Out of Neutral | Grace Baptist Church

Brian McLaren says, “The kingdom of God is not a ticket to heaven but a call to transform this world through love and justice.” Have we got it wrong? Are Christians too preoccupied with the life to come? If we stop talking about heaven will that make us more useful here on earth? The Bible presents an interesting balance.

It's hard to understand sometimes what God is thinking when we face painful circumstances. Knowing God could have prevented the trial we're going through makes us question His heart toward us. Is He cold, stern, and uncaring? Does He just stand aloof and watch us suffer?

Is heaven the next stop for those who trust in Jesus? Or do we go through a cleansing fire first? Understanding the history and biblical basis for purgatory helps us prepare for what comes next and appreciate the great hope of the gospel.

For most of church history, Christians never questioned whether to choose burial or cremation. In 1980 in Canada, only 6% of people opted for cremation—and most of them would have been non-Christians. Today, that figure is over 75% and is a popular option among people of all faiths. How should Christians think about this trend? Is this a question of faith? Is it wrong to cremate a body?

Is faith about seeking answers or embracing uncertainty? Progressive Christianity celebrates questioning, but the Bible speaks of a faith once delivered, to be believed and defended. This post examines the Scripture's view on truth, doubt, and whether certainty is narrow-minded.

Many say arguing about beliefs is pointless—shouldn't Christians just focus on being better people? But can kindness thrive without truth? This post explores why truth is essential for real change, spiritual growth, and genuine love.

Fake news isn't just a problem—it's changed how we think. We believe what feels right, trust no one, and spread misinformation without realizing it. Here's how fake news affects you, why it matters, and what you can do to resist it.

Anyone who's experienced the pain of being judged by other Christians wishes more of them would heed Jesus' words, “Judge not, and you will not be judged.” But what did Jesus really mean? Is there a time for judgment, or is it always wrong? When you see Jesus' words in light of the rest of the Bible, several clarifications emerge.

Manifesting promises success through positive thinking, but many are left frustrated when their dreams don't materialize. The Bible reveals why: you're not in control, you don't know what's best, and your thoughts don't shape reality—God does. Here's what to do instead.

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We often see food as a guilty pleasure or a craving to be conquered. We're either eating with indulgence or restraining as a punishment. What if we could embrace both sides of the Bible's calls to celebration and discipline in our relationship with food? The practices of fasting and feasting may hold the key to the balance God has designed.

Some might consider Jesus' relationship to veganism unknowable and irrelevant. Understanding it, however, unlocks one of the keys to His attitude toward food and how we should view it.

Do you ever wonder why God gave us cravings for potato chips, chocolate, and bacon? Our hunger for food and our need for it to sustain us is part of God's design for humanity. As you consider what the Bible teaches, a picture emerges of God's purpose in food and how we should relate to it.

The ancient church thought so much about food that they made gluttony one of the seven deadly sins. Today, many Christians have very little idea about what the Bible teaches about food at all. As a result, Christian attitudes toward food are mostly dictated by our appetite, the latest diets, or either guilt or ambition about the shape of our bodies. This post gives an overview of the Bible's teachings toward a theology of food.

We're all bombarded with more information than we can process. Recounting the most popular articles and videos from Out of Neutral at the end of the year is my way of helping you see what you might have overlooked or missed.

The happiness we expect at Christmas can magnify our pain, and sugary-sweet holiday movies may leave us feeling alone in our struggles. But the first Christmas was a dark tale that acknowledges our pain and points to our hope.

Painful trials have a way of testing our coping strategies. The Book of Job introduces a man whose suffering included unimaginable financial devastation, unrelenting physical pain, and the tragic loss of his children. His story helps us to see the limitations of some of our usual responses and gives us more effective means of relief.

In one of the wealthiest eras in history, our attitudes about money often reflect scarcity instead of generosity. This post explores common beliefs about giving that would baffle the early church and challenges us to embrace their faith-filled perspective.

I thought I had strong convictions. Maybe you do, too. What I learned was that many of my beliefs were borrowed from other people and hadn't been tested, applied, or internalized. I've come to recognize the cheaper substitutes to convictions that we often mistake for the real thing. As you consider them, reflect on your own beliefs and try to discern whether they're truly rooted or just borrowed.

God's forgiveness is complete, but it doesn't erase every consequence of sin. Exploring the guilt offering in the Book of Leviticus reveals how God's grace calls us to confess, repent, and take action to restore what our sins have broken.

Stress at work, problems with kids, and our mental health push us to look for peace in different ways. But the instructions for the Peace Offering in the Book of Leviticus teach us to confess, connect, and celebrate in order to experience lasting peace.

The grain offering of Leviticus teaches us how to respond to the love and forgiveness of God. It pictures an ancient act of devotion that shows how God delights in sincere expressions of love, no matter how simple.

Desperate for acceptance, I went to wild lengths in university to fit in. Years later, Leviticus, a book many avoid, transformed how I viewed acceptance. The background of a sacrifice called a sin offering reveals a deeper, lasting acceptance from God that goes beyond masks and striving.

Everybody knows the command to honour your father and your mother, and Jesus called us to love our enemies. But what if our enemy is also our abuser? What if the parent we're called to honour is mistreating or exploiting us? Some say the Christian response is to turn the other cheek. Others follow the recent explosion in articles advocating that you cut off all the toxic people in your life. The biblical tension is somewhere in between.

Maybe starting a Zoom group in the first century wasn't an option technologically, but there's value in considering what would have been lost if Jesus had chosen to mentor His disciples online instead of in person.

The King James Version is a good translation that's stood the test of time. But how should we understand the many modern translations that have been released in recent years? Are they more reliable or have they corrupted the Word of God?

“God helps those who help themselves” is the most popular verse you'll never find in the Bible. Seeing how it falls short of the teaching of Scripture helps us better understand the truth about God's role and ours in dealing with the challenges of life.

We were created for connection, so we all feel a longing for relationships. In a church, there are lots of opportunities to get to know others, but if we don't understand the difference between friendship and fellowship, we can miss out on what God wants to do in our lives.

If you're a Christian parent, at some point, church will probably be a challenge for you and your kids. It was for me, and yet in retrospect, those challenges blessed our kids and our family, and I'm grateful for them. Let me share some of the lessons we learned when church was hard.

Friendships can either make learning attractive or derail a child's motivation altogether. Friendships are where a child learns how to relate to others and works at practicing patience, forgiveness, kindness, and compassion. Most parents talk to their kids about grades. I'm convinced that we need to talk to them at least as much about relationships. Here are four topics to address.

Over the years, I have had many people reveal to me a terrible trial or sickness they're facing and the sickening feeling they have that God has cursed them or punished them for some unknown sin they have committed. People brought those same kinds of assumptions to Jesus, and He opened their eyes to the many ways that God redeems the trials we face for our good.

There's so much to do, and if you believe that what you do matters, doing more of it and doing it well is important. I've read all the books and I've tried all the apps. They're helpful, but they tend to say the same things using different words. Jesus makes a truly unique contribution to a vision of personal productivity.

People sometimes ask, “Why doesn't Jesus spell out more plainly the fact that He is God?” While He does express His divinity plainly enough, we often forget that Jesus carried out His ministry in constant threat of death. The authorities were looking for a sound bite they could use as evidence to prematurely end His ministry. And after just a few years, they succeeded.

Jesus doesn't send His disciples out to battle armies or take over enemy lands. But the message of Joshua is important for Christians today. It gives vital lessons on how to face our spiritual battles.

Joseph is given a dream of greatness and royalty, but he's rejected and despised. Each time people try to harm him, he ends up closer to the throne. After his enemies presume him dead, he ascends to power and brings salvation and forgiveness to many. Joseph shows what kind of Saviour to look for and helps to identify Jesus as the fulfillment of God's plan.

Everybody knows the story of Noah's Ark. Children love drawing the zebras and monkeys, and adults endlessly speculate about how everything fit and what it might have been like. But all of those things distract us from the message that Noah's Ark is intended to convey. Do you know what it teaches? There are several important lessons that we should hear from Noah's Ark no matter what our age.

If someone ate a cheeseburger and a root beer, thought about what Jesus did on the cross, and called it the Lord's Supper, you'd probably tell them that Jesus had something more specific in mind. I think the same needs to be said about baptism.

Sometimes, cultural shifts can help us to understand the Bible more effectively. The rise of the transgender movement may have unknowingly done that in our generation. Today, it's common to hear people say things like, “I feel like a woman trapped in a man's body.” The person's feelings drive them to think about their life in ways that don't correspond to the objective reality of their biology. They get mixed messages. The Bible describes a similar dilemma facing all Christians.

It's easy to put other Christians and other churches who have rejected God's commands in a different category from ourselves. We say things like, “I can't believe they did that,” but our surprise says more about us than it does about them.

If you find yourself rushing through your reading, deliberately slow down. The Bible doesn't TikTok well. Our digital scrolling trains us to skim but God's Word needs to be stored and hidden deep within us to have its effect.

If you just need some life hacks, maybe a Christian self-help book will do. But if you realize that your problems go deeper than that, you need something more powerful. When you invest in daily Bible reading, you're taking a blow torch to the impurities in your life and a sledgehammer to the hardhearted attitudes that get in the way of your growth.

Hopefully, you're not reading this because you want to start a cult. But I think it's important that we understand the ingredients of Christian cults so that we can recognize them when they come. Here's how you might start a cult that taught that you have to be baptized to be saved.

I was asked to debate baptism with a Christian Reformed pastor. As we talked back and forth for more than two hours, it was clear how much we shared in common but also how Christians from our traditions can often misunderstand each other on this issue.

If you grew up Catholic and visited a Protestant church, you might be surprised to see that they use a different Bible. But it's not for the reason you might think. Understanding why they differ, tells you something important about these two churches.

This year, the most read articles and watched videos included topics from marriage and parenting to prophecy and church membership. See what you missed or what might warrant a second look as I break down the top 10 of 2023.

No matter what your religious background is, you should be at least a little outraged at the message that a child's presents somehow correlate with their moral behaviour. As others have pointed out, the presents that children receive mostly reflect the relative wealth of their parents, not whether they're on some list of morally superior children.

We often view hope the same we do gasoline: it helps us move so we don't care much about where it comes from. But hope isn't neutral. There are many things we hope in that end in huge disappointment and even painful consequences.

Each of these individuals was likely hard-working and well-educated. They were probably personable and sincere. If you had lunch with one of them, you would probably be impressed with their charm and conclude they were “good people.” So, how did things go so terribly wrong?

Nobody's watching. Surely, no one will notice. You've heard God's warnings, but you decide to do it anyway. It's compromise. You're cutting a corner. You've stepped over the line. And then you wait for God's consequences. Only they don't come. Whew, you got away with it! Or did you? In those moments, we often misinterpret sin's consequences and God's heart toward us.

I would have said that I believed in Jesus long before I actually did. I believed in Him like I believed in Napoleon. In other words, I didn't completely reject His existence. But surely there's more to it than that.