Blog - Page 102 of 318 - John H Armstrong

Chronic Fatigue and the Challenge to Education

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:17:12-05:00September 27th, 2011|Categories: Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Personal|

A recent article in the Wall Street Journal underscored the problems schools and parents face whose children suffer from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS). Amy Marcus tells the sad story of increased conflicts between parents and school districts as they seek to educate children with CFS who cannot cope with the daily routines of class and study.

By federal law public schools are required to provide a “free appropriate public education” in the “least restrictive environment” to children with special needs. But is CFS a “special need?” Most agree that it is. But it was not always this way. Until the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDPC) took CFS seriously this was not the case, perhaps for several decades at least. The CDCP estimates that one million Americans have CFS. As many of you know I am one of those Americans.

Amy Marcus correctly says CFS is a condition characterized by debilitating pain and severe fatigue, among a cluster of other related symptoms. These related symptoms include many […]

God Is Looking for Man

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:17:12-05:00September 26th, 2011|Categories: Jesus, Scripture|

I have always thought one of the more impressive and important things our Lord ever uttered is recorded in Luke 17:10. Here he says:

Jesus entered Jericho and was passing through. A man was there by the name of Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax collector and was wealthy. He wanted to see who Jesus was, but because he was short he could not see over the crowd. So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore-fig tree to see him, since Jesus was coming that way.

When Jesus reached the spot, he looked up and said to him, “Zacchaeus, come down immediately. I must stay at your house today.” So he came down at once and welcomed him gladly.

All the people saw this and began to mutter, “He has gone to be the guest of a sinner.”

But Zacchaeus stood up and said to the Lord, “Look, Lord! Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount.”

Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, because this […]

The Challenges of Unity in the Local Parish

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:17:12-05:00September 25th, 2011|Categories: Unity of the Church|

I am regularly told that the biblical doctrine of unity is primarily about the unity of the local church, not the universal or global church. I reject this distinction as false. But I also want to challenge the notion that somehow evangelical churches are united in the way Jesus and the apostles taught.

Congregations face many challenges today but none more difficult than that posed by the American phenomenon of individualism. In a culture where fewer and fewer people do fewer and fewer communal activities our faith in Christ still calls upon us to live and serve as one. Without liturgy churches are even more prone to abject, privatized individualism being the ubiquitous sea in which the church functions week-to-week. Most evangelical churches do not celebrate weekly communion, they rarely participate in actions and practices that unite their people in mission and they infrequently pray together as a church. What is left is a large gathering of individuals who come to be “fed” and “helped” by a preacher […]

“I’m Not Religious, but I Am Spiritual”

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:17:12-05:00September 24th, 2011|Categories: Spirituality|

Brian McLaren, in his new book Naked Spirituality, raises this intriguing question: Why do so many people say “I’m not religious but I am spiritual . . .” And what do they mean when they say this to us or to others?

McLaren reasons that he began as a religious young man but he was plunged into spirituality one night under the stars where he countered the living God in an experience that he describes with great care and caution. He then says a lot of folks he meets feel a real tension between religion and spirituality. I have discovered the same thing in my conversations and experiences with people. Brian says he follows this comment with a question and I’ve done the same. “I’m curious. What do you mean by ‘spiritual’?”

Brian says that four answers come up again and again. As I read these I ticked off each one and said, “That is precisely what I’ve also discovered.”

First, people say “I’m spiritual” with reference to secular science, politics […]

Naked Spirituality: A Life with God in 12 Simple Steps

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:17:12-05:00September 23rd, 2011|Categories: Books, Emergent Church, Spirituality|

I have read about half of Brian McLaren’s published books. Some have moved me and some have left me puzzled and have not proven entirely helpful. Brian is an eloquent man, a good thinker and a serious Christian. My personal relationship with Brian has included both private and public conversations. He has always proven to be vulnerable, gentle and receptive.

When Brian’s well-known book, Generous Orthodoxy, was published I read it with great interest. I even required a grad class of mine to read it as one of our texts. There is much in it to like. There is some in it to question. I think Brian intends this, at least so far as I understand both his thinking and his writing style. Eventually, I decided to devote a serious group of review articles to this book that were published in our quarterly journals. (The journal is no longer published, sadly. It suffered the fate of most print journals during the last five years or so. If you […]

Overregulation Cuts Across Both Parties: The Real Danger of Xenophobia

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:17:12-05:00September 22nd, 2011|Categories: America and Americanism, Current Affairs, Immigration, Politics|

Republicans routinely criticize the Obama administration for overregulation. I believe this criticism is just in many instances. It is interesting to see this administration back away from a whole host of regulations in the present recession because they realize (pragmatically) they cannot defend these and be re-elected in this bad economy.

But the Republicans are sometimes guilty of the same problem, just in different ways. Consider the immigration issue. Recently the House Republicans have made noise about trying to counter the costs of their own version of restrictive policies. The House Judiciary Chairman Lamar Smith has routinely fought what he calls “cheap foreign labor.” One of Smith’s pet political projects is to harass American business into becoming the line of defense in keeping immigration laws in force. The Texas congressman recently introduced what is called the Legal Workforce Act, a bill that would require employees to run the names and Social Security numbers of all new hires through E-Verify, a federal database. Employees can use E-Verify voluntarily at […]

Why We Do Evangelism: What Does Hell Have to Do with It?

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:17:13-05:00September 21st, 2011|Categories: Evangelism, Theology|

In the recent debates about hell, stirred by the book Love Wins and the various blogs, articles and books now written in response to Rob Bell, I have heard many rather ridiculous arguments and statements on every side of this debate. At some point I may say more but there is one argument I want to take up today that I’ve heard all my life and find completely lacking in biblical evidence.

The argument goes like this—if people are lost eternally without consciously knowing and hearing about Jesus then if we remove this doctrinal point, namely that they must “hear” or they will burn in hell forever, we destroy the/a primary motive for our doing evangelism. My point here is not to open Pandora’s Box about the destiny of the un-evangelized but rather to ask a simple question: “Is this motive about saving people from hell who have not heard really a necessary and biblically given motive for evangelism?” So far as I can tell it is not.

To […]

Friday Night Lights Gets Much Deserved Recognition

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:17:13-05:00September 20th, 2011|Categories: Culture, Film|

Several friends pointed out to me on Monday that my favorite television series, Friday Night Lights, was one of the big surprises at the Emmy Awards ceremony Sunday evening. Not only did Friday Night Lights win for best program for its final season (in its five-year run) but it also won for best dramatic actor, Kyle Chandler who was the brilliant Coach Taylor, and for the best drama writing, Jason Katims, who was the first executive producer and head writer.

Jason Katims gave a speech described by a media source as “lovely [and] graceful” and ended it with the most famous line of the whole series: "Clear eyes, full hearts, can't lose." This memorable line, for those of you who have yet to see this series, is Coach Taylor’s great line used repeatedly at moments of intense drama just before his team took the field to play an important football game! Katims won his award for writing the show's finale, titled: “Always.” Personally, I believe this was the […]

The Power of the Word

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:17:13-05:00September 19th, 2011|Categories: Missional-Ecumenism, Roman Catholicism, Scripture, Spirituality, The Church|

Several weeks ago I wrote a blog about the authority of Scripture and how the church has disagreed about the role that tradition and the Catholic Magisterium have in forming the doctrine of the church. I made particular reference to the teaching of the Catholic Magisterium and they differed with the magisterial Protestant Reformers. The main reason I wrote that particular piece was to show one of the reasons why I was not a Catholic. Another reason I wrote was to show that one could hold to the final authority of Scripture without holding to the typically fundamentalist views of the Bible many conservative Catholic apologists accuse Protestants of holding to even when they clearly deny these views. My blog was not meant to be a polemic against Catholics, or even Catholicism, even though I am not persuaded by the Catholic argument at all. It was meant to be more of a confession about my own journey and understanding than anything else. It was a type of statement that very simply stated why I remain where I am in terms of the church. Most readers understood […]

Brothers and Sisters Pray for Me

By John Armstrong|2021-07-02T06:17:13-05:00September 18th, 2011|Categories: ACT 3, Personal|

I write today, on the Lord’s Day of September 18, 2011, asking you to pray for me personally. Unashamedly I request your intercession in your corporate worship today and in your private intercession as well. Why?

1. I am a simple servant of the living God, like you, and thus I need the prayers of all God’s people. Revelation 5:6-8 says:

Then I saw a Lamb, looking as if it had been slain, standing at the center of the throne, encircled by the four living creatures and the elders. The Lamb had seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God sent out into all the earth. He went and took the scroll from the right hand of him who sat on the throne. And when he had taken it, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb. Each one had a harp and they were holding golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of God’s people.

The metaphor used here is of a golden bowl full of incense offered to The Lamb on the throne—Jesus. These bowls are […]