Classically, there are three ways in which humans try to find transcendence--religious meaning--apart from God as revealed through the cross of Jesus: through the ecstasy of alcohol and drugs, through...
From drugs and alcohol to TV and workaholism, we are increasingly a society that fulfills T.S. Eliot’s description of a people “distracted by distraction.” There is hardly a public menace we can name ...
Colossians 1:13-14, Matthew 5:14-16, Romans 13:12, Isaiah 9:2, 1 John 1:5-7, Ephesians 5:11
A few years ago, a journalist named Joseph Blackman wrote an Op Ed on an interesting subject, “Why Clubs are Dark.” That is, why is it when you walk into a nightclub or a bar, the lights are off, or a...
Living in a society governed by technique conditions us to believe that in every way life is easier than it ever has been. Technique is the use of rational methods to maximize efficiency, and we...
John 10:10, Luke 12:15, Matthew 5:14, Proverbs 3:5-6, Ecclesiastes 3:11
Recently I was watching a children’s television show on YouTube with my kids, when the host asked, “What is the meaning of Life?” His response was typical: “I don’t know,” but what he said next made m...
A good story goes beyond just describing what actually happened. It tells us about how the world works more broadly, in ways that pertain to things that didn’t actually happen or at least haven’t happ...
All addictions begin in shame. They don’t begin with troubling behavior—a binge on porn, a night of overdrinking–but with a sense of lack or limitation. An addict may be loved deeply, but sense of lac...
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...
Studies show we actually get a dopamine hit when we think we’re proven right. We can literally become addicted to the sensation of our rightness. “Your body does not discriminate against pleasure,” wr...
According to the groundbreaking book The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg, his research tells us that cravings drive our “habit loops.” Some of us crave escape or relaxation through the habit of a g...
"Nothing paralyzes our lives like the attitude that things can never change. We need to remind ourselves that God can change things. Outlook determines outcome. If we see only the problems, we wi...
Colossians 3:5, Psalm 115:4-8, 1 John 5:21, Acts 17:22-23, Matthew 6:24, Romans 1:25, Isaiah 44:13-17
Martin Lindstrom observes: When people viewed images associated with the strong brands-the iPods, the Harley-Davidson, the Ferrari, and others-their -their brains registered the exact same patterns of...
And now we are witnessing a transformation. A true opium of the people is a belief in nothingness after death—the huge solace of thinking that our betrayals, greed, cowardice, murders are not going to...
Ecclesiastes 5:10, Proverbs 11:4, Exodus 32:1–35, Luke 12:15, 1 Timothy 6:10, Psalm 49:16–17, Matthew 6:24, Matthew 6:19-21
Jesus warns against greed and seeking wealth, because ultimately, money is fiction. Gold coins? Slips of paper? Ones and zeroes in a computer? They only have value because people think they do....
Luke 18:14, Proverbs 29:23, Isaiah 2:11, 1 Peter 5:5, Romans 12:3, James 4:6, Proverbs 16:18
Up until the twentieth century, traditional cultures (and this is still true of most cultures in the world) always believed that too high a view of yourself was the root cause of all the evil in the w...
Split second decisions can reveal prejudices that we aren't aware of ourselves. This is particularly important in split-second decisions with life-or-death consequences, such as police officers ha...
Philippians 4:6-7, 1 Peter 5:7, Romans 8:38-39, 2 Corinthians 1:3-4, Matthew 11:28-30, Isaiah 41:10
God of grace and truth, holy and compassionate—Father, Son and Holy Spirit: You hold the universe in Your hands and earth’s oceans hardly moisten Your palm; yet—You number the hairs of our heads and k...
Jesus–our Lord, Savior, Friend and Companion: To be “in” You is to no longer be strangers to Your Father, or to one another. In You–we are brought near. In You–we are redeemed and forgiven. In You–we ...
Proverbs 21:13, Matthew 25:40, Luke 4:18, James 1:27
Teenage prostitutes, during interviews in a San Francisco study, were asked: “Is there anything you needed most and couldn’t get?” Their response, invariably preceded by sadness and tears was unanimou...
Adjusting for population growth, ten times as many people in the Western nations today suffer from “unipolar” depression, or unremitting bad feelings without a specific cause, than did half a century ...
1 John 3:8, 2 Thessalonians 2:9-10, Matthew 13:19, 2 Corinthians 11:14, John 8:44, James 4:7, 1 Peter 5:8
The psychotherapist M. Scott Peck spent many years of his practice as an agnostic. He, along with thousands upon thousands of his colleagues were taught that evil was a social construct, and therefore...
A source of the intensest pleasure earthlings can experience, sex has also been a source of vexatious trouble for the human family since the beginning of history.
The more I use stuff to fill up my hungers, the more distance I put between God and myself. And as I continue to fill up my infinite hungers with finite things (when I run through the Starbucks drive-...
In this fictionalized pastoral counseling session, the Episcopalian Priest Robert Farrar Capon shares some eternal truths related to the nature of religion—and in conclusion, how Christianity differs....
We are a society that despises lack. We despise weakness and need and insufficiency. We turn the other way and pretend to be watching oncoming traffic when the red light halts us and the beggar reache...
In recent years, an entire discipline of modern psychology has developed called cognitive behavioral therapy. This breakthrough teaching reveals that many problems, from eating disorders to relational...
And of some sinful pleasure they say "Let me have but this and I'll take the consequences": little dreaming how damnation will spread back and back into their past and contaminate the pl...
[A] rock-star preaches capitalism. Wow. Sometimes I hear myself and I just can’t believe it. But commerce is real. . . . Aid is just a stopgap. Commerce—entrepreneurial capitalism—takes more people ou...