Dr Paul Allen

Transgenderism is such a new concept that the 1973 Oxford English Dictionary that sits open on my desk has no entry. According to etymonline.com, the word came into existence in 1974 as an adjective referring to “persons whose sense of personal identity does not correspond with their anatomical sex.” This word combines two older words. The first is “trans,” derived from part of a Latin verb that means to bring across or over, to transfer, cause to cross, extend across, or convert.  The second is “gender,” derived from the French word for genre and the Latin word for genus, meaning kind, sort, or class. “Transgendered” became “transgender” after 2015 to indicate the new idea: that transgenderism is ontological, or something true of a person’s very essence.  Today, the psychological condition where a person feels like their personal identity does not match their anatomical sex is called gender dysphoria. And there is a strong push in our culture to agree with the transgendered movement t

One reason so many Christians suffer from spiritual malnutrition is that they live on a diet of junk food , as far as building spiritual character is concerned. Peter is well aware of this and that’s why he says:  “Therefore, laying aside all malice, all deceit , hypocrisy , envy , and all evil speaking” (1 Pet. 2:1).  The Greek word used for “laying aside” actually means to “strip off your clothes.” The same idea is expressed in Hebrews 12:1 where we are told to  “lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us.”  Peter talks about five specifics that we should strip out of our lives: malice, deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and slander. Malice was the general word for wickedness . In Peter’s day it meant “heathen evil”—the characteristic evil of the world surrounding the young Christian church . Peter doesn’t advise laying aside some of it; he demands all of it to go. Today’s Christians are no different from those in the first century. Many of us like to p

Portrait of a Woman Suffering from Obsessive Envy (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Envy  Competes Who is Envy? What does Envy do? How do we define Envy? Something like this: Envy makes you feel resentment or anger or sadness because another person   has  something or another person  is  something that you want for yourself. Envy makes you aware that another person has some advantage, some good thing, that you want for yourself and, while he’s at it, he makes you want that other person not to have it. This means that there are at least three evil components to Envy: the deep discontent that comes when you see that another person has what you want; the desire to have it for yourself; and the desire for it to be taken from him. It’s crucial to understand that Envy flows out of Pride . (A commenter said it well: “In my wretched experience pride has always been envy’s father…”) Pride says, “This is what I deserve” or “Let me boast about all I have” or “I am better than you in all of t

English: Abraham embraces his son Isaac after receiving him back from God (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Isaac planted crops in that land and the same year reaped a hundredfold, because the LORD blessed him. The man became rich, and his wealth continued to grow until he became very wealthy. He had so many flocks and herds and servants that the Philistines envied him. So all the wells that his father’s servants had dug in the time of his father Abraham, the Philistines stopped up, filling them with earth (Genesis 26:12–15). ENVY The Philistines did not steal Isaac’s wells; they ruined them. The stopped-up wells did not make them richer; they made Isaac poorer. What was the Philistines’ motivation? The text is clear: envy. The Philistines wanted to see Isaac worse off. They resented the fact of his wealth. They resented the God who had made him wealthy. They could not attack this God, and they chose not to attack God’s man. They did the next best thing: they attacked the property of

The Seven Deadly Sins (ca. 1620) - Envy (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Tim Challies on the heart of envy . The heart of envy is the feeling that comes over a person when he sees another person’s success or advantage. When I see a person succeeding in an area where I long to be admired and acknowledged, that person’s success somehow calls me into question. His success makes me feel like a failure; the love people have for him makes me feel hated. Eventually the feeling begins to take action, usually in grumbling against God and in gossiping against the person. Eventually, of course, it proceeds into deeper and darker territory. Through my study of envy I came to see that I am prone to this sin and that I will need to be constantly vigilant against it. While writing those articles brought me face-to-face with the sin, it certainly did not destroy its power in my life. Envy remains, and I continue to fight against it. Those articles generated a lot of discussion, including one between m

Nothing to Envy (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Envy  Competes Who is Envy? What does Envy do? How do we define Envy? Something like this: Envy makes you feel resentment or anger or sadness because another person   has  something or another person  is  something that you want for yourself. Envy makes you aware that another person has some advantage, some good thing, that you want for yourself and, while he’s at it, he makes you want that other person not to have it. This means that there are at least three evil components to Envy: the deep discontent that comes when you see that another person has what you want; the desire to have it for yourself; and the desire for it to be taken from him. It’s crucial to understand that Envy flows out of Pride . (A commenter said it well: “In my wretched experience pride has always been envy’s father…”) Pride says, “This is what I deserve” or “Let me boast about all I have” or “I am better than you in all of these ways.” Have you ever thought about the

The First Mourning (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Cain and Abel (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Ancient writers and theologians talked about it a lot, even suggesting that it was the second most serious and second most prevalent of all the sins, and yet today it has almost disappeared from our vocabulary or it has been confused with related sins like jealousy or covetousness. That sin is Envy. Proverbs says that whoever walks with the wise will be wise, but a companion of fools will suffer harm (13:20). What I found out is that Envy has been a friend of mine for a long, long time. I just didn’t realize it until recently. He has infected me with his foolishness. Let me tell you how he’s worked in my life. Nine years ago I slapped together a little web site so I could share a couple of articles with my parents. The Lord took that site and has done something amazing so that today tens of thousands of people read it every day. Not only that, but I have been able to write books and I have been able

Image via Wikipedia Image via Wikipedia Image via Wikipedia God has given us a mouth to speak, a heart to feel, and gospel joy to share. He has taken away every excuse for not spreading gospel grace in our words every day to those around us ( Ephesians 4:29). So what is it that corks the flow of grace to others? One answer is grudges. Not always big grudges, like the ones we hold towards those who have wronged us personally. The kinds of grudges that hinder our generosity are typically subtle ones, grudges towards those who seem less significant than us, or grudges towards those who seem more significant than us. Either way, we like to compare ourselves with others. We withhold grace like a miser withholds money. We are natural-born begrudgers. The Roots of Grudges Jonathan Edwards pulled out a spade and dug up the roots of these grudges in his sermon " The Terms of Prayer ," a sermon you can read for yourself. I’ll try my best to serve up his main points here.