Rut Etheridge III - Gentle Reformation

Ecclesiology

A "Canceled" Synod?

June 10, 2021

“Christians who can no longer listen to one another will soon no longer be listening to God either ..."

connection

Unfathomable Interrelationship

April 24, 2021

If you feel these days like anxiety is literally in the air, you might be right ...

Writing

Literary Efforts to Magnify the Word

April 15, 2021

...writing is rewriting. Christian writers recognize that the Bible is the only perfect book ever written. Our writing is imperfect, worthy of critique and yet hopefully helpful to readers in showings something of the truth, beauty, and goodness of our Savior.

easter

"Jesus and Resurrection? What's This Babbler Trying to Say?"

April 03, 2021

But this accidental tourism soon turns sour: “the city was full of idols.” That discovery drives him to do what he loves best: he preaches. This piqued the attention of the philosophers...

Hermeneutics

Fighting our way out of Forced Perspectives

February 11, 2021

What Scriptural words from our Savior are staring us straight in the heart while, under the influence of unexamined, forced perspective, we let our eyes pass over them, time and time again?

new year

"...and a happy new year"?

December 31, 2020

This year we must resolve by God’s grace to distinguish between ungodly anger and godly anger, to put the former to death, and to feel and employ the latter only when necessary.

Christian Liberty

Disabling Idolatry

October 31, 2020

All of the deprivations we’re enduring provide an abundance of opportunity to identify with, serve, and learn from those different from us. May we never squander opportunities for empathy on prideful personal entitlement!

culture

Mandates, Meaningful Ministry, and Martyr Complexes

September 10, 2020

When we pull the spiritual fire alarm every time the ideological temperature goes up in our culture, we lose the ability to recognize and respond biblically to the true emergencies.

James

Privilege Matters, Part 2: Autonomous Anonymous

July 09, 2020

As believers, our response to allegations of systemic sin in society must not be knee-jerk defensiveness; instead, we must drop to our knees in humble self-examination before the law of our loving Savior.

James

Privilege Matters, Part 1

June 11, 2020

... how dehumanizing must it feel to not even be able to say that the lives of people like you actually matter without being corrected ...

Ahmaud Arbery

Doing Righteousness with Indignation

May 14, 2020

The Psalms encourage, engender, and express the “patience of the saints” (Revelation 13:10) and the imprecatory Psalms let us voice how hard it is to have and maintain. In our culture, we need these patience-inspiring, peace-seeking Psalms now, rather urgently.

pandemic

Wri(gh)ting a Wrong

April 03, 2020

...in itself, agnosticism is not a more authentic state of mournfulness, much less is it a more Christian state of lament.

Coronavirus

To Meet, or Not to Meet: Is it even a question?

March 18, 2020

How contrary to a shepherd’s heart! To move away from the sheep, when they feel and sometimes are most vulnerable! And oh my, the weight of what one beloved, seasoned pastor calls “the guilt of the unpaid visit”!

eschatology

"It's the End of the World As We Know it," and Calvin would feel fine (albeit slightly chippy) ...

March 12, 2020

Christians among the most materially blessed people in the world and in history advocate an eschatology that gets us off the planet before “things get really bad.” Try selling that “end times” theory to Christians in ancient Rome’s gladiator arenas! Or now, to Christians in North Korea.

Paternity, Prepositions, and Painful Prayers

January 09, 2020

This week while taking a wonderful class in apologetics, I came in the assigned reading to a soul-nourishing statement from Francis Schaeffer, one with loads of import for apologetic methodology. In his 1968

James 1

(Anti)Virtue-Signaling

December 12, 2019

Virtue-signaling is a vicious, ever-present temptation for preachers and teachers of God’s Word. How can we, especially in our day, publicly promote righteousness without being and sounding self-righteous?

good advice

The Best Advice I've Gotten All Semester . . .

November 14, 2019

I’ve been privileged these past many months to be a student again, and as such to sit under some fine, soul-stretching, heart-and-mind enriching teaching. The semester is at its most intense with

Man up, Men!

October 10, 2019

Not content to let these works stand on their own, subject to scholarly scrutiny as any published work is, some of our brothers have subjected these sisters - who operate firmly within a Reformed and even Westminsterian framework, no less! - to ad hominem attacks ad nauseum.

God Breathed

"After Further Review ..."

September 12, 2019

This review comes from Laura Cerbus, a fellow teacher and a writer on theological and practical topics, with the particular focus of demonstrating that the latter is bound up in and required by the former.

narcissism

"A Comprehensive, Cathartic Compendium of Crass Self-Promotion" Or: “Buy My Book (several times, please)”

August 08, 2019

Promoting one’s own work is both frustratingly difficult and disturbingly easy.

Post-Christian culture, millenials, music, young adults

Playlist for Pastors / Or: Put Down the Books and Pick Up the Earbuds

July 11, 2019

As teachers and preachers, we must be every bit as concerned with how we’re heard as we are with what we say. Listening to lyrics such as these can help.

Westminster Confession

Patronizing Pastors - or: Capitalism meets Catechism

June 13, 2019

One of the blessings of being at any Synod meeting is the plethora of book tables available to peruse and from which to purchase unwise amounts of printed wisdom. (“I might need this someday!” is a favorite excuse among us pastor-types).

Puritanism, preaching, postmodernism, KJV, post-Christian

(Re)Incarnational Ministry?

March 13, 2019

Preaching to the spiritually dead (Ezekiel 37, Ephesians 2) does not mean preaching to the ghosts of the past.

Good Grief

February 13, 2019

So many have felt and continue to endure this kind of searing pain, or other potential soul-breakers, and Liesel has made it a professional priority to walk alongside such people by way of her work and the online writing I’ll share with you ...

suffering, sympathy, empathy, redemption

A Sympathy for Empathy

January 10, 2019

I can do absolutely nothing to know that pain from my children’s perspective, much less to lift it from them and bear it myself. But I’d do it in a heartbeat if it were possible. I can help them in some ways, but in no way can I actually be them.