Jeremy Miller

I struggle to understand people my age and older who have no regrets, I have many. But…the grace of Jesus is everything. @RosedaleBibleCo

[Dr. Michael J. Svigel @Svigel]

Theology 101: When the wise back away from arguments with fools, fools always think it’s because they won the argument. No, it’s because the wise have better things to do than feed the folly of fools.

[Jeremy Miller @jeremy_t_miller]

@ryanpost So good!

[L. David Fairchild @David_Fairchild]

I’ve thought a lot about the Lindsay Clancy case, especially after watching the public response to it, and I keep coming back to a basic question: How should Christians think about something like this biblically?

I want to be really careful here because I don’t deny the reality of mental illness. I’ve been a pastor for 25 years and have walked with people through some extraordinarily difficult psychological suffering. My own wife struggled with postpartum depression after the birth of our second child. So I’m not minimizing psychological disorde, or pretending that what happens in a person’s mind doesn’t matter. But I’m increasingly concerned that we’ve begun to impose modern psychological categories on the Bible that the Bible itself simply doesn’t allow.

Lindsay Clancy killed her 3 children. She’s admitted that she did it. The controversy has become whether her psychological condition means she should ultimately be held responsible for what she did. And this is where I find myself struggling with the categories our culture increasingly uses, because I don’t see Scripture creating a separate moral category in which psychological impairment removes responsibility for an intentional act.

When the Bible deals with homicide, the distinction it repeatedly makes isn’t between a psychologically healthy person and a psychologically unhealthy person. The distinction is between intentional and unintentional killing. Numbers 35, Exodus 21, and Deuteronomy 19 are clear about this. Someone who causes another person’s death accidentally is treated differently from someone who intentionally kills. Deuteronomy speaks about the murderer who hates his neighbor, “lies in wait,” attacks him, and kills him. Exodus speaks of someone who “willfully attacks another to kill him.” The question being asked is whether the killing was deliberate. And when deliberate murder is established, Scripture treats it with tremendous seriousness.

Genesis 9:6 grounds this all the way back in creation: “Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image.” Human life is sacred because human beings bear God’s image. Murder isn’t merely a violation of a social contract. It’s an assault upon someone who belongs to God and bears His image. That’s important when we’re talking about 3 little children.

Scripture certainly recognizes that people can be profoundly disturbed. Saul is probably one of the clearest examples. He becomes increasingly irrational, is himself tormented, jealous, paranoid, and violent. Yet when Saul picks up a spear and attempts to kill David, Scripture still says Saul threw the spear. His internal condition may help us understand why he behaved as he did, but the Bible never turns Saul’s condition into the responsible moral agent.

Saul did it. Explanation of his condition isn’t exculpation.

A psychological diagnosis may explain something about why someone commits a terrible act. It may tell us something about what they were experiencing, how they were thinking, what pressures or delusions were present, or what kind of treatment they desperately needed. Those can all be legitimate questions. But somewhere along the way we’ve begun allowing explanations to function as absolution. And I don’t think Scripture does that.

The Bible gives us all sorts of descriptions of the conditions under which people sin. People act in fear. They act in anger. They’re deceived. They’re drunk. They’re jealous. They’re hardened. They’re tormented. They’re ignorant. They’re emotionally overwhelmed. Some are even possessed. Scripture takes those things seriously, but it continues attaching the verbs to the person. Cain killed Abel. Saul threw the spear. David took Bathsheba and arranged Uriah’s death. Judas betrayed Jesus. And Herod killed John.

People remain moral agents even when there are powerful factors influencing their behavior.

Part 1/2

[Dr. Michael J. Svigel @Svigel]

Folks, there’s something we need to discuss, and it’s going to be hard to hear. In some churches, we have an acute worship song leader problem. Many aren’t leading others in singing but performing for others in ways that make congregational singing challenging. When a lead singer engages in rhythmic displacement, unexpected syncopation, melodic embellishment, lyrical improvisation, and vocalization only professionals can pull off, this isn’t leading worship. At best, it’s performance. Or worse, it’s showing off. From now on if this is happening, I’m not even going to try to sing along. I’m going to be quiet and listen and enjoy the show, because at that point it’s just entertainment, and I’m the audience.

[Michael Clary @dmichaelclary]

In the Screwtape letters, CS Lewis anticipated what some corners of Christian discourse on X would become.

Screwtape instructed Wormwood:

"Your patient must demand that all his own utterances are to be taken at face value and judged simply on the actual words, while at the same time judging his [opponent's] utterances with the fullest and most over-sensitive interpretation of the tone and context and the suspected intention...

Hence from every quarrel they can both go away convinced, or nearly convinced, that they are quite innocent...

Once this habit is well established you have the delightful situation of a human saying things with the express purpose of offending and yet having a grievance when offence is taken."

[Gretchen Ronnevik @garonnevik]

"High status" isn't a Christian thing.
Quite the opposite, actually.
Also, maybe don't treat people by their worldly status. God isn't even looking at that.

[Paul David Tripp @PaulTripp]

We lose heart because we anchor our hope in the wrong things.
Have you? I know I have!

[Jeremy Miller @jeremy_t_miller]

@drantbradley True…it is past time for something different

[Paul David Tripp @PaulTripp]

The Bible is clear that whatever controls our heart will exercise inescapable influence over our words, choices, and actions. That one thing will shape and direct our responses to the situations, locations, and relationships of daily life.

If the Lord Almighty isn't our one thing, something elese will become our functional lord. Whether for a moment, a day, a month, a season, or for many years, this one thing will exercise dominion over us in some way, shape, or form.

[Michael Foster @thisisfoster]

Wisdom is learning to live joyfully within the boundaries God has given.

A mature man doesn’t resent his limits; he accepts them as gifts from the Creator and faithfully works within them.

[Dr. Michael J. Svigel @Svigel]

Theology 101: The authentic Christian life is more like wagon-training on the Oregon Trail than resort-hopping at Disney World.

[Dr. Michael J. Svigel @Svigel]

Theology 101: Belligerent party politics and culture-war tribalism are the last refuges of a people who have lost hope in the power of the gospel preached and lived to transform lives, families, communities, cultures, and the world.

[Melissa the Hopeful🏠Homemaker @BiblicalBeauty]

Steven Bartlett, host of the podcast, The Diary of a CEO, released an interview with Christian apologist, John Lennox, this week, and his closing comments to him were fascinating:

"One of the most compelling arguments for God that you've presented (and your way of seeing the world and being) is not actually necessarily anything you've written in your books or not not necessarily anything you've said. It is actually you.

You have a certain peace and contentment that I rarely see in people that I interview, but I often see, and I've almost always seen, in the Christians that I've interviewed, and this is a interesting phenomenon for me...it seems to be a trend that a lot of the Christian apologists that I've interviewed have that anchoring that so many of us are looking for."

What a great witness.

Link to interview below

[Jeremy Miller @jeremy_t_miller]

@MattCas04807118 To whom is this preacher preaching if not to lost souls such as these?

[Jeremy Miller @jeremy_t_miller]

Kingdom truth: “if you show partiality (to the rich), you are committing sin.” - James 2:9

Tension point: fundraising is a significant part of my job.

Key aim: love ALL my neighbors as myself.

God help me

[Jeremy Miller @jeremy_t_miller]

Life truth: “Be quick to hear, slow to speak, and slow to anger; for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God.” - James 1:19-20

[Jeremy Miller @jeremy_t_miller]

Life truth: “keep your life free from the love of money, and be content with what you have” - Heb. 13:5

[Jeremy Miller @jeremy_t_miller]

Foundational truth: “What is seen was not made out of things that are visible.” Heb. 11:3

[Neil Shenvi @NeilShenvi]

I see people lamenting the lack of "evangelical elites" so here's my perspective:

I graduated from Princeton summa cum laude and then went to UC Berkeley for a PhD in theoretical chemistry. My career was all planned out: awards, academia, prestige.

Then I became a Christian 1/

[Jeremy Miller @jeremy_t_miller]

When everything in life becomes a question of economic advancement, life losses meaning and purpose.