by Bill Farley | Nov 9, 2020 | Culture, theology
WESTERN CULTURE IS SHAKING. It is a time of significant social instability. The death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis Police unleashed a torrent of rage. Large segments of our society have demonstrated, even rioted, for something enigmatically called...
by Bill Farley | May 30, 2020 | theology
God’s Passion For His Glory Wm. P. Farley (This essay originally appeared in Discipleship Journal in 2002 and won an EPA prize) I TRIED TO CONSTRUCT A JIGSAW PUZZLE of a stone bridge arched over a lazy summer stream, but I had little success. Hundreds of pieces...
by Bill Farley | Apr 21, 2020 | The Word of God, theology
FOR MANY CHRISTIANS TODAY, the five books of the Pentateuch are fly-over country—especially Leviticus. Written at least 3,000 years ago, it feels foreign to the modern mind. Pages of detailed regulations about blood sacrifice, dietary laws, swift and violent...
by Bill Farley | Sep 18, 2019 | church history, Human Nature, Pride, Sin, theology
LIFE IN FOURTH CENTURY ROME WAS DIFFICULT AT BEST. The population was about 1 million. The next largest city was 300,000. Rodney Stark, in his book Cities of God, notes that “Roman cities were small, extremely crowded, filthy beyond imagining, disorderly,...
by mark | Aug 1, 2019 | Sanctification, theology, Uncategorized
This is part one in a series of posts on the subject of God and what he is really like. Sequential posts will follow. THE IDEA FOR THIS SERIES germinated in my thinking thirty years ago. At the time I was struggling to reconcile the apparent wrath and brutality of God...
by Bill Farley | Jul 15, 2019 | love, marriage, theology
MANY PEOPLE DEFINE LOVE IN THEIR OWN TERMS. It is a feeling. It is a sexual attraction. It is primarily an affection. But biblical love is more complex. We dare not make up our own ideas about it. Instead, we look at Christ. “God is love” (1 John 3:16), and Jesus is...