R. A. Snider, developing

The devil loves to obfuscate, to blur and obscure clear vision and plain understanding, and he loves to do so with grand visions, pointless diversions, irrelevant details, and positive oceans of words. Red herrings, all of them.

In Stephen King’s 1977 genre-leaping novel The Gunslinger, the titular character and protagonist, Roland, pursues an archetypal bad guy for the duration of the story, just as he has for decades. When he finally catches up with the him - a sorcerer who goes by several names (naturally) - he enchants Roland with a grand, sprawling narrative about scale and the size of the cosmos, the interconnectedness of dimensions and realities, the mysteries of the Dark Tower, and of God, and even manages to make it at least partly about himself, the sorcerer. As readers, we are caught up in this narrative, enchanted by it almost as much as Roland...

R. A. Snider, developing

There are categorical differences between the things we do, and people have a habit of jumbling these things up. I posit a commitment hierarchy, populated in ascending order by interests, hobbies, occupations, careers, and callings, and men and women are forever confusing them with one another; not so much interests and hobbies, but certainly occupations, careers and callings. “Career”, a word for which I’ve developed an intense dislike bordering on hatred (for its persistent misuse), is one of the great idols of the modern age. (Honestly, what farmer ever called farming his “career”? To be certain, it is his career, but he’d hardly call it that. It’s simply what he does, and has always done, and will always do until his days are done.) It has become practically synonymous with “religion”, or “god”, in the minds of 21st century working men and women, some...

Christian, when you overcome some especially difficult or even tenacious enemy, some sin that has taken you at will over and over again, or some awful weight that has dragged at your heals for years, you may for a time find yourself feeling unmoored, disconnected, aimless, or even empty. Perhaps even broken in some way. This is only a feeling, and a temporary feeling at that. It’s not unlike the feeling of “spent-ness” one feels in the sickbed near the end of a long convalescence. Strength returns. Life returns. Those who wait on the LORD will renew their strength. This is a promise, as certain as the dawn, no matter how much time may pass. If you, as a Believer, keep your way pure, not returning to that which you have overcome, your strength in the LORD will return in time, and you will stand victorious, wiser, stronger, and more resolute than ever. Your self-confidence will be greater...

“Judge not according to the appearance, but judge righteous judgment.”
Jesus, Gospel of John 7.24

Judge, but judge righteously.

Judge, but without superiority or worse, supremacy.

Judge, but lean toward judging actions more than people.

Judge, but judge cautiously, remembering that you seldom, if ever, know all the facts.

Judge, but without hypocrisy; be certain of your own innocence on the same matter first (Matthew 7.1-2).

Judge, but sparingly; it can all too easily become a full-time job.

Judge, but without compromise, else your judgment is for sale and you have become a judge with evil thoughts (James 2.4).

Judge, but don’t love judgment. Love mercy. There will always come an hour when you’ll need mercy yourself.

…and other such holidays.

(Written in the tone of a father holding his two combating sons apart with his bare hands)

Put down your swords, your pitchforks and torches. Silence your outrage and reserve your judgment. Engage both the brain that God gave you, and the Spirit within you, and let’s get some discernment going.

Neither of you are wrong. The apostle Paul, writing by inspiration of the Holy Ghost, told us in his letter to the Roman church:

“Him that is weak in the faith receive ye, but not to doubtful disputations. For one believeth that he may eat all things: another, who is weak, eateth herbs. Let not him that eateth despise him that eateth not; and let not him which eateth not judge him that eateth: for God hath received him. Who art thou that judgest another man’s servant? to his own master he standeth or falleth. Yea, he shall be holden up: for God is able to make him...

You don’t know it all. No one does. And just when you think you have a previously unrevealed mystery figured out and nailed down, be sure you do not.

Do you think you understand the full mystery of the trinity of God? You don’t. Do you think you understand the relationship between human free will and the divine foreknowledge of God? You don’t. No one knows fully, only in part.

Concerning such mysteries, what you have, at best, is a snap-shot of the tip of an iceberg. Don’t presume you understand its depth and breadth. What you have, at worst, is an untestable hypothesis that may even be heretical, and you wouldn’t be the first.

Walk, therefore, in humility on such issues. Don’t fall in love with your own knowledge or your own ideas. Stay in love with Jesus, with God, and let mysteries be mysteries. Keep the simplicity of the Faith as did the first disciples and the apostles, and model...

Evil is nothing more than an overriding self-will. That’s it. It is not necessarily a malevolent act, but it is certainly the soil out of which grow all the malevolent and sinful acts of the human race.

Evil, in its most basic state, is that condition in which a person resides when they are desirous of pursuing, or willing to pursue, their own interests without regard to laws, ordinances, rules, authorities, damages to others, or to the self. It is that condition in which a person is a law to their own self, a god to their own self, and it is that condition into which every human being is born from the womb – higher than animals, but with a corrupted nature; little gods not perfect.

This is the whole definition of evil, for out of this condition come at once the most monstrous acts of the world’s most evil men and women, and the most banal acts of the passively selfish.

From “My Utmost for His Highest”…

“Cast thy burden upon the Lord. PSALM 55:22
We must distinguish between the burden-bearing that is right and the burden-bearing that is wrong. We ought never to bear the burden of sin or of doubt, but there are burdens placed on us by God which He does not intend to lift off, He wants us to roll them back on Him. ‘Cast what He hath given thee upon the Lord’ (rv mg).”

Oswald Chambers spoke of distinguishing between two different kinds of burden-bearing, and a recurring theme lately in our church has been that of an exchange of responsibilities. These are not dissimilar.

The burden we should never bear, according to Chambers, is that of sin or doubt. He is right. That burden, that responsibility, is the kind we cannot bear, because the end of it is judgment and the fiery indignation of the Lord. What we exchange that unbearable responsibility for is...

A brief disputation against the philosophy of Felix Culpa
R. A. Snider for the Body of Christ

The philosophy of Felix Culpa (Happy Fault) states, in essence, that the Fall of Man  - that ruinous rebellion of Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden  - was ultimately joyous because it set in motion the plan of redemption that gained for the Believer and the whole human race far more than was lost in the Fall.

While this philosophy accurately recognizes the ultimate state of the Believer as more blessed than the state of Man in his innocence before the Fall, the philosophy itself should be rejected on the basis of its evident disregard for the ultimate state of the Unbeliever.

This state — that of eternal separation from God and of everlasting torment in a sea of fire — is so horrifying to the imagination when considered at length that it should be impossible for anyone capable of human...