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I’m taking a course on blockchains this semester, and I can’t stop thinking about the Bible, the Quran, and the transmission of manuscripts in the ancient world. At its core, a reliable blockchain is: Distributed: Copies of the ledger (the “text”) exist on many nodes (“communities”). Immutable / Verifiable: Once a block is added, everyone can check its authenticity; it’s tamper-evident. Consensus-driven: The network agrees on a single canonical sequence of blocks, much like reaching consensus on an authoritative text....

Do humans have free will to choose God? Can a starving vulture freely choose a fresh salad over rotting flesh? Picture a gaunt vulture released into a room where two heaps of food await. One is a pile of fresh vegetables like kale, carrots, and spinach. The other is a mound of decaying carcasses with the stench thick in the air. Which will the vulture choose? Without hesitation, it will lunge toward the rot and feast as though the greens beside it do not exist....

The intent of this document is to share a trove of Biblical resources on masculinity and provide a heads up on common questions people have wrestled with. The Lion-Lamb Paradox A man must learn to live as both lion and lamb. He must be fierce when defending the honor of God and the dignity of the poor, the weak, women, and children. Yet he must also be gentle, lowly, and meek, willing to suffer quietly when his own name is slandered, ridiculed, or mocked for the sake of Christ....

This past summer, I memorized Romans 8 with some brothers from my church. One verse in particular grabbed my attention: Romans 8:37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. The phrase more than conquerors was peculiar to me. So I dug into the ancient koine Greek: hypernikōmen. It’s a mash-up of the words hyper and nikōmen. Hyper is the same prefix we use in English (think hyperactive versus hypo) so it means super or over or excessive....

Chapter 1: Discipline for Godliness Discipline is the indispensable key for accomplishing anything in this life. It’s the mother and handmaiden of what we call genius. 1 Timothy 4:7 “Train yourself for godliness” The word train comes from the word gumnos, which means “naked” and is the word from which we derive our English word gymnasium. In traditional Greek athletic contests, the participants competed without clothing so as not to be encumbered....