Ask Away

True or false? Christians spend very little time with God. Making plans is contrary to being led by the Holy Spirit. Effort is the opposite of grace. God the Father loves you as much as he loves Jesus. On this week’s episode of Ask Away, Vince and Jo grill each other on some of the most common assumptions people hold about Christianity, and whether they pass the truth test! ------ We’re so glad yo...

True or false?   Scientific advancement makes it harder intellectually to have faith. Happiness is the opposite of depression. Any prayer is better than no prayer. Atheists should pray. God won’t give you more than you can bear. This week on Ask Away, Vince and Jo grill each other on some of the most common assumptions people hold about Christianity, and whether they actually pass the truth test!...

If God wants to be known, why isn’t He more obvious? This week on Ask Away,  we're re-posting a conversation between Jo and Vince on a topic that most of us have struggled with at one point or another. As one listener eloquently framed the question: “Why isn’t God more clear in revealing Himself, in His motives, in His character, in His morality? If He wants to have a relationship with people and...

Oftentimes, the more advice we get on parenting, the more we feel like we’re failing our kids! We long for them to thrive, but what does thriving look like in this day and age? We want our kids to be successful, but successful at what?! This week on Ask Away, Vince and Jo share some of what they’ve been learning about raising kids, and about the Gospel-centered themes that emerge when we seek to a...

For those of us living in societies often characterized as “post-Christian”, the symbol of the cross occupies a strange place in our cultural landscape—so familiar that it typically fades into the background, and yet that familiarity has certainly bred contempt. So what are we to make of the cross of Jesus? Aside from being an architectural feature of a skyline, what does this symbol really stand...

Do you ever walk away from a conversation feeling like you weren’t totally present with the person, or honest in the way that you engaged with them? Have you ever felt like there’s a mismatch between the love you wish you had for others and what’s actually in your heart? In this episode of Ask Away, Vince and Jo share a talk they recently gave on how to be more intentional with our conversations,...

One of the most harrowing accounts in the Old Testament, this story from Genesis 22 raises all kinds of troubling questions for us: Does God condone child sacrifice? Does this story teach that it’s permissible for us to commit evil in the name of God? What about the impact on Isaac? And perhaps most relevant for us today: with texts such as this in the Bible, how can we trust that God is good and...

While we are always encountering new questions from college students, it is still the case that the topics of singleness, dating, and marriage come up in conversation more frequently than any other. So in honor of Valentine’s Day, this week Jo and Vince are re-posting a previous episode on how to engage in relationships in a way that reflects Jesus’ own approach to choosing us!  ------ We’re so gl...

Some of us are hurting so much that living each day is a struggle. Others wake up every morning to the anguish of having lost a loved one to suicide. In either case, the question of what happens after death to those who have taken their lives is a deeply personal and painful question. This week on Ask Away, Jo and Vince discuss the hope of the Christian faith for those who are carrying these heavy...

Do you have people in your life who have heard about your faith and have engaged with you on spiritual topics, yet you are longing for them to actually respond to the Gospel? But when is the right time to extend an invitation to them to follow Christ? Are they ready? What if they aren’t? Should the invitation be the culmination of a process of sharing the faith or the very starting point for it? A...

These days, any measure of peace feels hard to come by. Whether we’re at war with one another or at war with ourselves, we are always conflicted over one thing or another. Under such conditions, the angelic announcement of “peace on earth” seems hopelessly naive. But what if peace were more than an empty promise or a futile proposition? This Christmas, the Ask Away podcast considers the implicatio...

Does the Bible endorse chattel slavery? How could a loving and just God command the killing of civilian populations? Does the Bible teach that women's bodies are inferior? Did God tempt Job? Why is it that according to Old Testament law, only women (and not men) had to endure a trial for perceived unfaithfulness? In this week's episode of Ask Away, Jo Vitale responds to live Q&A questions base...

Imagine jumping into a game without knowing when it started, when it will finish, what the rules are, or even the objective—without that information, your participation would be totally meaningless! And yet, how many of us are walking through life without answers to those same fundamental questions? In this episode of Ask Away, Vince suggests that every person needs answers to these questions, and...

For many of us, it feels incredibly stressful to unexpectedly find ourselves in a religious or political conversation with anybody, friend or stranger, who holds radically different views from our own. When that happens, how do you handle the situation? And what does the other person walk away thinking and feeling, after they have encountered you? This week on Ask Away, Jo Vitale considers how Jes...

We all have desires, but what are we supposed to do with them? Which makes for a better life—pursuing or suppressing desires? Indulging them or fearing them? In this episode of Ask Away, Jo and Vince talk about the role of desire in the Christian faith, and if the real problem might not be that we want too much, but that we’re settling for far too little.  ------ We’re so glad you joined us for As...

Perhaps the two greatest callings for a Christian are to live with God and to live with God’s people. Tragically, many who go by the name Christian are doing neither, having been deceived into settling for the counterfeits of believing intellectually in God and going to church. What if we need to completely reframe how we conceive of the Christian life? If you’ve been trying to live as a Christian...

It's a confusing time to be alive. We celebrate a diversity of people and experiences, but we fear a diversity of thought and beliefs. It's ok to live your truth, so long as you don't infringe on mine. Undergirding this cultural consensus is the assumption that making truth claims inevitably leads to disagreement, and disagreement is the start of a slippery slope into division and dehumanization....

In a world of online connection, we are all a “follower” of somebody—or a multitude of somebodies! So where does that leave Jesus? Is he just one among a multitude of influencers we engage with from afar, or is he looking for something more from us? In this episode of Ask Away, Jo Vitale discusses what Jesus really meant when he invited his first hearers to “come, follow me!”  ------ We’re so glad...

Many of us will spend more than half of our waking lives working. We frequently joke about “the grind” of work and living for the weekend, but that doesn’t seem like much of a way to live. If the goal of work is retirement, then what does that say about the work in the first place? Is work a punishment for the fall? Will there be work in heaven? In this episode of Ask Away, Jo and Vince consider w...

Christianity has long claimed to be for every person, irrespective of who you are or where you're from. Does Jesus undermine that claim and show himself not to be divine, or even not worth following, by making a racial slur against a foreign woman? In this episode of Ask Away, Vince and Jo talk about what we should make of this confusing interaction between Jesus and the "Canaanite" woman in Matth...

Isn't there something feudalistic and demeaning about "worshipping" God? What modern, rational, free and autonomous person would want to do that? And what is "worship," anyway? Is it just Christian karaoke, or something more? In this episode of Ask Away, recorded at Menlo Church in California, Jo considers both why we worship and what it looks like to worship God authentically.  ------ We’re so gl...

At the heart of the Nicene Creed (325 AD) we find the words: “For our sake [Jesus] was crucified under Pontius Pilate, he suffered, died, and was buried.” But how is it possible that someone who died 2,000 years ago could have died for our sake?! And if Jesus is God, how could He have died? And why would He have died—was this something He chose, or something He was coerced to do? In this episode o...

"1+1+1 = 1 is not going to get you a pass in mathematics." This comment, made by a Muslim apologist and spoken word artist, is an intriguing critique! When Christians claim that there is one God in three persons, are they making a contradictory statement? When it comes to the nature of God, how much can we really know about him, anyway? And what difference—if any—does it make to us if God is in fa...

Could it be, paradoxically, that the very things that lead to success in youth can set us up for struggles and hurt later in life? If so, what can we do about this in our own lives and the lives of our children? And how are the notions of success, winning, and competition reconceived and redeemed within the Christian faith?  ------ We’re so glad you joined us for Ask Away. If you have a question t...

From the early days of the Christian faith, Christians were mocked for their unusual practice of connecting the eating of bread and wine with the body and blood of Jesus. At times they were even accused of cannibalism! And yet, two thousand years later nearly every Christian church continues this remarkable practice in some form. Why did Jesus institute this sacrament and what should it mean to us...