What Determines Happiness? Imagine a movie theater full of a hundred people. These hundred individuals represent the full continuum of happiness: Some are exceptionally happy, others less so, and ...
In his book, A Short History of Nearly Everything, author Bill Bryson details the complexity within the human body: No one really knows, but there may be as many as a million types of protein in the ...
Medical doctor Paul Brand, who is best known for discovering the cause of leprosy and developing a treatment for it, reflects on the nature and design of the universe. The more I delve into natural l...
People don’t rise from nothing. We do owe something to parentage and patronage. The people who stand before kings may look like they did it all themselves. But in fact they are invariably the benefici...
Acts 11:1-18, John 14:6, Colossians 1:13-14, Psalm 103:12, Isaiah 1:18, 1 John 1:9, Micah 7:18
The “grammar of the gospel” is the grammar of grace and response, the life-changing and life-giving intrusion of God into our midst, our lives, and our communities.
Scientist John Haldane once proposed to the English priest Ronald Knox that, given the vast number of planets in the universe, the emergence of life by sheer chance was inevitable. Knox responded with...
The atheist author Richard Dawkins, who wrote, “The universe, at the bottom, has no design, no purpose, no evil, and no other good. Nothing but blind, pitiless indifference. DNA neither knows nor care...
Think of your own experiences as a human being: your body is not just a “shell” in which you dwell. Your body is not just a body. Your body is not just any body. Your body is somebody—you! Through the...
Colossians 1:6, Matthew 13:24-30, John 12:24, Luke 13:20-21, Luke 13:18-19, Matthew 13:33, Matthew 13:31-32
Jesus made clear that the Kingdom of God is organic and not organizational. It grows like a seed and it works like leaven: secretly, invisibly, surprisingly, and irresistibly.
Paul’s insight that Gentiles are co-heirs, co-members, and co-participants in the gospel is not a mere sociological adjustment—it is a radical theological revelation.
The great danger is to always single out some aspect of God’s good creation and identify it, rather than the alien intrusion of sin, as the villain. Such an error conceives of the good-evil dichotomy ...
James 1:19-20, Ephesians 4:29, Proverbs 18:21, Colossians 4:6, Proverbs 10:19, Matthew 12:36-37, Proverbs 29:11, 2 Timothy 2:23-24, Proverbs 17:27-28, James 3:5-6, Ecclesiastes 10:12-14, Psalm 141:3
Have you ever heard of Godwin's Law? While it may sound like some overly technical scientific hypothesis, it’s actually quite simple. Godwin's Law, first coined in 1990 by an an attorney and e...
God’s grace is present in all people and cultures. As we submit ourselves to learning from other cultures, we catch glimpses of God’s grace that would be unavailable in our own culture.
Sharan Merriam and Carolyn Clark, in their fine study Lifelines , effectively show that life is fundamentally about two things—our work and our relationships. And maturity is found in having the c...
Christianity Does Not Reject the Body The “spirit-good / body-bad” dualism that often passes for Christianity is actually an ancient gnostic error called “Manichaeism,” and it couldn’t be further from...
Gracious God, sometimes I am so caught up in my failures, in all the ways I am not like you, that I neglect the deeper truth, the earlier truth of Genesis 1. You have made me, as a human being, in you...
Every person in Scripture lived out a personal story incarnated by an even greater story about God, life, and the world. That story came from the politics, theology, and culture ingrained in their mem...
The basis of life is people and how they relate to each other. Our success, fulfillment, and happiness depend upon our ability to relate effectively. The best way to become a person that others are dr...
Matthew 5:48, 1 John 3:2-3, Galatians 5:16-17, Philippians 3:13-14, Colossians 3:1-2, Ephesians 4:22-24
The scholastics used to say: Homo non proprie humanus sed superhumanus est —which means that to be properly human, you must go beyond the merely human.
I love watching young boys and girls build things with Legos. Their small, creative masterpieces cannot help but reflect their image-bearing nature and remind us we were all made to make things. When ...
Isaiah 1:17, Colossians 3:12, Romans 12:10, Proverbs 31:8-9, Galatians 6:2, Matthew 25:40, James 1:27
In this beautiful illustration from Tom Long’s well-known preaching guide, The Witness of Preaching , a pastor shares a true story of what valuing human life can look like when God’s Kingdom takes ro...
The current understanding of the physical sciences, which contrasts sharply with the strictly mechanical perspectives prevalent in earlier centuries, aligns closely with the New Testament’s portrayal ...
I am not perfect, and I will struggle with the “old Jim,” who was and is influenced by American culture, narratives and values. But the key is that identity comes before behavior. We almost always do ...
Dealing with sin, saving humans from it, giving them grace, forgiveness, justification, glorification-all this was the purpose of the single covenant from the beginning, now fulfilled in Jesus Christ.
Colossians 3:5, 2 Corinthians 10:4-5, 1 John 2:16, James 1:14-15, Romans 8:1-2, Galatians 5:16-17
The early church fathers named the primary sin patterns “passions,” borrowing a Latin term that could also be translated “sufferings ” As we live out a unique pattern or “face” of sin, we begin to thi...
Ancient lens? What can we learn from the historical context? Context and Tone Paul was writing from prison to a Christian community that he didn’t establish. Rather, it was his co-laborer, Epaphr...
Romans 12:1-2, Colossians 2:8, 1 John 2:15-17, 1 Corinthians 10:23-33, Mark 7:8-9
When my grandparents were in their eighties, their television developed a fault that made the screen permanently bright green. It was good for viewing garden shows or nature programs, but it was prett...