Building on the Foundation

  B.O. What do you smell like to other people? Do you smell bad? We wear deodorant, perfume, cologne, and all kinds of other things to avoid the occurrence where someone might accidentally smell a bad odor emanating from our person. We want to smell good to others, especially in a world where the natural odor of the body is all but forgotten.  Just like animals, humans emit pheromones, and those natural odors contain information about us that other humans can interpret. Specific odors carry information about our physical health, our sexual readiness, and even about whether we are male or female.  We wear deodorant, perfume, and cologne to cover natural body odors—because in today’s world, even our God-designed scent is considered unpleasant.  But what if that effort to cover up applies not just physically, but spiritually?  What if, without realizing it, we are masking our spiritual scent in order to blend into the world? Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m thankful fo...

In the midst of revising my post on authority in the church (after a lot of feedback and more study), I realized that the main change to that post would be a great standalone article as well. There seems to be a lot of ideas about how churches should function, who should run them, what can be done inside the official meetings of those churches, etc, but one huge question remains that defines all those other things.  What is the “Church?”  I think we often think of a church as something we go to, and actually, that’s not terribly far from the truth, but in a different way than it’s often thought of. A church isn’t the building, a church isn’t even an organization, and a church isn’t exactly the people either. All of the mistaken ideas of what a church is come from a poor translation of the words used for church in the New Testament. In fact, the idea of a church, to hear many speak of it, seems to have sprung into existence out of nothing immediately upon the events of Acts 2....