Be careful, warned Nietzsche, lest in fighting the dragon you become the dragon. I see the confusion of politics and religion as one of the greatest barriers to grace. C. S. Lewis once said that almos...
Be careful, warned Nietzsche, lest in fighting the dragon you become the dragon.
Barbara Brown Taylor, an Episcopal priest, decided to leave her clergy position in part because of the church’s failure to administer that grace: One thing that had always troubled me was the way peop...
As I have said, the Bible consistently changes the questions we bring to the problem of pain. It rarely, or ambiguously, answers the backward-looking question Why? Instead, it raises the very differen...
As Dorothy Day put it, I really only love God as much as I love the person I love the least.
Andy Rooney, the late commentator on the 60 Minutes television show, once said, I’ve decided I’m against abortion. I think it’s murder. But I have a dilemma in that I much prefer the pro-choice to the...
Always, no matter the circumstances, we have the assurance of Immanuel, which simply means God with us.
Along with Chesterton, I’ve had to take my place among those who acknowledge that we are what is wrong with the world. What is my snobbishness toward my childhood church, for instance, but an inverted...
Again and again I tell God I need help, and God says, Well isn’t that fabulous? Because I need help too. So you go get that old woman over there some water, and I’ll figure out what we’re going to do...
According to Barna surveys, 61 percent of today’s youth had been churched at one point during their teen years but are now spiritually disengaged.
A pilgrim is a fellow-traveler on the spiritual journey, not a professional guide.
A grace-full Christian is one who looks at the world through grace-tinted lenses.
A counselor, David Seamands, summed up his career this way: Many years ago I was driven to the conclusion that the two major causes of most emotional problems among evangelical Christians are th...
The issue is not whether I agree with someone but rather how I treat someone with whom I profoundly disagree. We Christians are called to use the weapons of grace, which means treating even our oppone...
Recall Gandhi’s remark that if you take the principle an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth to its logical conclusion, eventually the whole world will go blind and toothless.
Positioned myself. I once described the people I tend to hear from as borderlanders, those caught in a no-person’s-land between faith and disbelief. Some approach the church cautiously, attracted to J...
What would it look like if a Christian took literally Jesus' sweeping commands and acted on them. What would a Good Samaritan look like today, in urban America?
We grow up hungry for love, and in ways so deep as to remain unexpressed we long for our Maker to love us.
We feel pain as an outrage; Jesus did too, which is why he performed miracles of healing. In Gethsemane, he did not pray, Thank you for this opportunity to suffer, but rather pled desperately for an e...
We do well to remember that the Bible has far more to say about how to live during the journey than about the ultimate destination.