Dr Paul Allen

By Dr. Jim Denison.  The Taliban’s sweeping takeover of Afghanistan is dominating world news. Many will examine President Biden's incorrect statements and rationale. But how does God see this situation? Let's look through the lens of Scripture and Christian theology. Let’s ask some prior questions:  Who are the Taliban?  What does God think about them?  How should we respond biblically to them? Who are the Taliban? The origins of the Sunni Islamist group known as the “Taliban” (from the Pashto for “students”). According to the most common explanation, when two teenage girls were kidnapped and raped in 1994 by followers of a warlord in Afghanistan, a group of 30 students joined their village cleric, Mullah Muhammad Omar, in rescuing the girls and hanging the group’s commander from a tank barrel. Their group grew in strength and popularity, eventually gaining the support of religious parties within neighboring Pakistan. In the chaos of post-Soviet Afghanistan, their en...

Kids can be annoying. We can be tempted to think that they were born to irritate adults. It seems like the brief moments of sweetness that they display are the only things that keep adults from shipping them to their own island, where they can live out their days annoying one another as they descend into the climactic scene from Lord of the Flies. But there is a problem with that statement. Annoyance is not an attribute someone can possess; it’s a response we have.   Kids aren’t annoying so much as adults get annoyed. Deep down inside, we know this, despite how we usually phrase our annoyance: “You’re so annoying,” or, “Those people are annoying me.” In truth, we ought to say, “I’m annoyed.” Annoyance is our response to circumstances we dislike. We can think of annoyance as a quiet form of anger. Anger is the feeling of “against-ness” at some perceived offence. Annoyance is a version of this—feeling aversion for someone who is not conforming to our standard for them. Adults find ch...