Why should suffering be an important matter for Christians? During the time when the gospel began to circulate around the world, most of Greeks had no conflict with the beliefs in the virgin birth of and incarnation of God in the flesh, because the Greek legends and mythologies also taught similar themes to their adherents. The Greek gods were portrayed as human beings and having intimate and even sexual relationship with human beings.
Read MoreEven though Peter was the leader of the disciples of Jesus and the first pope of the Catholic Church, and wrote two letters of the NT, he still did not receive the same respect as Paul did. This may be because he was an uneducated fisherman, had hot temper, cutting an ear of a man who tried to arrest Jesus, and denied Jesus three times. Maybe, it was because Jesus once rebuked the devil out of Peter. Nevertheless, Peter had intimate relationship with Jesus, spending three years with him, eating with him, seeing the actual miracles with his own eyes, and being taught and loved by his Master.
Read MoreThe first series of “Image of God and Disability” captured the universality of the divine likeness on all human beings regardless of the features that differentiate us. At the same time, the image functions as the common ground for us to stand together as equal beings. The Scriptures revealed that there was no mysterious significance on the words image and likeness by themselves; I mean the image of JD does not have any implication, not that I have no value.
Read MoreIf you have been attending church for some time, you probably heard about the phrase, image and likeness of God. Well, it sounds theological and profound even. The writer of Genesis proclaims that God made Eve and Adam in his likeness, but does not that mean that God only made them in his image? How about us? Are we made in God’s likeness? But, what does that mean?
Read MoreThe world is filled with too many ideas and too much information, too many and too much to crowd and confuse our Christian values. Sometimes, what the Bible teaches us about Christian principles are so intricately related to the ideas of the world that it requires our careful attention and examination to untangle them.
Read MoreThe world praises the value of compassion, but not enough. Christian communities do believe in the value and encourage practicing compassion in our lives, but not often as God taught us through the Scriptures and not as He demonstrated it in action. Believers hear about those great achievements of pastors building mega-churches, of missionaries traveling around the world, of Christian writers publishing best-selling books, and of business leaders obtaining financial success, but the significance of compassion and the examples of individuals who practice compassion everyday became too shabby to be decorated on the first page of Christian magazines and even cliché to be preached and celebrated on Sunday church pulpits.
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