This much I can say with definiteness – namely, that there is no scientific basis for the denial of religion – nor is there in my judgment any excuse for a conflict between science and religion, for t...
Lord, you whose Son did pray that all your children might be one, we come with repentance for the sin of useless division and for the secret vice of pride. We beg forgiveness for harsh judgment, for p...
It is a simple fact of nature that once the leaves are off the tree, you cannot put them back again. Once you have uttered words, you cannot rip them out of another’s hearing. Once you have acted on a...
John 11:35, Psalm 5:5, Psalm 6:1, Psalm 78:58, Psalm 78:40, Psalm 18:19, Psalm 25:6, Psalm 5:7, Exodus 20:5, Exodus 22:23, Isaiah 15:5, Luke 15:null, Genesis 23:2, Genesis 42:24, 1 Samuel 1:10, 2 Samuel 1:11-12, 2 Kings 8:11-12, 2 Kings 22:18-20, Mark 14:72, John 20:11, Acts 20:37, Revelation 5:4
When the Professor Weeps: A Personal Story About ten years ago, I was teaching a course on the psalms for my seminary students in the midst of a personal health crisis. It wasn’t in my notes, but I ...
I ask people to anonymously write their worries on sticky notes. We post them to a wall and look at them together. Participants are often surprised by the raw honesty of what is shared and the private...
Matthew 5:9, James 4:1-2, Ephesians 4:31-32, Colossians 3:12-13, Romans 12:18, 1 John 2:9-11
To become peacemakers, then, we must begin with ourselves. We must ask ourselves, “Why do I make cutting remarks to another person? Why do I make demeaning remarks about them?” We must also ask oursel...
One of the most hopeful and gratifying conclusions to come out of our 12 years of research on shame and guilt is that that notion of morality is wrong. Dead wrong. You don't have to feel really ba...
A few years ago, while celebrating our fifteenth wedding anniversary, my wife, Esther, and I stayed at the base of the twin mountains of Whistler and Blackcomb, the mammoth ski resort on Canada’s West...
Proverbs 21:2, Revelation 20:12, James 2:12-13, Matthew 12:36-37, 2 Corinthians 5:10, Romans 14:12, Hebrews 9:27
W.H. Auden is one of the greatest poets of the 20th Century, who grew up in England but who spent some of his life in the United States. In November 1939 he found himself in a German-language movie th...
James 1:27, Hebrews 13:2-3, 1 Peter 2:12, Galatians 6:10, Romans 12:13, Acts 2:44-45
The fourth-century emperor Julian (AD 331-336) feared [Christians] might take over the empire. Referring to Christians as “Galileans” and Christianity as “atheism” (because of their denial of the exis...
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 ...
Almighty God, the Psalmist most accurately describes the state of our distance from you, “[We] have all turned aside; together we have become corrupt; there is none who does good, not even one.” While...
Evading self-acknowledgment of our faults enables us to avoid painful moral emotions: guilt and remorse for harming others; shame for betraying your own ideals; self-contempt for not meeting even our ...
We will often stop at nothing to avoid cognitive dissonance. We will twist logic, bend reason, conveniently forget facts, invent new stories, even destroy relationships—all in the name of preserving o...
Self-deception is a major part of what defeats spiritual formation in Christ. In self-deception the individual or group refuses to acknowledge factors in their life of which they are dimly conscious. ...
The five stages ̶denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance ̶ are a part of the framework that makes up our learning to live with the one we lost. They are tools to help us frame and identi...
Death is not ok. By avoiding the subject of death, we act like that’s not true. And we shrink down the scale of Jesus’s victory to fit the world we live in now.
Dissonance theory predicts that we will eventually (and conveniently) forget good arguments made by opponents just as we forget silly arguments we made ourselves. . . . It’s motivated by our need to b...
Christ never failed to distinguish between doubt and unbelief. Doubt is can't believe. Unbelief is won't believe. Doubt is honesty. Unbelief is obstinacy. Doubt is looking for light. Unbelief ...
Most Christians can deal with inevitable doubts as long as there is room for doubt. But when a system is enforced that leaves no room for doubt, benign uncertainties can mutate into faith-destroying m...