Always Reforming

Though I do not confine my beliefs by the boundaries of man-made doctrinal systems, I do consider myself to be a conservative Reformed Presbyterian.  As such, I try to be aware of the strengths and weaknesses of my particular corner of the theological world.  Our strengths?  We seek to appreciate all of God's Word.  We try to engage our minds, emotions (some of us, anyway), and bodies in our religion.  We seek to apply our theology to all of life.  Those, I believe, are good things and marks of faithful Reformed Presbyterianism.  We have our weaknesses though, too, and it doesn't help anyone to ignore them.  I'd like to take a few minutes to explore one of those weaknesses. Presbyterians love their systems.  To be a little bit more specific, we Presbyterians love our Systematic Theologies.  We love having an answer to every question and we really love being able to fit any issue into the bigger picture so that all of our puzzle pieces fit together perfectly.  There are tw

This is the time of year that many Reformed people on the internet like to let everyone know of their disdain for Christmas.  They are a rare breed, but vocal.  They point out that the Bible doesn't tell us exactly when Christ was born (we can be pretty sure it wasn't December, at any rate), nor does it command us to celebrate it with a festival.  They are absolutely correct on both counts.  Furthermore, they allege, celebration of man-made holidays like Easter and Christmas distracts from the observance of the weekly Sabbath (Sunday).  Some of these folks are vocal and condescending in their proclamation of their superiority.  Many of them are not. I was raised in a home that generally followed this line of thought.  We celebrated Christmas, but never as a "Church" holiday.  We had a sibling gift exchange and we went had family get-togethers, but my father, who pastored the church I attended growing up, never preached a Christmas sermon (never on Christmas anyway).

So I turned on the news the other day.  That was my first mistake.  I like to keep myself informed, I guess, but turning on the mainstream news hardly helps one to gather concrete information.  It does, however, allow you to see the type of idiocy that goes on in our nation's capital, so I turned on the TV around 6:00 P.M to see what was happening.  All the evening news programs were on and they were all, without fail, discussing the allegations that the Russians were involved in hacking and proliferating negative information in order to manipulate the election.  For some reason, they were all stating this as if it were a negative thing.  Imagine that!  The press is criticizing someone for spreading information!  Could the media "out" themselves any more clearly?  What more could they do to reveal their patent bias? Get this.  The Democratic party, along with their bedfellows in the media, are accusing Russia, one of the most powerful nations in the world, of manipulati

It's that time of year again!  The holidays are upon us once more, and they tend to bring out the best and worst in us.  Materialism is at an annual high, but so is generosity.  People spend exorbitant amounts of money on things they don't need, but they also volunteer at soup kitchens.  We look forward to getting gifts, but we also love seeing the expressions on the faces of our family members as they open up their presents on Christmas morning.  It's a busy, relaxing, hectic, dreadful, wonderful time of year! For many of us, it's a time when we would like to be more generous, but we just don't know if we can afford it.  We feel compelled to give as we are reminded that there are many who have less than we do, but we feel like we are stretching the budget as it is.  We want to help, but our resources are thin. What can we do?  One of the things that we often forget is that the most valuable resource we have is ourselves.  You may not have much money, but you have

It seems every time you turn around, another pastor is in the news, and it's rarely for a good reason. As I was scrolling down my Facebook feed, I came across another one.  This time it was a somewhat well-known Reformed pastor, whom I will leave unnamed, being accused of child molestation. The allegations, as often is the case, stem from events that are said to have occurred over a decade ago in a church that he no longer pastors in a state in which he no longer lives.  Such is the industry of the pastorate these days.  Every time I see one of these scandals, it leaves me somewhere between disgusted, angry, and humbled.  How could a pastor harm those whom he is supposed to be shepherding?  How could a pastor bring such shame to Christ's name?  How do congregations let these types of guys in their pulpits?  Child molestation isn't the only sin you read about, either, though that is certainly among the gravest of sins.  They also make the news for affairs, money laundering,

Millennials aren't nearly as bad as people make them out to be.  Allow me to rephrase that. Millennials aren't as uniquely bad as people make them out to be.  They are materialistic.  They are shallow.  They are morally relative and don't know how to use a broom or a mop (trust me...I see it all the time).  They use language in a barbaric and annoying manner.  These things are not, however, unique to this generation.  I'm pretty sure the boomers were saying these same things about the Generation X'ers.  The boomers, in turn, we largely decried by the "greatest" generation, the World War 2 generation that worked their butts off for everything they had. The one awful thing that I have found about Millennials, however, is our priorities.  Let's face it, our priorities are pretty questionable.  We spend way, way too much time on he internet (irony noted).  We do things like texting while driving.  We spend an inordinate amount of time manicuring our app