galatians on Manipulation

We might not say we believe a Jesus-plus-our-efforts idea of the gospel, but when we place our performances on the pedestal of personal progress, we’re not relying on the grace of God. We’re worshipin...

Your decisions . . . along with your responses to other people’s decisions, which are also your decisions...are about the only thing you can control in life, which means your decisions are how you con...

When we observe evil, sinful behavior from a distance, the inclination is simply to see people as acting with malicious intent. We assume they are “bad people.” But often the motivations that lead to ...

In their excellent book Invitation to a Journey , M. Robert Mulholland and Ruth Haley Barton describe the foundation of life as being spiritual in nature. This means we are constantly be “formed” s...

The way most of us serve keeps us in control. We choose whom, when, where and how we will serve. We stay in charge. Jesus is calling for something else. He is calling us to be servants. When we make t...

Religion is like a knife: you can either use it to cut bread, or stick in someone’s back.

My mind is bent to tell of bodies changed into new forms.

Sin is a deep interior dislocation of the soul. It's a desire to keep control of your life.

A 2014 study by Wendy Wood found that approximately 40% of people’s daily activities are performed out of habit. According to Wood, “an important characteristic of a habit is that it’s automatic…We fi...

In life, whenever someone achieves success, criticism usually follows—regardless of their skill or the effort they’ve invested. An old story illustrates this truth. A woman crafted artificial fruit so...

“Moral”…is an orientation toward understandings about what is right and wrong, just and unjust, that are not established by our own actual desires or preferences but instead are believed to exist apar...

When we watch cartoons, it is fun to see the way we can so easily allow some of the craziest stuff to just be taken at face value. Movements that don’t follow the laws of physics? Sure. Talking animal...

When you take "personal" attacks personally, you unwittingly conspire in one of the common ways you can be taken out of action-you make yourself the issue. Attacks may be personal, understan...

There is not any thing, relating to men and characters, more surprising and unaccountable, than this partiality to themselves. . . . Hence it is that many men seem perfect strangers to their own chara...

One of the cardinal rules of improvisational theater is that actors must never steal scenes. In her book Improvisation for the Theater , Viola Spolin bluntly puts it this way: “Any player who ‘st...

One of my favorite sections of Home Depot is the power garden tool department. Even though I have all the tools I need, I still like browsing through Home Depot’s collection of power mowers, chainsaws...

Teach me to feel another's woe, to hide the fault I see, that mercy I to others show, that mercy show to me.

To accept this [Jesus' self-humiliation in washing the disciples' feet] is to be converted. And nothing can be added to this. If you imagine that you can add something to what is given in the ...

[Beauty] “is goodness made manifest to the senses.

The inordinate desire in the west to increase productivity, to go faster and faster, especially in business, can actually become counterproductive. In this short story from the Chinese philosopher Men...

Practicing confession is one way to guard against paternalism in both extreme and more subtle ways. For example, we can tell stories of justice in a way that discounts other people’s agency—that is, t...

Some years ago, the syndicated newspaper columnist Sidney J. Harris shared an interesting anecdote from one of his friends. Each evening, this friend would stop at the same newsstand to buy a newspape...

People bind themselves into political teams that share moral narratives. Once they accept a particular narrative, they become blind to alternative moral worlds.

We fixate on sins of commission far too much. We practice holiness by subtraction-don't do this, don't do that, and you're okay. The problem with that is this: you can do nothing wrong and...

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.

A Tough Way to Start Ministry You don’t have to spend much time on Twitter or Facebook to be reminded that schadenfreude (taking joy from another's misfortune) is alive and well. Depending on w...

Life is 10% what happens to me and 90% of how I react to it.

Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half-truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and ob...

These, then, are the two points I wanted to make. First, that human beings, all over the earth, have this curious idea that they ought to behave in a certain way, and cannot really get rid of it. Seco...

The cross, Martin Luther wrote, was the devil’s mousetrap. The devil smelled cheese, and wham, felt steel. Thus, we see a little baby lying defenseless in a crib at Bethlehem, and a tortured man hangi...