Randal Rauser

Home of progressively evangelical, generously orthodox, rigorously analytic, revolutionary Christian thinking (that's what I'm aiming for anyway)

What's So Confusing About Grace?

Finding the Devil in Rock and Roll … Backwards

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The single most infamous song of the backward masking craze of the 1980s was surely Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven.” A message from the devil or a trick of the imagination? I’ll say the latter. But when we were kids, playing “Stairway to Heaven” backward on the record player was still a memorable way to […]

A Special Promotional Sale for What’s So Confusing About Grace?

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Good news for my American readers. My awesome 2017 book What’s So Confusing About Grace?, a three-hundred-page semi-autobiographical exploration of the meaning of the Gospel, is currently available in Kindle for a mere $1.99 until Wednesday morning. Think about that: for less than the price of an Americano, you are invited to a transformative journey into […]

Do All Children Go to Heaven? On the age of accountability

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This article is based on chapter 30 of my book What’s So Confusing About Grace? Parenthood opens you to new questions you never thought to ask before. For me, it initiated a new stage in my wrestling with salvation and the Gospel: what did it mean for my daughter to be saved? Did I agree that […]

Formulating an Argument Against Christianity Based on Confusion About Salvation?

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About a year ago, I posted an article at Strange Notions titled “Answering the ‘Confusing Revelation’ Objection to Christianity.” In the article, I formulate an argument against Christianity based on the putatively confusing nature of Christian revelation. I then offer a rebuttal to the argument. (At a broader level, my entire book What’s So Confusing About […]

How I wore evangelistic T-shirts in high school to try and save … myself

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In my book What’s So Confusing About Grace? I journey through several different ways of thinking about salvation that I held growing up (and into adulthood). Along the way, I summarize several “laws” that I came to believe were essential to salvation, including that which I call “Law 5”: Law 5: If you are ashamed of Jesus, […]

What does it mean to be evangelical? And is it worth defending?

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I grew up viewing the term “evangelical” as a guarantee of quality. I believed that evangelicals were the most faithful and orthodox followers of Christ and that they offered the closest approximation of the New Testament church. But while I regularly used the term “evangelical” to identify “good” Christianity, I would have been hard pressed to give […]

Why doesn’t God give everyone a miracle?

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Some years ago, a friend of mine told me how, after losing his wife to cancer, he encouraged his embittered young adult children to return to church. On their first visit to a small group, several people shared their recent answers to prayer — miracles, they said — while the two young visitors sat quietly. When they […]

Hymns vs. Choruses: Are the Worship Wars Worth Fighting?

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This article is based on a section from my book What’s So Confusing About Grace? In a 1960 interview on Meet the Press, Martin Luther King, Jr. famously observed, “It is one of the tragedies of our nation, one of the shameful tragedies, that 11 o’clock on Sunday morning is one of the most segregated hours […]

Have you committed the Unforgivable Sin? A Devotional Reflection

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I recently wrote a few devotionals for a forthcoming publication and I decided to publish them at my blog as well. This second devotional is based on a section of my most recent book, What’s So Confusing About Grace? Mark 3:29: “But he that shall blaspheme against the Holy Ghost hath never forgiveness, but is […]