where Do Pastors Fit In?
The same day as the Umpqua Community College shootings, President Obama gave
an impassioned speech regretting the violence and calling for more gun control. In
his remarks he made an interesting statement, proactively responding to an
inevitable criticism of more calls for gun control. He said that some complain
that he and others would politicize this issue and remarked that of course he
Phil Steigerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14948892557259431751noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7309718.post-19412335879945565842015-09-28T13:35:00.000-06:002015-09-28T13:35:02.714-06:00Amnesty International, The Military, and the Sex Slave Trade
The New York Times published a horrifying story about the
rape and abuse of Afghan boys by Afghan militia leaders and the U.S. military’s
position that our soldiers are not allowed to do anything about it. In “U.S.Soldiers Told to Ignore Sexual Abuse of Boys by Afghan Allies,” US soldiers
tell their stories of knowing about the abuse and being told to look the other
way. In addition, when Phil Steigerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14948892557259431751noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7309718.post-33801369015725128822015-09-22T18:12:00.001-06:002015-09-22T18:12:34.082-06:00The Pastor As Public Intellectual
Kevin J. Vanhoozer, Owen Strachan, The Pastor As Public Theologian: Reclaiming a Lost Vision (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2015).
As soon as I heard this book existed I looked it up, read
up on some of the details, and immediately purchased it. I knew it was going to
resonate with my thoughts on the pastorate, what has been lost and what needs
to be regained, and it had the promise Phil Steigerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14948892557259431751noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7309718.post-31937082471839996832015-09-22T15:21:00.000-06:002015-09-28T13:39:23.017-06:00Pope Francis, Meet President Obama, and Welcome to the Land of Infantile, Illiberal Intolerance
If you listen to the rants of many political and cultural
liberals today you might get the feeling that they are very a tolerant people.
You would at least get the clear sense that they want you to be tolerant of
ideas and lifestyles you disagree with. But there is a catch. The modern,
liberal idea of tolerance is not what it is made out to be. To paraphrase a
wise man, I do not think it Phil Steigerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14948892557259431751noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7309718.post-53656068751010003872015-09-17T20:06:00.000-06:002015-09-17T20:06:06.899-06:00Things you don’t want to hear your Doctor say, but which I have been told in the last 2 months.
I have a great deal of appreciation for doctors and nurses and all they do. Even dentists. My last couple of months, however, have been full of unexpected visits and interesting conversations. I hope you enjoy more than I did.
“When I put that filling in (1 and ½ years ago…) I made a
mistake and didn’t go deep enough. That’s why you tooth is dying and you now
need a root canal.”
(2nd Phil Steigerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14948892557259431751noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7309718.post-28895074313905518022015-09-15T16:48:00.000-06:002015-09-16T09:19:16.085-06:00Bad Ideas Have Really Bad Consequences
The horrors of Planned Parenthood, exposed by the video
releases by the Center for Medical Progress (the 10th being released today),
are inevitable consequences of the worldview that created the organization.
People are rightly shocked to hear what
they do to babies crushed to death in their mother's womb, or pulled out
in-tact in their amniotic sacs and cut to pieces, or born alive and Phil Steigerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14948892557259431751noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7309718.post-29277011833656660272015-09-02T16:07:00.000-06:002015-09-02T16:08:37.392-06:00Choose To Follow Christ
"[M]any of us live our lives with the perpetual
question, 'Lord, what do you want me to do; what is
my mission?' The common
mistake is that we seek the answer to this question before we start walking the
path of obedience. This is exemplified by nearly 50 percent of churchgoers who
attend services a couple of times a month, throw something in the offering that
is below 2 percent of Phil Steigerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14948892557259431751noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7309718.post-90144257467488898772015-09-02T10:27:00.000-06:002015-09-02T10:27:26.189-06:00Your 'Get Through The Middle of the Week' PostThis guy is as talented as he is funny.
Phil Steigerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14948892557259431751noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7309718.post-6291434693810364252015-08-26T11:25:00.000-06:002015-08-26T11:25:01.342-06:00I'm Pretty Sure a Good Theology of Joy Includes LaughterMy lovely and talented wife, Heather, never laughs at these guys, but that doesn't stop me from inflicting them on her from time to time. This episode, however, had her laughing and crawling out of her skin at the same time. It's one of the funniest things I have watched in a while.
Maybe the internet exists to watch other, braver, people sample Jelly Fish Jello.
Phil Steigerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14948892557259431751noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7309718.post-76465896918109323112015-08-24T20:30:00.000-06:002015-08-24T20:30:09.014-06:00Great Conteporary Text on Preaching
Timothy Keller, Preaching: Communicating Faith in an Age of Skepticism (New York: Viking, 2015).
I am a preacher, but I have a hard time listening to most
sermons. I have learned over the years that I end up being frustrated or disappointed
when I listen to most preachers speak to congregations on Sunday mornings.
Often I am disappointed by the lack of biblical exposition and depth, and Phil Steigerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14948892557259431751noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7309718.post-44557660802498886562015-06-29T12:04:00.000-06:002015-06-29T12:04:21.331-06:00Some Clarity on Tax Exemption, Part Two
In the previous post, I tried to make the case that non-profits are subject to several forms of taxation and that taxing non-profits further will either put a lot of good works out of business, or result in targeted discrimination. Now for a brief argument from religious liberty.
Tax Exempt Status is a Necessary Component of Religious
Liberty
In a twist of mental gymnastics, those who Phil Steigerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14948892557259431751noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7309718.post-5979624966980002212015-06-29T11:56:00.000-06:002015-06-29T12:05:45.335-06:00Some Clarity on Tax Exempt Status, Part One
More than once in our not-so-small hamlet of Colorado
Springs public initiatives have been launched to tax non-profits in order to
make up for the revenue shortfall the city consistently faces. Each time it
happens the public argument is something to the effect that churches need to
pay their fair share. Currently, with the SCOTUS ruling on Same Sex Marriage
(SSM), the argument is being made Phil Steigerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14948892557259431751noreply@blogger.com0