christian living on Celebrity

In his thoughtful book, Our Good Crisis: Overcoming Moral Chaos with the Beatitudes , Jonathan K. Dodson points out our blind-spots with respect to pride: We rarely think of ourselves as proud. I...

We are formed by what we admire. But it is possible to cultivate one’s taste in this regard as in any other pursuit. It is important to learn how to recognize what is good, to train our ears to discer...

It is a phone call no parent wants to receive. “Jerry,” Bethany said, “Catherine’s had a little accident.” “Accident! How bad?” “She’s going to be okay. You want to talk to her? We’re in a kind of am...

I have a nagging sense that when we read the word blessed , we either feel indifferent or suspicious. Both of these responses are likely the result of the way the term is (over)used in our day-to...

We pastors don't drive fancy cars or rake in the dough (most of us, anyway). But there is still a temptation to a skewed version of "holy success" that we need to watch out for, the idea...

It is a phone call no parent wants to receive. “Jerry,” Bethany said, “Catherine’s had a little accident.” “Accident! How bad?” “She’s going to be okay. You want to talk to her? We're in a kind o...

In a July 2014 New York Times article about happiness, author Arthur C. Brooks quotes tenth-century Moorish king Abd Al-Rahman III, who assumed his throne as a young man and enjoyed tangible abundance...

TV is imago populi—all of society’s trendy appetites incarnated into visible form and broadcasted.

Most of us probably assumed Elvis Presley enjoyed his unofficial moniker of “the king.” As it turns out, Elvis had a rather complicated, if not tortured experience with fame and fortune. One day duri...

Character is always lost when a high ideal is sacrificed on the altar of conformity and popularity.

In our postmodern culture which is TV dominated, image sensitive, and morally vacuous, personality is everything and character is increasingly irrelevant.

There’s undeniably a dark side to restless ambition, however. You can see it in dramatic fashion in the documentary  Conan O’Brien Can’t Stop , which follows the comedian on tour after he left the To...

Like many others who find themselves in the spotlight, Elvis Presley struggled with his fame, as well as the many temptations that befell him during his time as an iconic musician. In 1958, following ...

When I was in college I sometimes visited Bel Air Presbyterian Church, as did many of my friends. At that time Bel Air was known for being a place celebrities liked to visit. (This was not my favorite...

We’re tourist Christians. We remain as long as we’re entertained.

Sometimes moments of forgiveness and friendship come from unexpected places. In 2018, the comedian Pete Davidson appeared on the “Weekend Update” segment of Saturday Night Live (SNL). Davidson made a ...

Who, then, are we, we prideful late-twentieth-century creatures? Lord knows, we no longer think of ourselves as belonging to anyone or anything. We do not belong – we own; we possess. And that, to say...

I’ve served on staff at a few different churches throughout Silicon Valley for the last decade and a half, including a medium-sized church, a young church plant, and a multisite megachurch. At each, w...

Sometimes moments of forgiveness and friendship come from unexpected places. In 2018, the comedian Pete Davidson appeared on the “Weekend Update” segment of Saturday Night Live (SNL). Davidson made a ...

Beauty will save the world.

American religion is conspicuous for its messianically pretentious energy, its embarassingly banal prose, and its impatiently hustling ambition.

Though I tweet like Justin Bieber and have more Facebook friends than the pope; though I get a BA from Cal and an MBA from Stanford; though I invented Snapchat and Uber; though I have great hair and w...

Character is like a tree and reputation its shadow. The shadow is what we think it is and the tree is the real thing.

Go out into the world knowing you are called to become like Jesus and empowered, by his Spirit, to be an example for others. Amen.

Executed publicly, situated at a major crossroads or on a well-trafficked artery, devoid of clothing, left to be eaten by birds and beasts, victims of crucifixion were subject to optimal, unmitigated,...

The family has long been a haven in a heartless world, the one place immune to market forces and economic calculations, where the personal, the pri­vate, and the emotional hold sway. Yet. . . that is ...

Joy, which was the small publicity of the pagan, is the gigantic secret of the Christian.

The temptation of the age is to look good without being good.

In his excellent book, Recapturing the Wonder: Transcendent Faith in a Disenchanted World , Mike Cosper shares a short vignette about the comedian Louis C.K.* Louis CK tells fans he meets in pu...

People talk of the sacrifice I have made in spending so much of my life in Africa. It is emphatically no sacrifice. Say rather it is a privilege.