Dr Paul Allen

The Christmas story clearly shows that the hope of the universe is a person. Hope was what the angels sang about. Hope lay in the manger. Hope caused Mary to wonder in her heart. It was hope the shepherds came to worship. Hope was presented with gifts from the Magi who had travelled so far. The Advent story is a hope story because it chronicles the coming to earth of the One who is hope, Jesus. For a people born in sin and for a world damaged by sin, there simply could not be any other source of hope. Good education would not solve the problem. The benevolent government had no power to solve the problem. More and better laws could not penetrate to the source of the problem. People couldn’t help one another and surely couldn’t help themselves. You see, the inescapable condition of sin infects every single human being and has scarred every aspect of the cosmos, which cried out for one thing and one thing alone: divine intervention. The only solution was a Savior, and the only suitable S...

Christians, non-Christians, and people of no faith are now particularly mindful of the possibility that the forms of living we have grown accustomed to may very soon come to an end, whether by runaway climate change or another virulent plague, or extreme acts of violence.  For so many, normal life, or whatever once passed for it, now appears irretrievably lost. To be fair, extreme dislocations of this kind are nothing new to human history. But there is something new within our peculiarly combustible cocktail of catastrophes.  We see it in the increasingly violent rhetoric and action taking over once-stable democracies, the frustration and desperation that grips even the most peaceful and hopeful social movements, and the chronic despair of a young generation who has given up on the idea that society will ever work for them.  There is, in all these things, a sense of hopelessness. It pervades all levels of society, from the highest institutions to the simplest human intera...

Despite the Paul McCartney jingle echoing through our department stores this season, many of us will not be “simply having a wonderful Christmastime.” Much of our Christmas joy will be met, and made to sing, shoulder to shoulder with dissonant sorrows. I’ve had cancer since 2018. I received my Stage 4 diagnosis in December 2020—just in time for Christmas to be included in that year's crookedness. This blow came just a month before our third child, Jane Ridley Wright, was born. We soon learned our “baby Jane” had been born with a regressive and rare gene mutation. I bear witness that the hope and joy of Christmas are not easily held in hand with the harshness of life under the sun. It’s a weary task to unify everything: birth and disability, sacred and profane, transfiguration and tragedy, cancer and Christmas.  But, as Leo Tolstoy observes, “All the beauty of life is made up of light and shadow.” Samwise Gamgee agrees: “It’s like in the great stories, Mr Frodo. The ones that really...

Hope of Resurrection Paraphrasing the beloved apostle Paul, to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord (2 Cor. 5:6–8). But there is something better: to be raised in the body is glorified with the Lord. You were made for this. The earthly tent of this body will give way, at the coming of Christ, to the glory of embodied immortality (2 Cor. 4:16–17; 2 Cor. 5:1). What if I told you that a glorified and risen body was not just a New Testament hope? And what if I told you it was rooted in previous biblical revelation? Problem and Solution The New Testament announcements about our future resurrection and immortal physicality are explicit and fully-flowered concepts that grew from earlier divine revelation. The hope of resurrection is an Old Testament idea because death is an Old Testament problem, and God’s steadfast love is an Old Testament reality. Divine love is greater than death, and resurrection will establish this truth forever. The book of Daniel reminds us that peopl...

Why is the great “Hall of Faith” in Hebrews 11 so amazing? Answer: It speaks of faith.  “What is faith?”  It might seem like this little word faith, so familiar to every Christian, would be easy to define. It occurs all over the Bible; various forms of it are used nearly one hundred times in the gospel of John alone.  But what is faith? Often, Hebrews 11:1 is cited as a definition of faith. In the ESV, it reads, “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” Though this might sound like a definition of faith, New Testament scholar J. Gresham Machen is likely right when he says that Hebrews 11:1 gives us more of a description of faith than a definition of faith.1 In the New Testament, faith is often referred to as the subjective means by which the people of God receive the Word and blessings of God. But it is also used to describe the content of what God has revealed in His Word and in the gospel in particular.  In Jude 3, for in...

Sometimes, as you watch the hand of God’s providence draw some picture in your life, the pencil suddenly turns, and what you thought would be a flower turns into a thorn. The unanswered prayer seemed finally heard, the hope deferred seemed at last fulfilled — but no. You reach for the daisy and get pricked, instead, by a thistle. C.S. Lewis’s marriage to Joy Davidman strikes me in this regard. The couple married later in life when Joy appeared to be dying of cancer. After a prayer for healing, however, Joy recovered unexpectedly and perhaps miraculously. The love they thought they were losing came back to them, a precious gift, it seemed, from the hand of a healing God. But soon, cancer returned with a fury, ending their brief marriage. In the rawness of his grief, Lewis wrote, “A noble hunger, long unsatisfied, met at last its proper food, and almost instantly the food was snatched away” (A Grief Observed, 17–18). Experiences like these can shake the soul. More than a few have lost fa...

The definite article (“the”) is a bold choice for the title of Matt Reeves’s new film about Gotham’s fabled caped crusader. A more appropriate title for The Batman would perhaps be A Batman because this latest reboot of the lucrative franchise is just one of many iterations of the comic book world. To declare Robert Pattinson’s version the Batman is to boldly go all-in on this rendering of the familiar story, pitting it against other renderings—Christopher Nolan’s so-serious Dark Knight trilogy (2005–2012), Tim Burton’s and Joel Schumacher’s campy versions in the 80s and 90s, and Ben Affleck’s Batman in the DC Extended Universe films (2016–2021)—to vie for supremacy in cinema lore. Yet this boldness is what I loved most about The Batman. By going all-in on reenvisioning the world of Gotham—and its many colorful characters, textures, and subplots—Reeves captures why franchise reboots are attractive. Even if our memories of previous Gothams are still fresh, there are something captivatin...

The Christian life has three ingredients: faith, love, and hope. We must have all three to truly live out the Christian life. FAITH The Christian life is grounded in faith in Jesus Christ. Paul’s message was not about a new religion; it was not about Paul’s ideas. It was all about Jesus. After hearing this story, some people in Thessalonica turned from their idols and converted to Jesus (1 Thess. 1:9). They transferred their faith from their self-appointed idols to the God-sent Jesus. Based on what they had heard, they placed their faith in Jesus Christ. They did not add Jesus to their own idols; they got rid of the idols and embraced Jesus as Savior and Lord. The gospel is the good news of Jesus Christ that turns people away from their idols and toward God, therefore leading to salvation by Him and in Him. This is an essential ingredient of the Christian life. We cannot have faith in our idols and in God. It’s either/or. LOVE The Christian life is shown forth in love. ...

According to Greek mythology, all evil is the fault of one woman: a young lady named Pandora. When the gods created Pandora, they each bestowed her with a gift. Among her birthday presents was a beautifully crafted treasure chest. But inside this box was a host of all the world’s evils. When Pandora opened the box, the evils flew out like bats and immediately began plaguing mankind. Slander, greed, jealousy, hate, and every other degeneracy were forever at large. But as the legend has it, Pandora managed to snap the lid closed just in time to trap one evil inside. Do you know which evil was not allowed to escape? It was hope. Hope, you say? How can hope be evil? It was believed by the Greeks that hope was the most pernicious of all evils because it prevented people from accepting their fate. As long as hope remained trapped in the box, people would not long for an afterlife and would, therefore, be more useful in this life. Existential philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche, ...

According to legend, Qu Yuan was a wise and patriotic Chinese government official who lived during the time known as the Warring States period (475-246 bc). It has been said that he tried repeatedly to warn his king about an impending threat that would destroy the country, but the king rejected his advice. Eventually, Qu Yuan was exiled. When he learned about the fall of his beloved country to the foe he had warned about, he ended his life. Qu Yuan’s life resembles some aspects of the life of the prophet Jeremiah. He too served kings who scorned his warnings, and his country was ravaged. However, while Qu Yuan gave in to his despair, Jeremiah found genuine hope. Why the difference? Jeremiah knew the Lord who offers the only true hope. “There is hope for your descendants,” God had assured His prophet. “Your children will return to their own land” (Jeremiah 31:17). Although Jerusalem was destroyed in 586 bc, it was later rebuilt (see Nehemiah 6:15). At some point, we all find ou...

I offer these tips, each with a do and a don’t, for the Christian who is sick and seeking to be healed from God. This comes from personal experience , and from being around churches who believe in spiritual healing.  I often chat with Pastor Kindah Greening on this and other topics.  When you are sick, do give yourself the grace you need and be gentle on yourself. Let yourself be sick, take the time you need to get better But don’t allow your sickness to dominate your personality, and define your existence. If you are with a chronic illness or prolonged recovery, learn how hard to push yourself so that you don’t get into a downward spiral of doing less and less, and hence getting worse, but equally don’t push yourself too hard. Nobody can tell you how hard that is: only trial and error will tell you. Do trust in the sovereignty of God , and that he is at work in your circumstances for your good, and that you might learn to be more like him  But don’t let ...

Some people are inexplicably drawn to Jesus while others are just as inexplicably repelled by Him. Philip is an example of the former. He leaves behind his livelihood to follow this itinerant preacher who beckons him to “follow me” (John 1:43). No questions. He just follows. The crowds and disciples described in John 6:60–66 represent the latter. When many of his disciples heard it, they said, “This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?” But Jesus, knowing in himself that his disciples were grumbling about this, said to them, “Do you take offense at this? Then what if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before? It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh is no help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life. But there are some of you who do not believe.” (For Jesus knew from the beginning who those were who did not believe, and who it was who would betray him.) And he said, “This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless it ...