isaiah on Plagiarism

When Quentin Rowan published his first spy novel, Assassin of Secrets , it was initially received with glowing reviews. But five days after its release, it became clear that the novel had been al...

To handle the things of God without worship is always to falsify them.

Suspicion always haunts the guilty mind; The thief doth fear each bush an officer.

All our experience with history should teach us, when we look back, how badly human wisdom is betrayed when it relies on itself

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 ...

There’s a somewhat naïve belief among some that, in general, most people are inherently good. While many Christians may not fully embrace John Calvin’s doctrine of total depravity (which I believe is ...

We all desire to learn from our role models, but some take this ambition to the next level. The writer Hunter S. Thompson was so obsessed with the writings of F. Scott Fitzgerald, and specifically his...

Myself unholy, from myself unholy to the sweet living of my friends I look—eye-greeting doves bright-counter to the rook, fresh sand to salt sand-teasing waters shoaly:—and they are purér, but alas! n...

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

“Sin, he reflected, is not what it is usually thought to be; it is not to steal and tell lies. Sin is for one man to walk brutally over the life of another and to be quite oblivious of the wounds he h...

Loving God, we will betray you; yet you invite us to your table. We will deny you; yet you give us yourself in love. We will fail to pray with you; yet you pray for us. We will crucify you; yet ...

It is human to err, it is devilish to remain willfully in error.

“No thief, however skillful, can rob one of knowledge*, and that is why knowledge is the best and safest treasure to acquire.” (*or Faith)

A text without a context is a pretext for a proof text.

The New Testament scholar Craig Evans makes a compelling observation about how the academy can sometimes hinder the church through overly skeptical scholarship: Some scholars seem to think that th...

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...

I just paid a parking ticket the other day. It was easy. I read the charge against me, flipped the ticket over, checked the box that said “I plead guilty to the charge,” filled out a check for $35 to ...

Gracious God, we confess our sin to you, for we have denied your light in us; we have betrayed your Holy Spirit in us. For those sins which weigh upon us, and those we do not even know we ...

The pastor R.C. Sproul was studying in the Netherlands in the last 1960s and randomly struck up a conversation with a Dutch woman. The conversation was a common, enjoyable interaction, but when it was...

The clergyman cannot minimize sin and maintain his proper role in our culture’. For sin is ‘an implicitly aggressive quality – a ruthlessness, a hurting, a breaking away from God and from the rest of ...

In Guilt and Grace , Swiss physician and Christian, Paul Tournier, writes… I cannot study this very serious problem of guilt with you without raising the very obvious and tragic fact that rel...

Heavenly Father, forgive us for the times when we take advantage of your unfailing love. You forgive us day in and day out, you never fail us, and you’ll never leave us. As a result, we become complac...

Insecurity is a funny thing. It makes us into someone we’re not as a way to cope with someone we used to be. For me, it started at home. Growing up, my dad had been critical of my mother’s weight, and...

Dieu pardonerra; c’est son métier; God forgives you — it’s his thing. *for contrast

We readily confess our little faults in order to suggest that we have no big ones.

In the context of justice, I think what Christians need to confess about their pride isn’t so much about taking credit away from God but from the people we help. One version of this is sometimes refer...

Dear Everybody, We have a serious problem: All of us think we’re good people. But Jesus says we’re not. Sincerely, Brant P. Hansen …PS. IF YOU THINK I’M WRONG—about how we think we’re good people...

If your voice is heard by more people because you've earned some kind of name and fame, your silence on an issue of urgent moral importance is even more of a betrayal. Privilege is obligation.

Beware of manufacturing a God of your own: a God who is all mercy, but not just. Such a God is an idol of your own.

The essence of sin is man substituting himself for God, while the essence of salvation is God substituting himself for Man.