Caleb Reichardt

This is the Jordan Peterson approach, and I’m afraid it makes the Bible a muddled, incoherent, unsolvable puzzle. We’re not to take the Bible literally but literarily (which will then of course at times necessitate taking it literally). Yes, there’s glory in concealing, but there’s also glory in revealing, which is what revelation is.

worth reading Philo of Alexandria (~25BC) if only to get a sense of how interpretive devout people back then thought of the stories. Essentially: not literally true (why would god need 6 days to create the world?), but conveying important divine meanings that must be studied. Allegorical puzzles. The glory of God to conceal a matter...

Christian mutuals, what are your thoughts on Biblical literalism and Biblical interpretation in general?

Read the Bible as it presents itself, just as you would any other book. Another way of saying it is to read the Bible naturally: history is history; poetry is poetry; prophecy is prophecy; etc. No need to over complicate it. That doesn’t mean there still can’t be interpretive challenges that arise, but starting with this framework will at least give you a fighting chance. To do otherwise will leave you hopelessly confused.

Suffering either purges sin or intensifies it. The choice is yours. But just know that to double down on your sin is to double down on your suffering.

The “love is love” crowd often loves to hiss hate.

Moral superiority is a hell of a drug. This is why, for instance, you can find endless videos online of guys chasing pedophiles around with cameras and confronting them in public. Not to defend the pedophiles who are unquestionably indefensible, reprehensible, and deserving of the highest forms of punishment (up to and including capital punishment), but I’d be willing to bet that a large percentage of the guys chasing them are a moral mess themselves, yet they’ve latched on to this one vestige of virtue which in their mind supersedes the rest. The formula goes something like this: Find the most socially unacceptable thing there is, oppose it vehemently, and therefore you are now virtuous. But it doesn’t work like that. That is not virtue. That is called virtue signaling, and virtue signaling is the prime symptom of this drug. It works on the flip side too: Find something acceptable in your social circle—whether that circle be political, religious, etc.—and support it with the same vigor, and boom, you are virtuous. But again, it doesn’t work like that. This moral superiority, this virtue signaling, shows up not only in guys chasing pedophiles, but in the rainbow-colored corporate logos which desecrate our eyes every June, in the weak-willed men who “support a woman’s right to choose,” in the vaccine evangelists who lambast any dissenters from their rule of faith—the list goes on and on, and it goes on in you and me too, to one extent or another. Where do you feign morality? Perhaps it’s something as simple as hopping on the gossip train, participating in the pile-on of a person who’s done something stupid or shameful when in fact you have done the same thing yourself. This drug of moral superiority can even possess people to go to extremes, to go so far as to assassinate in cold blood the likes of Charlie Kirk for his faith or former UnitedHealthcare CEO, Brian Thompson, for his business practices. They must show the world that they are taking matters into their own hands, to do what needs to be done—it’s pathetic and almost comical, for they’ve murdered their way to “virtue.” Again, such acts are merely a signaling of virtue, but to signal virtue is to signal a lack of it, as we tend to signal that which we do not have. The only antidote to this deadly drug—and make no mistake, it will kill you eventually—is Christ. You solve your sense of moral superiority by coming to terms with your actual and utter moral deficiency. This is the way. He is the way. The only way. The only way to go from morally deficient to perfectly sufficient. And here you will not find a high, a fleeting self-satisfaction swamped in delusion; here you will find a true and lasting peace.

God Almighty becomes Mother Nature. Divine creation becomes Darwinian evolution. Pro-murder becomes pro-choice. Men become women and women become men. They suppress the truth—professing to be wise, they become fools.

This is the most dystopian thing I’ve ever seen. Two gay guys have someone’s baby. He asks the baby who he wants. Baby says, “mama” He tells the baby “there is no mama.. you have dada or pop” Baby cries. There is no mama.

Life is too short to finish every book you start. But it’s also too short to finish too few, always jumping from one to the next. You’ll never get to them all, so you might as well finish some while you can. Don’t be the person who’s always starting and never finishing. Rather, live your life with a bias towards completion, in reading and in everything. You may miss out on a few things along the way as a result, but to do otherwise would be to miss out on one of the most rewarding words there is: “done.”

There is a great gulf between the Christianity that wrestles with whether to worship at the cost of imprisonment and death, and the Christianity that wrestles with whether the kids should play soccer on Sunday morning. —@JohnPiper

@ManifestHistory Find a good plan. Here's a recommendation: lsbible.org/daily-reading-…

I’ve finally decided to read the entire bible. So far, I’ve read Genesis and Exodus. I’m obviously really interested in reading the Gospels and New Testament. I’m debating skipping ahead to the Gospels. What do you recommend I do: Read the bible from front to back or skip ahead and read the Gospels (or entire New Testament) and then go back to the Old Testament.

The Christian with less money is no less secure than those with more and, perhaps, even more secure as they, unlike the other, are forced to cling to that which cannot be lost. You are not ready for worldly riches until you have taken hold of the greater riches of faith in the faithful One. To possess worldly riches before such faith is the treasure of your heart, will prove to be an affliction rather than a blessing.

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To say you can plagiarize the Bible is like saying you can plagiarize the words listed in a dictionary. The Bible, like a dictionary, is not a mere source you can pull from but an essential foundation you must stand upon. Just as you cannot speak without the words of a dictionary, you cannot exercise an ounce of reason without the truth of revelation under your feet. It is truth to be properly quoted, certainly, but more so it is truth to be infused in a way where Scripture simply becomes your vocabulary, where you know no other words to speak and no other thoughts to think.

Marriage is about two becoming one only to have one become many, for to unify is to multiply.

The law of God is not only moral but practical—the two are inextricably entwined. In an ultimate sense, you cannot have something that is morally good while being practically bad or vice versa. We live in God’s world, and in God’s world, good is always good and bad is always bad. You can’t get around the way things are, the way God made them to be. God communicates to us in His law—His commands, His precepts, His judgements—not only what is morally right but what is practically best. What looks to be at first like a cold and bitter rulebook is actually a warm and sweet guidebook. You need not look any further than the first of the Psalms to see the stark contrast between the righteously obedient and the wickedly disobedient, to see the blessing on those who keep His word and the opposite on those who don’t. “Obedience” has such a negative connotation and, quite honestly, for good reason, because it is so often tied to faulty masters—faulty husbands, faulty governments, and so on. Because of this, we can hardly imagine the delight of obeying a perfect Master, a perfect Master who does not merely want what’s best for us but knows what’s best for us, a perfect Master who loves us with His perfect love. Individuals and societies alike flourish when they actually, truly, wholeheartedly obey His law. It does not start with anything grand. It starts with simply obeying the first word of Jesus’ first preaching: “Repent.” Repent of your disobedience up till this point and know that you’ve just exercised obedience’s first order of business; it may have been your first, but to walk in this way, it certainly won’t be your last. Repentance is obedience’s match, which continually reignites us after sin has snuffed out our flame. After which we can start small, prayerfully tending to our daily life be it our home or our work or our private affairs and loving those who are right in front of us, for this is where a man and his life are made. And with that, assuredly, blessing awaits.

The problem with the “even if Jesus was not God, he was still a great moral teacher” schtick goes to Lewis’s famous trilemma: lunatic, liar, or Lord. I hear so many people who like to applaud Jesus as some moral model for the world while totally ignoring his true character and primary purpose. The problem is, if you praise the former (his morality) and ignore the latter (his divinity) as “unimportant,” you’ve signed on to praising a complete lunatic or a pathological liar because this man claimed to be God, claimed to be the sacrificial lamb for the eternal good of humanity. The only thing left then, is Lord. If you find you can’t stop praising this man who may be either a lunatic or a liar, maybe he’s not those things. Maybe he’s Lord. And maybe you need to come to terms with the ramifications of that truth.

The Bible is not as much a book to read as much as it is a foundation to stand on.

@thedankoe I’ve always said that you are a niche of your own and that you monopolize yourself by being yourself.

Better an hour less of quality sleep than an hour more of poor sleep.

@jamei567 @chrisman Correct lol

@chrisman What’s good for the baby is entirely dependent on the psychological state of the parents? I’m not sure that’s a good heuristic to be using…

We tried cry it out with my oldest. After 5 minutes my wife said “anything that feels this bad can’t possibly be good for the baby.” And that was the end of that.