By Scott Keith –
What’s in a name? Well, I suppose it depends on the name. My name is relatively common. While growing up, I always knew two or three people my age with my same name. In fact, my best friend in high school was named Scott. If you Google the name “Scott Keith,” you will discover that there are many people with my name. The most popular among them is a gentleman who seems to have made a decent living blogging and writing about professional wrestling.
By Graham Glover –
Sometimes I wonder if being a Christian is only and exclusively about how one acts. It’s not that the Scriptures testify to this. The Church does not properly teach it. But every time I turn around these days, I find fellow believers telling me or suggesting to me that one’s Christian faith is a measurable thing – specifically, that our behavior is the clearest mark of what we believe, and the truest test as to whether one actually is a believer at all.
This asinine idea that our behavior is the means by which we measure our Christian faith is not only an unhealthy obsession, it is a lie.
By Joel A. Hess –
This past Sunday, our congregation hosted a viewing of The Passion of the Christ. I hadn’t seen it for a while and was once again in awe at how Mel Gibson accomplished both a work of art and a fairly orthodox and evangelical sermon; I was happy to see many members, especially younger ones, engrossed in the film as Gibson clearly preached Jesus as the substitute for our sins. Yes, I’m well aware there are other ways to talk of how Christ saved us.
By Jaime Nava –
Jesus entered Jerusalem during the period of the Passover. This was a time for the Jews to recall God’s saving work recorded in Exodus. The Passover meal is recorded in Exodus 12. When Jesus was in the upper room with His disciples, He was taking the old meal, a shadow, and in its place gave a new meal: Himself as the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. The meal of the first Maundy (Holy) Thursday is one we partake of every week.
By Bob Hiller –
Moral relativism..BOO! Ha! Scared you, right? Is there anything that gets us religious folk in a tizzy more than the relativism of our culture? I suppose one could argue that the culture is not so much relativistic over what is right and wrong. Rather, they’ve just decided to name wrong things right things. After all, when someone says, “What’s right for you may not be right for me,” isn’t that just a boring, wimpy way of saying, “You’re wrong?” Nonetheless, ours is a time where many attempt to blur the lines of what has been traditionally considered right and wrong.
By Scott Keith –
A few weeks ago, I was honored to be a plenary speaker at the now much lauded Christ Hold Fast (CHF) conference. For many, it was a life changing event. Why? Because the unadulterated Gospel of Christ was handed over with detail and passion for the sinner, over and over again. The speakers were fantastic. They faithfully proclaimed Christ and the forgiveness of sins through God’s radical pursuit of “prodigals” just like us.
By Jaime Nava –
So I was doing this one thing the other day. I overheard someone talking about something I hated. I could not believe they would even talk about it in public. What kind of people would even support this thing? They must have been brainwashed to think that thing that I overheard that one time I was doing that one thing the other day. I paused for a second to look at the other person who said that one thing. I didn’t notice it before, but yeah, I should have noticed it to begin with. They dressed like a person who says things I don’t like.
By Caleb Keith –
After being fried from a nine-hour road trip, I could not find the mental power to write a proper blog this week. Instead, I offer up a short overview of Romans Chapters 1-4. I submitted this essay as an assignment for my New Testament Book of the Bible class. My professor for this course is Dr. Michael Middendorf, who is the author of the new Concordia Publishing House commentary on Romans. Dr. Middendorf’s instruction has been priceless, and I hope this overview is exemplary of that.
By Joel A Hess –
“It’s better to live one day as a lion than a sheep for a hundred years” – Donald Trump and Benito Mussolini
Whether or not Donald Trump knew this quote was taken from the il Duce, the baldheaded embarrassment to both dictators and Italians, doesn’t matter. What does matter is that he desires to own and live by this quote. It should be noted that the original author of the quote was eventually mocked by the Germans, who really know how to do dictatorship, and dragged naked through the streets by his own people. I’m not sure Mussolini’s words are ingredients for success.
[Note: Jeff Mallinson has invited his wife Stacie to take the wheel this week, and reflect on what she encountered at the recent Christ Hold Fast conference.]
This past weekend, while attending the Christ Hold Fast conference, I found myself sitting in a small, no-frills side room of a church. I never thought that would be the beginning of one of the most transformative moments of my life.
By Jaime Nava –
Although I do spend time playing digital games, I also enjoy the occasional tabletop adventure. This means sitting around a table with others, usually my family, playing out a story with individual characters. We’ve started doing this relatively recently and one of the people who has the most fun is, believe it or not, my mom. We roll dice. We eat junk food. We say what our character would do and sometimes we even speak for them. It’s really a good time all around. What is it that we play? Dungeons and Dragons.
By Jeff Mallinson –
This week, I have the privilege of speaking at the Christ Hold Fast Conference in Orlando, Florida. I’ll be talking about the ways in which Luther’s call is for us all to become theologians of the cross. This is no mere academic concept. It is a revolution in the way we think about religion and theology itself. Theologians of glory seek to reach God through their own effort. Theologians of the cross receive the grace of God, accomplished by Christ alone. All of this is outside of us, and insists that there is no good speculative theology: we must approach the divine only through the Incarnate One who was crucified for our sake.
By Cindy Koch –
I know, I know. Ladies, don’t be too hard on him. The Man has posed an honest question about our society and our faith. He observed that men can look like sexist jerks by believing the word of God; so where is the honor for women today? He tried to stand up and defend our freedom, but we know how very short that answer falls. It’s easy to wonder on the outside, rather than to be the woman who must mold her life in the midst of the muck.
By Joel A Hess –
“The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of Conservatives is to prevent mistakes from being corrected. Even when the revolutionist might himself repent of his revolution, the traditionalist is already defending it as part of his tradition. Thus we have two great types — the advanced person who rushes us into ruin, and the retrospective person who admires the ruins. He admires them especially by moonlight, not to say moonshine. Each new blunder of the progressive or prig becomes instantly a legend of immemorial antiquity for the snob. This is called the balance, or mutual check, in our Constitution.”
By Daniel van Voorhis –
I am not a sociologist nor am I a theologian. So please, if you could answer my question down here at the level of a guy wondering: why does it seem that so many conservative gentlemen (or many who want to revive a culture of some refinement) seem like misogynists?
Alright, I just rolled a grenade out by using the “M” word. No one likes it. I could have used the “F” word and wondered why some are afraid of it- but that debate has played itself out.
It seems to me that theological and political conservatism has attached itself to a kind of Mad Men swagger.
By Scott Keith –
Like The Jagged Word, Christ Hold Fast is a project of 1517 the Legacy Project. As they describe themselves:
“We are a Law & Gospel collective of creative contributors, dedicated to teaching people how Christ remains faithful even when we are faithless (2 Timothy 2:13). We provide a voice for Christians who are both Sinner & Saint (Romans 7:15-25). We promote the bad news that you are a greater sinner than you think (Isaiah 64:6-7) and the good news that Christ is a greater Savior than you can imagine (Romans 5:6-11). And get this: He will never let you go (Hebrews 13:5-6).
By Paul Koch –
Well happy St. Valentine’s Day, my friends! Today is a day for matters of the heart. It is a day of flowers and chocolates and romance. Whether we like it or not, love is in the air on Valentine’s Day. I remember Valentine’s Day as a child in Elementary School. It was a day of both promise and great terror. The night before, you would fill out Valentine’s Day cards that your mom had bought from the store. Each one had some candy to go with it, and at the appointed time the next day you would go around the classroom and place your Valentines into the others students’ brown paper bags that were tapped to the edge of the desks. But there was always that one special Valentine.
By Jaime Nava –
When I was a buzz-headed lad growing up with my similarly shorn siblings, we would all gather around the Nintendo and play some of the most frustrating games I have ever seen. Granted it could be that we were too young to actually understand a specific game like, say, Metal Gear. It could also be that some games were just too incredibly difficult. People actually have a term for this: Nintendo Hard. These were games that were so difficult they were nearly impossible. It was the kind of thing that caused many a kiddo to hurl the remote control in an original rage quit. Games like Contra and Double Dragon come to mind. To be honest, I can’t recall all of them; but Nintendo was hard, okay?
By Bob Hiller –
Well, friends, I am simply elated. The smile has not left my face in days! All that yelling and pillow biting and making a complete jerk out of myself in front of friends and family has finally paid off! My Denver Broncos are Super Bowl champions! I could not be happier. Watching that defense manhandle every single top level quarterback in the NFL this season (Cam Newton, Tom Brady, Aaron Rodgers…not so fast Philip Rivers…) has been like listening to a beautiful symphony. Wade Phillips truly produced a work of art. For me, reveling in the Broncos third Super Bowl victory is pure delight.
By Joel A Hess –
Nothing is worse than a drama queen, right? Like a train wreck, we slow down our cars to watch them on reality T.V., Hollywood award shows, or perhaps we get to enjoy a live show at work or on campus. They wear their emotions on their sleeve. Well I suppose it’s just one emotion. They are upset and they want to make sure everyone knows. One can tell that they actually like being upset!
