Two separate audio clips to share here from two different sources. Each struck me as worth highlighting.

The first is from Pastor Joel Hunter. Hunter heads Florida's Northland Church. I've been rather late to appreciate Hunter despite his being in the news for much of the past few years. My bias tends to be toward younger pastors, but Hunter is a clear exception. I'll usually listen to his sermons late at night, turn down the lights and let his voice just fill the room. The church also has great sermon notes and a study guide to go by also. As a communication techie who dabbles in graphic arts, it's a nice addition.

Hunter's segment here is from the sermon "Wasting Wisdom" - one that I find myself listening to repeatedly. It covers the difference between moralism and morality. It's a point that I suspect Hunter has covered in his recent book covering politics and religion: "Right Wing, Wrong Bird." In the end, however, it's an affirming view to the way I tend to look at that intersection. Give Pastor Hunter a listen and I'll leave it to him to clarify. If you're up for it, though, the entire sermon is great to take in.

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Second up is a duo of clips. Greg Boyd from Minnesota's Woodland Hills Church is one of my favorites because there's a lot to his style that I recognize in myself. He's at once nerdy and rambling. As he puts it, he tends to "think in paragraphs." Like Hunter, Boyd is another author of a book covering the intersection of politics and religion, but this clip doesn't go into that (mercifully). These were actually back-to-back answers in a Q&A session that concluded a series on spiritual warfare. Again, the entire session is worth listening to, but it's over 2 hours of audio from each of the services. I won't lie ... even I couldn't sit through that in one sitting. But it's an incredibly educational and entertaining lesson.

Boyd gets a little bit of grief from critics of his view of what's called "open theism." I don't pretend to have done enough theological study to break that down on both sides for one and all. But the first clip gives a brief overview of what that's about. I'll leave it for you to decide whether it fits with your own worldview, but it certainly opens up an area that warrants more thought in terms of how we live out God's purpose in our lives.

The second clip picks up from the other participant in the Q&A, Paul Eddy. This one grazes on that politics/religion intersection, but only as a means of providing a metaphor. It also, I think, addresses the question more directly. That question was essentially ... why doesn't God just take away - or just obliterate - Satan's power in this world? As Eddy notes in his answer, the metaphor isn't perfect, but it's a good starting point to illustrate with.

I'll recommend the whole 2-hour session if you've got the time and interest in the subject. As a throwback, I first mentioned this topic back when I read John Eldredge's "The Sacred Romance." The book excerpts from back then are another great illustration of the subject as well.