A while back, Australian-American billionaire Rupert Murdoch said that all Muslims need to be held responsible for jihadist attacks against the West.  This comment quickly prompted J. K. Rowling, who claims to a Christian by virtue of her birth in England, to offer this sarcastic apology: “The Spanish Inquisition was my fault.”  Oh yes, the Spanish Inquisition! Many years ago, a graduate student v...  Read More

Romans 16:1I commend unto you Phebe our sister, which is a servant [diakonos in Greek from which the English word “deacon/deaconess” is derived] of the church which is at Cenchrea.I have a very famous cousin who grew up attending church but has long left the faith. When asked why, he said it was due to the poor treatment of women taught in Scripture and practiced by the church. That response remin...  Read More

1 Kings 21:5-7, 15-16 (ESV)But Jezebel his wife came to him and said to him, “Why is your spirit so vexed that you eat no food?” 6 And he said to her, “Because I spoke to Naboth the Jezreelite and said to him, ‘Give me your vineyard for money, or else, if it please you, I will give you another vineyard for it.’ And he answered, ‘I will not give you my vineyard.’” 7 And Jezebel his wife said to him...  Read More

Ephesians 5:22-23 (ESV)Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. 23 For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior . . . let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.Robert G. Ingersoll, “The Great Agnostic” of the 19th century, once quipped, “As long as women regard...  Read More

1 Timothy 2:11-12 (ESV)“Let a woman learn quietly with all submissiveness. 12 I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet.”1 Corinthians 11:3 (NASB)“But I want you to understand that Christ is the head of every man, and the man is the head of a woman, and God is the head of Christ.”Among the hundreds of pastors in Mexico whom the Lord allowe...  Read More

1 Corinthians 14:34-35 (NIV)“Women should remain silent [sigaō] in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the law says. 35 If they want to inquire about something, they should ask their own husbands at home; for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church.”1 Timothy 2:11a (ESV)“I do not permit a woman to teach . . . over a man.”The only time I ever apol...  Read More

1 Timothy 2:11 (NIV)“A woman should learn in quietness and full submission.  I do not permit a woman to teach or have authority over man; she must be silent.”1 Corinthians 14:34-35 (NIV)“Women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission, as the law says. 35 If they want to inquire about something, they should ask their own husbands at home; for it...  Read More

Joshua 20:1-3 (ESV)Then the Lord said to Joshua, 2 “Say to the people of Israel, ‘Appoint the cities of refuge, of which I spoke to you through Moses, 3 that the manslayer who strikes any person without intent or unknowingly may flee there. They shall be for you a refuge from the avenger of blood.”The Yali people, pygmy cannibals in Papua, Indonesia, had an interesting custom.  Once a man fleeing ...  Read More

Fadel Alkilani, a Washington University student, must have spent several hours removing and then trashing nearly 3,000 American flags displayed on the campus to commemorate 9.11.  His reason: “the 9.11 memorial display was ‘incomplete’ because it did nothing to call attention to the victims of Islamophobia in the U.S., or the civilian casualties in the Middle East as a result of American military ...  Read More

Acts 4:12 (NASB) Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved.A Christian apologist writes, “Christianity is the only true faith, all other religions are of the Devil . . .” Undoubtedly, he will hate what Dwight Eisenhower, the 34th President of the United States (1953-61), once said about religion: “Our government makes no s...  Read More

“The Most High . . . is kind to the ungrateful and wicked” (Lk. 6:35)Whenever I teach missiology, I tell the following story to distinguish between churches that do missions out of missio Dei (mission of God: His tender heart for the nations) and those that do them as annual programs.  While 52 Americans were held hostage in the U.S. Embassy in Iran for 15 months from 1979-1981, many churches were...  Read More

1 Thessalonians 2:7“But we were gentle among you, like a nursing mother taking care of her own children.”Something I said in my preceding blog might have alarmed some readers: “While many social roles and responsibilities are mutually inclusive between the two sexes, they do not always perform at the same level relating to certain tasks attributable to differences in physicality and to a lesser ex...  Read More