arts and culture on Cheating

In their excellent book Misreading Scripture with Western Eyes, E. Randolph Richards and Brandon J. O’Brien share the importance of recognizing the lens through which see the world: We speak as insi...

George Bush Sr. (41) enjoyed the game of golf, even if he wasn’t necessarily very good at it. Following his presidency and his return to private life, he began to notice something: It’s amazing how ma...

I don’t know about you, but I’ve always enjoyed hearing stories about the origins of certain words. One of these words is the “sincere.” While there are some questions about the history’s authenticity...

As a committed Southern Baptist, president Jimmy Carter was often questioned by reporters on a variety of moral issues. One day, a reporter asked, “How would you feel if you were told that your daught...

A traveler, between flights at an airport, went to a lounge and bought a small package of cookies. Then she sat down and began reading a newspaper. Gradually, she became aware of a rustling noise. Fro...

True love is a lack of desire to check one’s smartphone in another’s presence.

The exhausting manipulation and control it takes to protect an identity based on circumstances will crush our hearts and hide the best of who we are behind a wall of insecurity.

Young people are moving away from feeling guilty about sleeping with somebody to feeling guilty if they are *not* sleeping with someone.

In Words We Live By, Brian Burrell tells of an armed robber named Dennis Lee Curtis who was arrested in 1992 in Rapid City, South Dakota. Curtis apparently had scruples about his thievery. In his wal...

I take a page from Kierkegaard’s The Sickness Unto Death and I define sin as building your identity—your self-worth and happiness—on anything other than God. Instead of telling them they are sinning b...

So much of our unhappiness comes from comparing our lives, our friendships, our loves, our commitments, our duties, our bodies and our sexuality to some idealized and non-Christian vision of things wh...

Moralistic behavior change done for one's self simply manipulates and leverages radical selfishness without challenging it.

A predominant characteristic . . . of the behavior of those I call evil is scapegoating. Because in their hearts they consider themselves above reproach, they must lash out at anyone who does reproach...

Behavior modification that’s not empowered by God’s heart-changing grace is self-righteousness, as repugnant to God as the worst sins people gossip about.

When we observe evil, sinful behavior from a distance, the inclination is simply to see people as acting with malicious intent. We assume they are “bad people.” But often the motivations that lead to ...

Epithets can chip away at the image of God in us. Name-calling and identity theft are felonious offenses against divinity and humanity. Blasphemy. Those of us who have been victims of identity theft o...

Thus it is that we always pay dearly for chasing after what is cheap.

They have invented a phrase, a phrase that is a black and white contradiction in two words—“free-love”—as if a lover ever had been, or ever could be, free. It is the nature of love to bind itself, and...

In 1988, I (Randy) moved with my wife and two sons (ages two and eight weeks) from Texas to Sulawesi, an island north of Australia and south of the Philippines. We served as missionaries to a cluster ...

In His book When Narcissism Comes to Church, Chuck DeGroat describes a common tool employed on social media, gaslighting: Gaslighting is a form of emotional abuse that draws its name from a 1938 Bri...

Advertising - A judicious mixture of flattery and threats.

Another form of unholy unhurry that many of us have heard little about is acedia. Derived from the Greek a (for “not”) and keedos (meaning “to care”), acedia is ultimately a failure of love. It’s a pl...

A text without a context is a pretext for a proof text.

Money can extinguish intrinsic motivation, diminish performance, crush creativity, encourage unethical behavior, foster short-term thinking, and become addictive.

While movies and novels often present stories of a budding love interest willing to give up everything for “true love” (Romeo and Juliet, for example), the renowned poet, and later clergyman, John Don...

Lying is the misuse of language. We know that. We need to remember that it works the other way round too. Even with the best intentions, language misused, language used stupidly, carelessly, brutally,...

My husband, Jeff, is an excellent driver. He has never had an accident, excepting two incidents in high school which hardly bear mentioning— Several years ago, I was driving across town to get to a sp...

Dan B. Allender, in his book Leading Character, tells the story of a friend whose daughter was diagnosed with leukemia. He kept news of his daughter’s illness to himself, fearing that his employees wo...

In his thoughtful book, Our Good Crisis: Overcoming Moral Chaos with the Beatitudes , Jonathan K. Dodson describes what has become a reality of modern-day life-scandals happen every day, and no-one...

The open doors left me wanting more . . . It’s another way to win a useless fight You’ve been lying so long don’t know you’re faking.