A plea for the Truth and Christianity’s inherent humility…

Below is a letter that I wrote to my uncle in March of 2008 after he visited for a few short days and returned to his home in Stockholm Sweden. My uncle was the first family member I told after I became a Christian. He comes from a Muslim background, as I do,  and has strong post-modern views rooted in the familiar mantra of relativism and humanist views focused on being “good” while on earth. We had several intense conversations related to absolute truth and Christ being the only path to salvation. He had clear views on all religions being equal yet different paths and Christianity’s exclusive claim to salvation having a tone of arrogance. I thought I would share this letter with all of you and perhaps it may help in your evangelistic dialogues with others…

Dearest ,

I write this email just after you have left our house and hopefully successfully made it onto your plane for Ottawa. The reason I write this email now is to express my gratitude and love for you and your cause.

Without question, I understand and value and appreciate the efforts you made this weekend and the intention that was seeded in you across the ocean to come to help my family - your family and your sister. This IS love and it is ALWAYS felt - love is a unique characteristic because it can never be overcome with darkness.. Love never fails. Below is a famous passage from the Bible that describes love (you can check it to ensure it matches your version… I assure you it does …

Lyrical Theology

This past weekend I was at my church summer conference and we had a great series of sessions on the topic of “The Journey of Salvation: Justification, Sanctification, Glorification”. I will blog on these learnings in the near future.

I wanted to dedicate this post to a form of musical worship that was newly introduced to me during our conference by a fellow brother (Thanks Jermaine). The term for this developing genre is “reformed rap”. It features select artists with a passion for the Scriptures and meaningful lyrics that are based on the Truth.

One such artist, is Shai Linne (his MySpace page is here and blogger page is here). I listened to a couple of his tracks and immediately was taken aback with the quality of the music and the lyrics. It was indeed “Lyrical Theology” - what a concept! Such dedication to the Word and such focus on the art/medium of rap and what has been generated is a deeply meaningful, educational, challenging, inspiring form of musical worship. It is even more inspiring to hear that some of these labels will not present an artist until they have finished seminary - what a testimony to their dedication to handle the word of God as carefully as the prophets and apostles did.

I immediately logged onto iTunes and downloaded 2 albums of Shai and am making my way through each track. After using 2 of the songs (Mission Accomplished and Atonement Q&A - see below) to close out our series of talks at our conference that dealt with the same …

Digital Age = Churches in Shopping Malls?

The other day I was listening to the radio on the way home from work and the “Charles Adler Show” was being broadcast on 640AM. I tuned in at a point in the show where the discussions started about the future of churches in the world. After a few minutes of listening to the dialogue I was trying to figure out what exactly the topic of the show was. After they finished discussing the the future of churches Charles re-introduced the topic, as radio hosts often do to inform people like me just tuning in, and it was clear the topic that was to be discussed was the idea of the “stuff that’s going the way of the dinosaur with the digital age”. Back to the dialogue that I listened to as I tuned in…

The guest was talking about the cost to run churches and maintain them and how churches in the rural areas or the “quaint” churches in the country would probably start closing down. She stated that, of course, the nice cathedral-style churches would stay intact but that most churches would either close or be moved into shopping malls as “boutiques” so you could drop in on Sunday and do your shopping after going to church or vice versa. Although I do find the topic of the show interesting and agree with the thoughts of the newspaper classifieds going the way of the dinosaur (the item discussed after churches), I was deeply saddened and distressed by hearing this treatment of the modern day church.

Now …

Dead Sea Scrolls

Today, I had the pleasure of being able to go down, with a group of people from a house fellowship I attend, to the ROM to witness the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit. Rev. Tony Costa was our guide and was great in providing us context to understand what we saw. I am not a huge fan of museums as I tend to need to engage in what I learn but the effect of the texts and the finds was a truly great experience. Looking at the parchment and papyri and realizing the meaning behind the dating of these documents (however inexact) and the message that they communicate about the accuracy of the Bible as we have it today is astounding. To see texts written from the collection of Dead Sea Scrolls covering 100 BC to 100 AD serves as a reminder of the weight of the evidence we have in favour of biblical writings.

I encourage you all to take the time to go down and visit the ROM between now and when the exhibit closes. The exhibit runs from June 27 2009 to January 3 2010.

In order to really get the most out of the exhibit, I would suggest that you read about the various scrolls beforehand to understand the context of it all. Although this is not a requirement as the ROM has done a nice job of organizing the information and communicating key facts and translations. To share a bit of background to either entice you to go or to hopefully make it more enjoyable when you do go …

Welcome…

Hi Everyone,

I am so excited about launching Theology in Sneakers. TiS has been a concept in my mind and on my heart for years. I hope that you find TiS informative and engaging. I encourage you to leave comments, send me emails, and use the information on the website to glorify our Lord Jesus Christ.

If this is your first time visiting, please feel free to browse through the “About” pages via the menu at the top of the page (or click here) to familiarize yourself with what compelled me to develop TiS and its chief aim.

Thanks for visiting and don’t forget to subscribe to receive updates on when I post new materials or share my personal reflections.

God Bless,
- Sumair…