Category: Christian Living

Does Theology Matter?

statue of jesus christ on mount in evening
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Does the study of God, who He is and what He wants, matter in how we live our day-to-day lives? It does.

By Mark D. Harris, MD, MPH, MBA, MDiv, ThM, PhD, DBA

American conservative icon Charlie Kirk was slain by an assassin on 10 September 2025. Within hours, flaming rhetoric from both sides flooded the airwaves and social media. Many called Kirk a faithful Christian, husband, father, and rebuilder of America. Some called him a bigot and a sexist. Real harm results. Conservatives lost jobs for speech that the left considered unacceptable under Biden, and liberals are losing jobs for speech that the right considers unacceptable under Trump.

Our local Republican party wanted to honor Charlie’s legacy with a vigil for him at the local baseball stadium. The idea, in the minds of some, was to hold a vigil to pray for him, though he was dead. One woman mentioned that honoring Kirk for his life and work was appropriate, but praying for him, that is, praying for the dead, was not. A middle-aged politician replied, “Let’s not debate theology. We just want to get together and say a few prayers.”

The issue is not “should we pray for the dead?” The issue is “should we debate theology?” A related question is “does true theology, the opinion of God, matter?” God has an opinion on prayer for the dead, and is it worth our time to learn what that opinion is? It seems that our politician friend did not care to discover what is scripturally true, at least at that moment. We need to ask ourselves, “Does theology matter?”

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Courtship to Marriage

photo of coupe walking on grass field
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An answer to a young Ukrainian woman’s question about relationships, such as how to go from courtship to marriage, especially arranged marriage, in 2025.

By Mark D. Harris, MD, MPH, MBA, MDiv, ThM, PhD, DBA

I traveled to Ukraine earlier this month to teach World Religions to students at the Ukraine Baptist Theological Seminary in Lviv. My 16 students were undergraduates, about half male and half female. Less than 50% were married, and all were Christian. While we studied the Unification Church, the “Moonies,” the discussion moved to their practice of arranged marriages. One young woman asked what I thought of arranged marriages. This article is in answer to her concerns.

The Problem

Much like in Western nations, marriage rates have declined in Ukraine.[1] Fertility rates, the number of children each woman will have during her reproductive lifetime, have also dropped.[2] Ukraine was losing people before the Russians invaded in February 2022, and the demographic situation is far worse after three years of war. As in most of the West, relations between men and women are marked by mistrust and antipathy.[3] Women can suffer abuse, men can lose their livelihoods on the flimsiest of accusations, and both are the enemy of each other. Progressives have no idea what men and women actually are, and push singleness or relationships that can never produce children. In such an environment, one can conclude that, intentionally or not, Ukraine, all of the West, and much of the world are committing demographic suicide.

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Go Your Way

old man on the beach
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Memorial Baptist Church, Beckley, WV,

By Mark Harris, MD, MPH, MBA, MDiv, ThM, PhD, DBA

Wildwood Cemetery Resurrection Service

Brass Prelude – Trombone and Horn in F, Christ the Lord is Risen Today.

Congregational singing – Up from the Grave He Arose

Read Daniel 12:8-13

The Story

An old man sat on a rock by a river and said to himself, “The superpower is dead.”

“More than 70 years ago, the mightiest nation in the land destroyed my tiny country. Then they moved me hundreds of miles away from my homeland,” the old man remembered.

Now, that superpower was destroyed, hacked to pieces by an enemy younger and more vicious than itself. The old man had seen great and terrifying things in his years.

He knew that his death was near, so he asked God, the One he had served so faithfully for so many years, what would happen in the future.

“Go your way,” came the divine reply. “You are not to know what will happen after you.”

“Many will suffer, but I will purify and refine them through their suffering”, says the Lord.

“The wicked will not cease their wickedness, and they will not understand what I am doing. Worship as you know it will end, and terrible times will come,” the Lord concluded.

But the Old Man knew that he would not live to see it. God repeated His command.

“Go your way to your end. Then you will sleep with your fathers and rise again into eternal life. You will receive what God has allotted for you…forever.”

The Application in Our Lives

The Lord calls us to do the same thing.  Our world seems more unstable than the old man’s world. But we know what the old man did not. Jesus Christ rose from the dead. He has secured our future, both in this life and the next.

We can ask God about anything, but we should not always expect an answer. What we need to know is Christ. God commands us to follow Him and go your way.

We serve Him, we love Him, we worship Him, and we enjoy Him.

God says to us…Go your way, and you will rise again in Christ and receive the portion allotted to you in eternity.

Go your way.

Prayer

 

Up From the Grave He Arose                  Robert Lowry, 1874 [Key: F]

Verse 1
Low in the grave He lay,
Jesus my Savior,
Waiting the coming day,
Jesus my Lord!

Chorus
Up from the grave He arose,
With a mighty triumph o’er His foes,
He arose a Victor from the dark domain,
And He lives forever,
With His saints to reign.
He arose! He arose!
Hallelujah! Christ arose!

Verse 2
Vainly they watch His bed,
Jesus my Savior;
Vainly they seal the dead,
Jesus my Lord!

Chorus
Up from the grave He arose,
With a mighty triumph o’er His foes,
He arose a Victor from the dark domain,
And He lives forever,
With His saints to reign.
He arose! He arose!
Hallelujah! Christ arose!

Verse 3
Death cannot keep its Prey,
Jesus my Savior;
He tore the bars away,
Jesus my Lord!

Chorus
Up from the grave He arose,
With a mighty triumph o’er His foes,
He arose a Victor from the dark domain,
And He lives forever,
With His saints to reign.
He arose! He arose!
Hallelujah! Christ arose!

 

 

Preparing the Preacher

a man talking on a microphone while holding a bible
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The nature of man is to be part of a group rather than just an individual. As such, human nature is to communicate. Tomes have been written on proclaiming Christ through our sermons, but less on proclaiming Christ through our person. This article describes how to prepare the preacher to preach most powerfully.

By Mark D. Harris, MD, MPH, MBA, MDiv, ThM, PhD, DBA

Any man who has stood behind a pulpit in front of a group of God’s people has felt the yearning to be a perfect preacher. In our weaker moments, that yearning may be caused by the preacher’s desire for the listeners’ acclaim. In our stronger moments, that yearning may be caused by the preacher’s passion for his Lord, and a desperation to lead others to share that passion. But God does not honor His followers when they do not honor Him, so to be a powerful preacher, one must be a powerful Christian.

The thoughts of other preachers over the centuries can be useful in our spiritual preparation to preach today. My thanks to Colin S. Smith for compiling many of these quotations for the Basics Conference in May 2003.

Philips Brooks (Lectures in Preaching, p 5), said “Preaching is the bringing of truth through personality”

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Judges 19 and Sexual Abuse

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Judges 19 contains one of the most gruesome stories in the Bible. Few people read it, and as far as I know, no one enjoys it, but God placed it in His word as a powerful indictment of sin. Christians can and must learn from it to help ourselves and our society avoid sin’s traps, specifically in the area of sexual abuse. The following is a fictional story based on a real event as recorded in the Bible.

By Mark D. Harris, MD, MPH, MBA, MDiv, ThM, PhD, DBA

The Story

Aaron, a middle-aged priest from Ephraim, dismounted his donkey in the small village of Bethlehem, while his two servants removed the bags and fed and watered the donkeys. Aaron’s primary wife, Rama, was unable to conceive a child so he had come to Bethlehem to find a concubine, a secondary wife. The priest looked anxiously for the people he was meeting. As the sun neared the top of the sky, a small group walked towards him.

A man with salt and pepper hair and beard, furrows on his brow, and a dark, weather-beaten face approached. Walking behind him and to his left was a trim, petite woman. Standing at a distance was an older woman with younger boys and girls.

“I am Jocham,” said the older man as he approached the priest.

“I am Aaron,” replied the priest. “My merchant friend in Ephraim told me that you have a daughter that I might be interested in.”

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The Men of Jane Austen

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The World, and especially the West, has forgotten what God made man and woman to be. Jane Austen provides some examples. Christian men would do well to study them, emulate them, and teach others to do the same.

By Mark D. Harris, MD, MPH, MBA, MDiv, ThM, PhD, DBA

American society no longer seems to know what a man or a woman is. Just as Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson could not define a woman, so the media, academia, and large organizations in the public and private sectors insist that “male” and “female” are products of the mind and culture with little or no basis in objective reality, if objective reality exists at all. The world tells each person to decide what gender they want to be.  Then, the world tells the person to scream at, hit, protest, fire, reject, sue, and perhaps jail anyone who doesn’t like what that person has chosen. This is provided, of course, that the person chooses one of the identities favored by the world.

As a result, millions of men and women throughout the world cast about without knowing who they are, what they should do, and how to relate to others. A reality based only on personal preference is not a strong anchor to weather the storms of life. Broken people wander alone through the years, driving others away while seeking solace in activities, money, hookups, or alcohol. Unable to douse their God-given fire for marriage and children, women sink into despair, however passionately they refuse to admit it. Men who once thought that free sex would lead to Shangri-La now realize how meaningless it is and perish alone, often at their own hand.

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