Roots by the River

"In the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you" (Matt. 7:2). The ability to be critical is a valuable skill, but it can be either good or bad. Like all tools, what matters is how you use it . The first meaning of critic in the dictionary is “a person who forms or expresses judgments of people or things according to certain standards or values.” [1] There is nothing wrong with the abili­ty to critique in this way. We do it all the time, and we need to. There are critics in art, music, education, and government. Civilization requires critical people to keep us in line; otherwise, we would slump to an awful place. Another meaning of critic is “someone who cen­sures or finds fault.” When that is done well, it is alright. You can legitimately find fault with something that is bad. The process of criticism itself is not a problem. A critical mind is necessary. But having a critical spirit is another thing entir...

by Larry Lucas (continued from 9/2) When you begin to look for the truth about Jesus, there’s an unsettling sound that starts to develop in the background. It’s as though we have spent our lives walking along a railroad track, day after day, mile after mile; it’s all we’ve ever known. And now the track has led us beyond the noise of the city. Our hearing has become more sensitive. We could always hear the wind; now we hear the breeze. We sense light movements. And now, in the farthest reaches of our hearing, we become aware of a train. It’s Jesus talking about what comes next, after this life ceases: “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his throne in heavenly glory. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left. Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are bles...

  by Larry Lucas (continued from 8/31) The four accounts mentioned above are named for their authors: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Mark’s profession is never mentioned, but Matthew was a tax collector, Luke was a physician, and John was a fisherman. Jesus called John to come and follow him at the very beginning of his ministry. He told John he’d make him a fisher of men. So John, along with his brother James, left his father Zebedee in the boat and took out after Jesus. They never turned back. The most explicit statements Jesus made about himself are concentrated in the Gospel of John. It’s there that you’ll most often find Jesus using the defining phrase “I am.” If you want to know what Jesus said about himself, it doesn’t get any more basic and to-the-point than this. Here, from the Gospel of John, is Jesus talking about who he is: “Then Jesus declared, ‘I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty’” (John 6:35...

by Larry Lucas   Three thousand years ago, a king named Solomon ruled in a land east of the Mediterranean Sea. That was 30 centuries ago. Since then, kingdoms large and small have regularly risen, flourished, and disappeared—and their rulers with them. Of all those kings, few are widely remembered, but Solomon is one of them. The curious thing though, is why he is remembered. Other names endure because of what they accomplished—they conquered, they built, they fended off. Not Solomon: he is remembered for a quality he possessed, and because he possessed more of it than any one before him or anyone since. That quality was wisdom . This post isn’t about Solomon. It’s about Jesus. However, the way you think about Jesus, what He said, what He did, or whether you’ll even give Him a hearing, has everything to do with wisdom—the very quality Solomon owned above all others. Wisdom is not the same as knowledge. The distinction is important, especially in an age when the process of acqu...

by W. Robert Smith, Th.D. Christianity is a body of facts, it is the interpretation of those facts, but more than that, it is a way of life. Christianity says something about how a man treats his wife and his child; it says something about whether a man is honest in his work, about how he pays his taxes, how he spends his time, about his attitudes of life, whether he is kind and loving, generous and patient, whether he is jealous or has a self-centered ambition. It says something about his aspirations and the purity of his thoughts, about his relationship to the church of Jesus Christ, about how he loves his fellow men, about how he spends his money and makes his money, about how much he charges for his services. Christianity deals with government, politics, medicine, philosophy. Christianity is a way of life which is supposed to dominate every aspect of a person’s being: "Be ye therefore followers of God, as dear children; And walk in love as Christ also hath loved us, and hath...

by W. Robert Smith, Th.D. Two young men who had fought side by side in the mud and blood of the Anzio Beachhead and were now enjoying life together on a college campus stopped at my desk one day after a class in logic. “Professor,” one of them said, “we are grateful for what you said today, only we wish you had said it about two weeks ago.”   This must be a rare day, I thought, as I asked, “What was so interesting about what was said today?”    “Well,” he explained, “you were saying how necessary it is to define terms. About two weeks ago we got into a bull session that turned into a hot debate. About three in the morning, when we were getting wild-eyed and desperate, we accidentally discovered that we were using different words to describe the same idea and actually we agreed. If we had thought to define our terms, we wouldn’t have lost that sleep.” These men illustrate the need for clear definition of terms. How often we use two different words for the s...