Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 11084 This question carries significant pastoral weight, because many conscientious believers are tormented by thoughts that arrive without invitation, thoughts that horrify them precisely because of how out of character they feel. The person asking this question is usually not looking for an excuse; they are genuinely distressed. Getting the answer right matters. The…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 06030 Envy and jealousy are two of the most uncomfortable emotions to admit to, perhaps because they expose something we would rather keep hidden: a deeply personal resentment of what someone else has, or a wounded sense that something we value has been threatened or taken. The Bible treats these two words differently, and…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 06031 Anger is one of the most contested emotional territories in Christian life. Some believers are taught that any expression of anger is sinful and unspiritual, a failure of self-control that a more mature person would have overcome. Others, reacting against that, treat anger as essentially neutral, requiring no particular scrutiny. Scripture does not…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 11085 Many believers wake troubled by the contents of a dream, carrying a sense of guilt or shame about what their sleeping mind produced. The question of whether dreams can constitute sin requires both theological clarity and pastoral honesty, because anxious people deserve real answers rather than reassurance that skirts the issue. The Nature…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 07070 Apostasy is a word that Christian communities use with varying degrees of precision. Sometimes it is applied loosely to any serious moral failure or extended period of spiritual decline. Used with its proper biblical meaning, it describes something far more specific and, theologically speaking, far more grave. The Meaning of the Word The…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 6042 When a Christian fails morally, are they in the same position as someone who has deliberately turned their back on God and done evil with full intent? Every honest believer has experienced the frustration of Romans 7, doing what they did not want to do, failing in ways they genuinely hated, confessed, and…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 02014 The phrase “God hates the sin but loves the sinner” has become so familiar in Christian circles that most people assume it must be in the Bible somewhere. It is not. The reality the Bible presents is more complex, more demanding, and ultimately more searching than that popular summary allows. Getting this right…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 6040 Few questions press harder on faith than this one. A faithful believer loses a child to cancer while a corrupt businessman retires in comfort. A woman who has served God for decades is consumed by chronic pain, while someone who gives no thought to God at all seems to sail through life without…
Reading Time: 4 minutesQuestion 6041 Churches are generally clear about what sins are unacceptable: sexual immorality, drunkenness, theft, violence. These are named, condemned, and, when they surface, addressed. But there is another category of sin that passes almost without comment in most congregations, sins that are just as real and just as damaging but that carry no social…
Reading Time: 3 minutesQuestion 6044 Paul’s language of the “old man” and the “new man” appears at key points in his letters, and it is easy to read past it without understanding the weight of what he is actually saying. This is not motivational language about improving yourself or leaving bad habits behind. It is a description of…