background on Temptation

For years Kyle and I [Jamin Goggin] had no trouble looking critically upon others in their quest for power. We bemoaned the rock-star pastors who were in the spotlight, whose churches appeared to be m...

I’m not a big movie buff. I’ve seen my fair share, but if I have an evening free I’d rather read a book, play a game, or watch sports than take in a movie. My wife, on the other hand, likes movies, mo...

We read of the temptations of Jesus, but we never hear of a confession of sin on his part. He never asked for forgiveness, though he told his followers to do so. This lack of any sense of moral failur...

But let me point out something we almost always fail to notice. We can only be tempted to something that is good on some level, partially good, or good for some, or just good for us and not for others...

In his excellent book on the desert fathers, Where God Happens , former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams tells of an encounter between two monastic fathers. The first was Macarius, famous in...

As a writer, my great interest is human nature, and in particular, the subject of happiness. A few years ago, I noticed a pattern: when people told me about a “before and after” change they’d made tha...

All idols begin by offering great things for a very small price. All idols then fail, more and more consistently, to deliver on their original promises, while ratcheting up their demands, which initia...

The central plot device of The Lord of the Rings is the Dark Lord Sauron’s Ring of Power, which corrupts anyone who tries to use it, however good his or her intentions. The Ring is what Professor To...

The author John Steinbeck once wrote a letter to the diplomat Adlai Stevenson, which was later published in the Washington Post in January of 1960. In it Steinbeck said, “A strange species we are. We ...

In his excellent book, An Unhurried Life, Alan Fadling describes one of our greatest temptations in the modern age—hurry: Hurry is a great temptation. Hurry looks like impulsive, knee-jerk reactions...

In their excellent book Invitation to a Journey , M. Robert Mulholland and Ruth Haley Barton discuss the poignant insight that it is the Spirit that leads Jesus into the Wildnerness. What does this...

In her thought-provoking book, Teach us to Want , Jen Pollock Michel describes the tension in listening to our deepest desires: some of them these desires are integral to our identity, but they a...