Near-death experiences are hardly new, but it wasn’t until 1975 that the moniker near-death experience (NDE) was coined by the occult parapsychologist Raymond Moody in the run-away best-seller Life After Life. Since then the endless stream of stories concerning subjective experiences occurring during a state of unconsciousness brought on by a medical crisis, such as an accident, suicide attempt, or cardiac arrest, have flooded the market. Precipitating the question, “What’s up with near-death experiences?”

This is a good, hard question. The way we answer it will both reflect and inform our understanding of justice and mercy. In the book of Joshua God commands Israel to slaughter the Canaanites in order to occupy the Promised Land. It was a bloody war of total destruction where God used his people to execute his moral judgment against his wicked enemies. In moving toward an answer it will be helpful to think carefully about the building blocks of a Christian worldview related to God’s justice and mercy.

Typically, evangelicals are shy about Lent. The 40 days prior to Easter—Sundays excepted—are known popularly as a season for giving up chocolate or other extras in order to show God how much we love him. With such impoverished notions, it is no wonder that Lent has fallen on hard times. So should evangelicals bother with Lent?

1. To experience the power of God (Matt. 28:18). “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me,” proclaims the Lord. He invests that authority and might in the work of redemption. Our participation in the Great Commission brings us under that Heavenly Authority. No better place to be.

There are four different ways to define faith. It is incredibly important that we, as Christians, don’t go wrong here.

Every Bible is, by necessity, a translation. As with any translation from one language to another, there is often some freedom in regard to the most appropriate word or phrase that can be used to convey the actual Greek or Hebrew word. Further, a language such as English is in constant flux. We use different words, or give different meanings to words, all the time. This raises an important question: Does it matter which Bible we use?

In The Mystery of God: Theology for Knowing the Unknowable (Baker Academic), Steven Boyer and Christopher Hall argue that theology too often attempts to put into concrete words and images an experience that is finally too large for us to take in—and not just quantitatively (there is too much of God for us to grasp), but qualitatively as well (as Uncreated Creator, God is wholly other than his creatures and cannot be contained in logical categories).

In his opening chapter of Preaching Christ from the Old Testament, Sidney Greidanus lists five reasons for preaching Christ today.

As a pastor, I am often asked what happens to babies like ours who are lost in miscarriage or to children who are killed through abortion. The one thing we do know is that they, like all of us, are image bearers of God who came into existence, even though they never had the joy of being loved, kissed, and cherished by their earthly mom and dad. Where do the unborn babies go?

But how do we pray for and work with our government, even when we won’t always agree with its policies or decisions on every point? In Romans 13, the apostle Paul gives us some powerful words by which to measure ourselves as we consider our relationship with the governing authorities.