Blog
When God Forgets: Forgiving and Forgetting Rightly Understood
Few phrases in the Christian vocabulary are more frequently used and more poorly understood than “forgive and forget.” It appears with great regularity in conversations about reconciliation, and carries an implicit expectation: that genuine forgiveness produces a kind...
Drawing the Line: Why Wise Boundaries Are Not the Same as Bitterness
There is a version of the call to forgiveness that, when applied without nuance, ends up doing harm. It goes something like this: If you have truly forgiven someone, you will restore the relationship to exactly what it was before. Any hesitation to do so, any distance...
Watched by the World: Forgiveness as Gospel Witness
When Paul wrote to Philemon, he did something easy to overlook. He did not address the letter to Philemon alone. He addressed it to Philemon, Apphia, Archippus, and—pointedly—to the church that met in Philemon’s home. This was not a private note slipped discreetly...
Two Different Things: Forgiveness and Reconciliation
One of the most important clarifications a Christian can make when navigating the aftermath of being wronged is the conviction that forgiveness and reconciliation, while deeply related, are not the same thing. Conflating them causes real harm. It leads some people to...
Before Reconciliation: The Posture of Forgiveness
There is a confusion that potentially does a great deal of damage to Christian discipleship. It is the assumption that forgiveness and reconciliation are the same thing—that if reconciliation has not happened, forgiveness has not been extended. This misunderstanding...
Bible study porn: The role of community in Bible study
When Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel was released in 2013, one reviewer critiqued its closing act as “violence porn.” Bryan Singer’s 2006 Superman Returns had been criticised as light on action. Snyder overcorrected with Man of Steel. The excessive action included a final...