Second post in a series drawing from and interacting with Richard Mouw's Abraham Kuyper: A Short and Personal Introduction (Eerdmans, 2011). If you missed it, you may desire to start at the beginning of the series with The Lure of Kuyper. Following the biblical narrative, Kuyper holds: when Eve and Adam succumbed to the Serpent's challenge, then, they turned their wills away from God and placed their ultimate trust in something less than God. (Mouw, 10) This turning of the will, not necessarily the act, is … [Read more...] about Kuyper’s Vision of Sin and Redemption
death
Devotions: Bearing the Image of God (2)
Genesis 3 tells the tragic story of the famous (or infamous) fall of the first humans into sin and corruption. Because of a choice that took them out of their assigned place in creation, under God but like God, their insistence on being “gods” distorted the image of God in them. Instead of derivative, yet creative knowledge, they disobeyed their “prime directive.” The penalty was not merely final physical death, but painful, hard-won work, struggling with creation instead of working with God's created order. Their … [Read more...] about Devotions: Bearing the Image of God (2)
DEATH be not proud, though . . .
Death and Resurrection
He was a young man, and I could see fear in his eyes as he gripped the railings of the bed and struggled to breathe, sucking in heavily through the plastic mask feeding him oxygen. His body was wasting away from cancer, and the infections that had crept into his lungs were now forcing every compensatory mechanism into extremis. He wanted to fight and live, but there was little left for the ICU to offer. I had been pleading with him for days to consider hospice and a more peaceable passing at home where he could be … [Read more...] about Death and Resurrection
Reasons: Why I am a Christian Part 2
Every year, the translator at our pediatric hospital asks this question: What are the four hardest words to translate? He will pause for a moment and then say, Your child is dead. Every time I hear it, I wonder how many times he has had to say that phrase. Every year, I think the tally must be a little higher. Fixed in every medical provider's mind are similar moments of unsettling and stunning grief. Death, crippling injury, and disability rarely happen in the dramatic TV show ways. They are ordinary and … [Read more...] about Reasons: Why I am a Christian Part 2