discussion on Conflict Resolution

Lucy says to Charlie Brown: ‘You know what the whole trouble with you is, Charlie Brown?’ ‘No; and I don’t want to know! Leave me alone!’ ‘The whole trouble with you is you won’t listen to w...

In one of Aesop's familiar fables, an old man has several sons who are always fighting among themselves. He had often, but without success, exhorted them to live together in harmony. One day, he c...

What is our responsibility to our neighbor? This is a question many have asked, including the Medieval theologian Thomas Aquinas. Meditating on the topic he observed, “To patiently endure wrongs done ...

In 2010, an oil rig named “Deepwater Horizon” suffered a catastrophic failure. Due to improper installation of the cement seal, a malfunctioning blowout preventer, and cost-cutting decisions by corpor...

We all have shadows and skeletons in our backgrounds. But listen, there is something bigger in this world than we are, and that something bigger is full of grace and mercy, patience and ingenuity. The...

The robbing of our lives occurs when the core story of who we are—created as “very good” (Gen 1:31) and never downgraded, and “beloved” of God (1 Jn 3:2)—is taken through specific memories and twisted...

The famous poem The Charge of the Light Brigade includes these haunting lines: Into the valley of Death Rode the six hundred… Someone had blundered. Theirs not to reason why, ...

The unjust steward who, hearing he is going to be fired, doctors his master’s accounts to secure another job, is commended precisely because he acted. The point does not concern morality but apathy. H...

Reject Christianity, if you will, out of motives of cynicism; turn away from it because you believe. Reality is malign and punitive; choose a God that is cantankerous, vindictive, or forgetful, or det...

In those same weeks, Harper’s Magazine featured an evening-long conversation between two professors, Neil Postman and Camille Paglia, about the meaning of television for persons and for polities...

When every option is available to us, we don’t actually have freedom; we tend to shut down. I experienced what sociologists call choice overload (or paralysis) and decision fatigue. If you’ve ever tri...

At the core of every project of self-salvation is the staunch unwillingness to believe that God’s love and forgiveness can be unmerited. Those who would try and save themselves prefer work to rest, ef...

We cannot be closed off to one another and be open to God. That’s not how this works. Do you remember the commercial when the woman says “that’s not how this works, that's not how any of this work...

The cross of Jesus is the world’s supreme example of anguish, suffering and injustice, but it has nothing to do with tragedy as we experience it in Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides and Shakespeare—trag...

Rodney King had led the police on a high speed chase through Los Angeles. Eventually the police got him to stop, and after he exited the car, he was savagely beaten by four officers. The entire countr...

If you have ever watched the President of the United States deliver the State of the Union Address in recent years, you know that at some point in his speech, he will point to the balcony and introduc...

One simple sentence, from my first pastoral supervisor, has significantly shaped how I seek to discern God’s personal will. Each Wednesday during my first year of congregational ministry, we met to re...

Too often we are given a choice—emotions or faith and belief. Yet as Dan Allender and Tremper Longman observe,  Emotion links our internal and external worlds. To be aware of what we feel can open ...

The problem we face today needs very little time for its statement. Our lives in a modern city grow too complex and overcrowded. Even the necessary obligations which we feel we must meet grow overnigh...

It’s easy to label what we consider “good things” in our lives as gifts from God and to welcome them with gratitude. But when difficult things happen, we don’t look at them as part of God’s good plan ...

Many people have misinterpreted the separation of church and state to mean that religious views shouldn’t play a role in public discussions and lawmaking. Someone might say, “We shouldn’t restrict abo...

A conversation in 1784 between Charles Simeon (a Calvinist and believer in unconditional predestination) and John Wesley (a follower of Arminius, who denied unconditional predestination) can help us u...

I believe that it is the paradox between serving a healing God and the persistence of illness and even death that ultimately lies behind most theological debates about divine healing in the Church. ...

According to Bill Tripp, a member of the Karuk tribe in Northern California and a forest manager, Fire is that which renews life. A lot of people have been conditioned to look at it as a threat and...

What is the matter with us is a question as old as time. Many philosophers and prophets believe they have an answer, but so too does holy scripture. According to the Dutch-Canadian philosopher Al Wolt...

Apologetics (from apologia in Greek) is a “word back,” a reasoned defense mounted on behalf of the one we love who is innocent but has been falsely and unfairly accused. Faith desires to let God be Go...

We sometimes imagine surrender to God as emotional starvation. Every pleasure feels suspicious, and every passion feels in competition with our love of God. We think that the more miserable we are in ...

Nearly everybody knows of at least one sin habit in their life that they wish to leave behind them. Yet, no matter what they do, it seems impossible for them to be free of this habit, character flaw, ...

A group of researchers sought to study the nuances of self-control. They conducted a study with a few dozen kindergarten students and gave them a painfully boring, repetitive task designed to test how...

A few years ago I led a two-day retreat for some Christian men. …We agreed that we don’t want to be a bunch of dudes , allowing American cultural images of masculinity to shape our hearts. Nei...