Kevin's Theogrimage

I had this piece sitting in my laptop since December, and I should have shared much earlier. Nonetheless, there is a time for everything.  This exposition has to do with a biblical view of guilt within the believer’s life. There are times that a truth sips into the soul so profoundly, that one sits bewildered, and amazed. I participated in a conference in December that reminded me of some foundational truths for the Christian life and hope which resulted in a deepening joy and assurance in Christ. One of the issues I have struggled with over the course of my Christian walk is the issue of sin in the believer's life. In my analysis, based on Christian Scripture, two underlying issues are involved: i) a faulty understanding of sin; ii) dealing with the guilt of sin.  For the first issue, I shall offer here a summarized overview. A wrong misconception, I think, among some Christians is the idea that once we trust in Jesus Christ, we become perfect. This idea of "sinlessness...

An Introduction I had began a series on the question "is there one way to God?" and this post has been long overdue. It is a second part following up on  Part 1 .   In the first part, I had given the cultural context that the dilemma in asking this question finds itself in. In summary, our postmodern context seems to reduce the fundamentals of a given worldview and strongly appeals to emotion. That is why it is commonplace in our culture to say things like "you only live once" or in dissecting moral issues, "what's right for you may be wrong for me." It is such responses that form the basis of a relativistic view on reality and life. In this post we shall analyze such a worldview and see how it is at odds with understanding the biblical message. Aren't you being too exclusive? We are living in a world and continent that is globalizing. Despite the fact that there are some nuances towards the perspectives and applications of...

Friend or Foe? It is often said that the experiences we go through give us a lens with which to view and interpret our reality in the world. In my case, especially after the death of my brother, I have been thinking more frequently about death and life and their mystery. In line with this, I was led to an essay by Esther Acolatse, professor of pastoral theology at Duke Divinity School. Her central idea is that  death strikes both as a familiar friend and a dreaded foe, hence creating ambivalent feelings in us . [1]   In her thinking through this ambivalence, she provides a framework for understanding this mystery of death and to anchor it on the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.  I have always thought of death, for a long time, to be both a natural process as well as a negative result of man's participation in his choice of separation from His creator God at the genesis of creation. The verse that Acolatse alludes in this thinking is Genesis 2:17 " but you mus...