Recently we learned about a crackdown in China in which more than 100 members and leaders of a church in Chengdu were detained. The pastor, Wang Yi, and his wife were charged with incitement to subvert the state and face real prison time. As it happens, Pastor Wang Yi prepared for this, and he... Continue Reading →
Bert and Ernie are Friends
Like a lot of people my age, I spent a lot of time watching Sesame Street growing up. This was back when Mr. Hooper was still tending the store and long before Elmo showed up. Two of the best characters, at least for me, were Bert and Ernie. They were carefree and careful, silly and... Continue Reading →
Meaning in Life and the Supreme Court
Every human is a meaning-searching being. Some of us engage in the search overtly and often. Many of us think of it from time to time, but nonetheless look for places to ground ourselves and our sense of direction and value in life. These places of meaning do a lot of work for us. They... Continue Reading →
“Unfriend”
What an awful term. If you look up a definition, you will learn it means to remove someone from a list of friends on a social media site. But this is, to me, an unfortunate and corrosive use of the word “friend” and the bonds that are painfully severed when you cease to be friends... Continue Reading →
God and the Transgender Debate
Andrew T. Walker. God and the Transgender Debate: What Does the Bible Actually Say About Gender Identity? (The Good Book Company, Denmark. 2017) 174 ppg. The cultural issues swirling around the American and Western church require Christians and church leaders to have a new level of theological perception. If we believe our faith... Continue Reading →
A Psalm and our Work
Psalm 112 The righteous worker is: happy, delights in God’s law, lends generously, conducts business fairly, is unafraid, gives freely to the poor, he is gracious, compassionate, and righteous, and the wicked hate it. How do you think about the value of your labor? What do you think are the primary two or three... Continue Reading →
Wrestling with Meaning in the Face of Evil
Bad theology leads to terrible conclusions when trying to deal with evil. We Americans are grieving again over another mass shooting. A few weeks ago it was a shooting in Las Vegas into a crowd of concert-goers, for which we still have very few answers. Last weekend it was a man who killed 26 worshippers... Continue Reading →
Ministering In Our Secular Age
Colin Hansen, Our Secular Age: Ten Years of Reading and Applying Charles Taylor (Deerfield, Ill: The Gospel Coalition, 2017). Arguably the most ambitious philosophical work in the last decade is Charles Taylor’s, “A Secular Age.” It defies simple description, but in it Taylor dissects the move toward secularism in the last 500 year of... Continue Reading →
Politics and Fundamentalism
Recently, Tim Farron resigned his position as leader of the Liberal Democrat party in the U.K. His reasoning had to do with how hard it became for him to live in the spotlight as both the leader of a liberal political party and be a committed Evangelical Christian. In his resignation speech he says in... Continue Reading →
A U.S Senator, Religious Discrimination, and a Few Thoughts
By now you have likely heard that Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) openly expressed his disapproval of President Trump’s nominee for deputy director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, Russell Vought. A couple of years ago Vought wrote an online article expressing the traditional Christian belief that Muslims “stand condemned” because of their... Continue Reading →