discussion on Fools for Christ

The first type of fool in the Bible is the character that might be called the fool proper. Folly in a fallen world is obviously partly relativistic, and we are always wise to say, “Says who?” Differen...

The Hebrew word for “fool” is very close to the Hebrew for “noble,” with only one letter different, and it is sometimes only in the outcome of their lives that the people considered noble by the peopl...

At the last Judgment Christ will say to us, "Come, you also! Come, drunkards! Come, weaklings! Come, children of shame!" And He will say to us: "Vile beings, you who are in the image of...

The cross, Martin Luther wrote, was the devil’s mousetrap. The devil smelled cheese, and wham, felt steel. Thus, we see a little baby lying defenseless in a crib at Bethlehem, and a tortured man hangi...

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...

Now I have to ask you: If Jesus Christ, the Son of God, did not presume to face the forces of evil in the world without a profound knowledge of the Bible in mind and heart, how could we try to face li...

In another day and age, God, religion and church enjoyed the general respect of the culture. Not today. Religion is suspect, church is weird, and Christians are hypocrites. Distrust has become the nor...

Writing about ministering to postmodern skeptics, Don Everts and Doug Schaupp share a helpful insight into the mystery of God's movement: The first lesson they have taught us about the path to f...

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...

Trust is sweet. It is better than gold. Trust is always a gift of the heart, and therefore it just may be the most precious thing in life, next to love. Trust between two people is so valuable and pre...

In Elie Wiesel’s Night , Eliezer is a Jewish teenager, a devoted student of the Talmud from Sighet, in Hungarian Transylvania. In the spring of 1944, the Nazis occupied Hungary. Increasingly repressi...

The cornerstone was a critical element of ancient architecture, the anchor that the rest of the building relied on. The cornerstone was the stone that set the alignment of the entire building. Every o...

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 ...

The second lesson this group of new believers has shown us is that the postmodern path to faith is organic. Lostness, of course, looks different depending upon your perspective and personality. It is ...

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...

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...

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...

New Testament scholar and Anglican bishop N. T. Wright recalls being at a party once when someone decided to read a portion of the seventeenth-century Prayer Book for laughs. The Prayer Book includes ...

It would be impossible to overestimate the impact these meals must have had upon the poor and the sinners. By accepting them as friends and equals Jesus had taken away their shame, humiliation, and gu...

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, ...

Brother Lawrence, a 16th-century Carmelite monk, spent his days scrubbing pots and mending shoes. Largely uneducated, he filled his free time writing letters and notes that, after his death, friends g...

When we aim at certainty when it comes to our Christian beliefs, it sets us up for failure. …Imagine someone with a lot of time on their hands who painstakingly constructs a five-foot-high house of...

It is quite common for Christians to experience doubts from time to time. Unfortunately, doubts about our Christian beliefs are often treated in the same way we would treat a common cold. We wait it o...

If we are all going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children...

Amy Carmichael was a passionate missionary to India. She gave her life for the sake of those who had suffered the consequences of an unyielding caste system. She also had her suffering, due to physica...

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...

I grew up in a church where healing never happened. We had theology that Jesus healed, but I never saw anyone healed growing up in the church. One day, I’m a pastor, and I decide we have to move beyon...

Humor points to faith in that both humor and faith spring up in response to the reality of the paradox and the incongruities at the heart of human experience. But while humor responds well to the lowe...

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 ...

A number of years ago, when sabbath laws were still a contentious issue, a church group was picketing a stadium just before a Sunday game. When Tampa Bay Bucs coach John McKay arrived, the minister co...