Galatians 5:17, 1 John 1:8, Proverbs 4:23, Romans 7:18-19, Mark 7:21-23, James 1:14-15
In a famous Earth Day 1971 Pogo comic strip by Walt Kelly, the titular Pogo and his companion Porkypine are enjoying nature when they come upon a clearing filled with trash. Pogo says the iconic line,...
Does it ever seem like the world around us is changing at breakneck speed? Well, it turns out, you’re right. A team of researchers have concluded that the Western world’s “environment and social order...
Christian scripture is abundantly clear that redemption through Jesus’ work on the cross has implications far beyond the church’s usual emphasis on the restoration of human beings alienated from their...
John 2:15-16, Romans 12:2, Ephesians 2:1-2, John 15:18-19, James 4:4
The world, though, is protean: each generation has the world to deal with in a new form. World is an atmosphere, a mood. It is nearly as hard for a sinner to recognize the world’s temptations as it is...
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 ...
Ancient Lens What can we learn from the historical context? The Old, Old Story Jesus’ resurrection and ascension (and perhaps Pentecost) are the resolution of a story that starts with all the way...
Romans 5:1, Romans 8:1, Galatians 2:16, Titus 3:5, 1 John 4:15, Isaiah 61:10, Hebrews 10:14
Much that we have interpreted as a defect of sanctification in church people is really an outgrowth of their loss of bearing with respect to justification. Christians who are no longer sure that God l...
Matthew 23:13, Matthew 23:3, Proverbs 16:18, Luke 14:11, Romans 12:3, Mark 10:42-45, 1 Peter 5:2-3, Ecclesiastes 10:1
My wife is a big fan of an advice column called “Ask a Manager.” The articles offer a variety of subjects, many of which are serious, but some are downright hilarious. They often capture the absurditi...
In this short (and humorous) excerpt, author David Zahl shares a definition of the secular: Perhaps secular warrants its own explanation, though. My most immediate association comes from the belov...
As popularized in Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein’s fascinating book by the same name, nudges are small changes in the environment around us that make it easier for us to make the choices we want to ...
As popularized in Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein’s fascinating book by the same name, nudges are small changes in the environment around us that make it easier for us to make the choices we want to ...
Note from TPW: Kara Martin addresses life in the secular workplace, sharing insights to help you lead your congregations to understand their faith and work and also to bring the Kingdom into your o...
2 Timothy 3:16-17, Romans 15:4, Isaiah 55:11, Hebrews 4:12-13, 2 Peter 1:19-21, Matthew 4:4, Matthew 24:35
The Bible contains rules, but it’s not helpful to think of it as a rule book. As important as rule books are, they don’t inspire devotion. Imagine curling up with a cup of coffee and your company’s em...
Culture is like gravity. We never talk about it, except in physics classes. We don’t include gravity in our weekly planning processes. No one gets up thinking about how gravity will affect their day. ...
1 Peter 1:6-7, James 1:2-4, Romans 5:3-5, 2 Corinthians 4:16-18, Hebrews 12:11-13, 2 Corinthians 7:10, Zechariah 13:7-9, Daniel 3:, Isaiah 48:10
Trivia time! What natural disaster is the most destructive to a forest? Chances are that the first thing that comes to mind is a forest fire. After all, fire is pure destruction to plants. What possib...
Romans 12:10, Revelation 3:20, Matthew 25:40, Luke 8:43-48, Song of Solomon 2:14, Psalm 42:7
In I’d Like You More If You Were More Like Me , John Ortberg uses an interesting analogy for an aspect of our relationships. In 2015, Stephen Hawking and Yuri Milner announced the Starshot Initiati...
Matthew 25:34-40, Acts 2:42-47, Matthew 21:12-13, Luke 10:25-37, Romans 12:2, Matthew 5:13-16
To focus our expectation in an otherworldly salvation has the potential to dissipate our resistance to societal evil and the dedication needed to work for the redemptive transformation of this world.
If you see a thing whole—it seems that it’s always beautiful. Planets, lives… But up close a world’s all dirt and rocks. And day to day, life is a hard job, you get tired, you lose the pattern. You ne...
To frame is to put a language boundary around our experience. It is to name what happens in particular ways, to say how we see the world, and to see the world how we say it is. Framing includes tellin...
Philippians 3:14, Matthew 7:13-14, 1 Peter 5:8-9, Colossians 2:8, Psalm 1:1-3, Ephesians 4:14, Romans 12:2
Perhaps the most intense place to experience drifting is commonly known as the EAC, the East Australian Current. If you’ve ever seen the Disney Pixar film Finding Nemo, you’ve been exposed to the EAC,...
Whenever I have encountered any kind of deep problem with civilization anywhere in the world—be it the logging of rain forests, ethnic or religious intolerance or the brutal destruction of a cultural ...
We all live between two worlds. We are planted here on earth while our hope is in heaven. We are given work to do in temporary soil that, we’re told, has the potential to spring up into unending fruit...
Eating does not need to follow this commodified, industrial way. It can occur in contexts where people take deeper notice of and accept responsibility for what they eat. To appreciate what this sort o...
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...
If you let your circumstances define the way you see God, you are a prisoner of perspective. Or worse, a prisoner of your past mistakes! But if you let God define the way you see your circumstances, y...
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...
The drug problems in the U.S. demonstrate this pattern: by heightening powers of perception, chemical stimulants open up a new world to a generation that has never learned to appreciate fully the worl...