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Some questions need more room.
The essays collected here are longer explorations of Scripture, theology, ministry, and the Christian life. They come out of study, pastoral ministry, and questions I have found worth wrestling with more carefully.
I do not offer them as the final word on every subject. My aim is simpler: to think carefully, argue biblically, and handle the Word of God faithfully.
An Essay on General and Special Revelation
It was a beautiful fall day in October. I had taken much of the day to travel up to Potter County, and though I knew that evening I was leading prayer meeting, I wasn’t quite sure what I was going to say during the devotional time. As the miles passed, a thought came into my mind. Some may say I was prompted by the Spirit of God, and to that I cannot argue, I too believe God was directing me. The colors of fall were just starting to bleed through the canopy of green and I knew what God wanted me to share that night. I pulled over on the side of Wykoff Run Road, and got to work. I found a little maple tree and began collecting leaves that had just started to turn the most beautiful yellows, oranges and reds. That night, I handed them to the people gathered in the room and asked them to look at it. Not glance at it. Look at it for several minutes. As we sat quietly and paid attention to something most of us had seen thousands of times before I asked them in their small groups to write down what they noticed; the veins running through it, the variations in color, the texture, the symmetry, the imperfections. All of the little details that disappear when a leaf is merely something beneath our feet.
Then I began asking questions. “What kind of tree did this come from?” That one was easy. A maple. “But what kind of maple tree?” The leaf had revealed something about the tree from which it came. Its shape and veins told them something. Its structure and design gave them enough information to correctly identify its source. Eventually one of the groups spoke up and correctly identified it was a sugar maple. Then I asked another question. “Where is the tree?” There were some guesses, educated guesses too. Some thought I had grabbed it from my tree-stand behind the house, but no one knew for sure. Another question. “How tall is the tree the leaves came from?” They didn’t know that either, but their guesses ranged from 50-100 feet tall. I could have kept the line of questions coming: What did the ground around it look like? Were there other maples nearby? Did its branches stretch over the road? Was it growing in a field, along a stream, or against the edge of the woods? The leaf could not tell them. And yet they were holding something that had actually come from that tree. That little exercise has stayed with me because I think creation works much the same way.
Reconsidering the Parable of the Yeast in Matthew 13:33
The parable of the yeast is one of the shortest parables Jesus tells. It is also one of those passages that can seem so familiar that we rarely stop to ask whether the interpretation we have heard is actually demanded by the text. In Matthew 13:33, Jesus compares the kingdom of heaven to yeast that a woman works into a large quantity of flour until its influence reaches the entire batch.
The most common interpretation today understands the yeast positively. The kingdom begins almost invisibly, but over time its influence spreads throughout the world. Like yeast working quietly through dough, the gospel transforms lives, communities, and eventually reaches the nations.
There is much about that interpretation that is attractive. In fact, for years I preached it, taught it in Bible studies and believed it without hesitation— without questioning that interpretation. However, the more I study Scripture, the more I sit with it and wrestle with common themes and the way the Bible talks about leaven in other places, the more uncomfortable I have become with simply assuming that interpretation. It is not the only way to understand the parable. It leads me to ask a question of the positive interpretation of this parable. Is the interpretation of yeast as a positive element most strongly supported by Scripture?
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