life on planet earth on Private Faith

I don’t know about you, but I’ve always enjoyed the public nature of Ash Wednesday. That is to say, what happens when we leave an Ash Wednesday service and there is the sign of the cross, for all who ...

In Silence, Shusaku Endo writes of the journey of Portuguese Jesuits journeying to Japan. It is a conversation about those who intend to take the path of Jesus, only to find they are on the path of Ju...

In his thoughtful book, Our Good Crisis: Overcoming Moral Chaos with the Beatitudes, Jonathan K. Dodson shares a funny, yet poingnant encounter with a man who wanted to keep religion private: I ...

Yes, we mark our heads with ashes—public shows of piety are not in themselves evil. But we must guard our motivations and do most of our spiritual work in private, because the privacy of those acts re...

Not long after the December 2012 Newtown shootings, and all the speeches by civic leaders, memorial services, and funerals were over, Samuel G. Freedman wrote a column in The New York Times titled “In...

I believe in Christ and confess him not like some child; my hosanna has passed through an enormous furnace of doubt.

Why is it so intimidating to talk about Jesus in contemporary western culture? One obvious reason might lie in the ubiquitous negative portrayals of Christians in mainstream media. Sam Chan makes this...

The wall Jefferson referred to is designed to divide church from state, not religion from politics. Church and state are specific things: the former signifies institutions for believers to congregate ...

We love to think that we're rational—that our take on the world is correct—and that if we were being dishonest with ourselves... we'd know. However, there's good reason to think that we...

During the 1992 presidential election, I (Rick) was directing the small group ministry at our church. Bill Clinton was running against George H. W. Bush, and given that many evangelicals found Bill Cl...

In The Violent Bear It Away, Flannery O’Connor’s character Tarwater works hard not to think about his lost faith. But ultimately, we can only lie to ourselves for so long before we acknowledge the tru...

In this wonderful interaction with a neighbor-turned-friend, the widow Miss Maudie Atikinson, Scout Finch tries to understand why some Baptists, called “foot washers” in the book, seem to shun most of...

The man of pseudo-faith will fight for his verbal creed but refuse flatly to allow himself to get in a predicament where his future must depend upon that creed being true. He always provides himself w...

Whether or not cancer patients intend to share their journey openly with others, they generally find that the cancer situation itself has put their lives into a fish bowl—for public viewing—whether th...

Heavenly Father, we remember before you those who suffer want and anxiety from lack of work. Guide the people of this land so to use our public and private wealth that all may find suitable and fulfil...

A common trait of human beings is a fear of failure. Most of us find ways of coping with it, but whenever failure rears its ugly head, it’s difficult not to experience the sting of feeling like we are...

Faith is a free surrender and a joyous wager on the unseen, unknown, untested goodness of God.

Faith is a voluntary anticipation.

Faith isn’t a feeling; it’s a choice to trust God even when the road ahead seems uncertain.

Faith is a how and, more specifically, a way of living in light of an event.

Now faith is not just a cognitive affair: its being “sealed upon our hearts” is a matter of will and affect; it is a repair of the madness of the will that is at the heart of sin. Still, it is at leas...

The foundation of faith is a firm conviction regarding three things about God—his perfect love, wisdom and power. Like a three-legged stool, no combination of two will do. There must be all three for ...

Real true faith is man's weakness leaning on God's strength.

Faith is a way of waiting—never quite knowing, never quite hearing or seeing, because in the darkness we are all but a little lost. There is doubt hard on the heels of every belief, fear hard on the h...

The defining ingredient of real human life is fidelity. It’s not wealth, power, control, or knowledge. It’s fidelity, the question of practice—how do we maintain fidelity [with God]?

Faith is the willingness to risk anything on God.

Authentic faith leads us to treat others with unconditional seriousness and to a loving reverence for the mystery of the human personality. Authentic Christianity should lead to maturity, personality,...

Faith consists, not in ignorance, but in knowledge, and that, not only of God, but also of the divine will.

People...think faith is a big electric blanket, when of course it is the cross...You arrive at enough certainty to be able to make your way, but it is making it in darkness. Don’t expect faith to clea...

We shall now have a full definition of faith if we say that it is a firm and sure knowledge of the divine favor toward us, founded on the truth of a free promise in Christ, and revealed to our minds, ...