Deuteronomy 6:20-23, Exodus 12:26-27, Joel 1:3, Psalm 78:4-7, Romans 5:12
Some stories, however, have been handed down to us. For some, we were not yet cognizant, and for others, we weren’t even born when experiences, memories, and stories affected our family and communitie...
Peter Ustinov, the British actor, director, and playwright, once received an indignant letter from the headmaster of his son’s school. The letter complained that his son frequently disrupted lessons b...
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 ...
Many of the modern controversies surrounding the Bible—for example, human sexuality, creationism and the “openness” of God—revolve around questions concerning hermeneutics. The science of hermeneutics...
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...
Now, technology is everywhere. I don’t mean just glowing screens and digital devices; I mean the whole apparatus of “easy everywhere” that has come into existence in just over the span of one human li...
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...
Proverbs 16:9, Psalm 37:23-24, Isaiah 30:21, Luke 16:10, Matthew 6:34, Ecclesiastes 9:11
The pioneering work of Israeli psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky has been popularized in recent years by the gamut of notable thinkers, including Malcolm Gladwell (Blink) and, in this cas...
After the fall of our first parents, boundaries were something to push past, to transgress. It’s worth pausing to note how we use the word transgression for “sin.” With its Latin roots, “across” and ...
"I've been thinking with my guts since I was fourteen years old, and frankly speaking, between you and me, I have come to the conclusion that my guts have sh** for brains."
Exodus 3:10-12, Esther 4:14, 1 Samuel 16:12-13, Luke 15:17-20, 1 Peter 2:9, Psalm 139:14, Matthew 1:
On March 11, 1830, a young English girl was studying a lesson on the royal family with her tutor. As she examined the genealogical chart, she suddenly realized the astonishing truth—she was next in li...
Intellect is therefore a vital force in history, but it can also be a dissolvent and destructive power. Out of every hundred new ideas ninety-nine or more will probably be inferior to the traditional ...
1 Corinthians 7:1-9, Matthew 19:3-12 , Psalm 139:13-16 , Genesis 2:18-25, Song of Solomon 4:1-16, Proverbs 5:15-19, Genesis 2:18
James Nelson describes sexuality as the central clue to what God is up to in the world. While this might seem a little over the top, when you think about it, sexuality factors integrally in our relati...
If we accept Genesis 1 as ancient cosmology, then we need to interpret it as ancient cosmology rather than translate it into modern cosmology. If we try to turn it into modern cosmology, we are making...
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 ...
Deuteronomy 6:6-7, Proverbs 22:6, 1 Samuel 1:27-28, Luke 2:51-52, Ephesians 6:1-4, Psalm 127:3-5
I want to suggest a pretty radical idea about what family is for. Family is about the forming of persons. Being a person is a gift, like life itself—we are born as human beings made in the image of Go...
Context matters. According to the Terman Study, which followed one thousand study participants from childhood until their death, the people we surround ourselves with are who we become. We see those a...
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 formed us in his image — a glorious thought! — but we all participate in the abandonment of that original identity…Does that mean that your precious little child is a dirty rotten sinner, as some ...
The mystery of perfection as an aspect of beauty is its transcendence. It points to a glory beyond itself. I knew that when I held my children, I didn’t simply cradle flesh and blood. I held a living ...
If we see more and further than they, it is not because of our own clear eyes or tall bodies, but because we are raised on high by their gigantic stature.
The Hebrew word yada (“to know”) is, in fact, used for both sexual intercourse as well as our relationship with God. Every relational event is a stage that affords one a glimpse into the consumm...
Exodus 3:11-14, Isaiah 6:5-8 , 1 Kings 19:11-13 , John 15:4-5 , Luke 10:38-42 , Psalm 46:10
Historically the West has tended to throw its chief emphasis upon doing and the East upon being. . . . Were human nature perfect there would be no discrepancy between being and doing. The unfallen man...
After the fall of our first parents, boundaries were something to push past, to transgress. It’s worth pausing to note how we use the word transgression for “sin.” With its Latin roots, “across” and ...
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...
Proverbs 4:23, Genesis 4:3–7, Ezekiel 36:26 , Luke 6:43-45 , Matthew 15:18-19, Psalm 51:10
When the Bible uses the term heart , it means the causal core of your personhood. The heart is your directional system. The heart is your steering wheel. Your behavior isn’t caused by the situati...