worldview and perspective on Truth and Beauty

If your salvation does not include living with God in beauty, truth, and goodness, it’s going to be a very dry haul. And so much of our difficulty today for Christians in this world, and for the world...

The closer you get to the truth, the clearer becomes the beauty, and the more you will find worship welling up within you. That's why theology and worship belong together.

The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives.

Paradox has been defined as “Truth standing on her head to attract attention."

Recently, when I was in London, I went to the National Gallery. It was a weekday, but it was still crowded with people wearing headsets, staring at famous paintings, listening to a narrator explain th...

The Christian gospel is rooted in language: God spoke a creation into being; our Savior was the Word made flesh. The poet is the person who uses words not primarily to convey information but to make a...

There Are No Ordinary Things J. R. R. Tolkien tells a short story about an ordinary fellow who just wants to finish a painting. Over time, he is constantly distracted by the requests of his neighbors...

In her excellent book Liturgy of the Ordinary, pastor and author Tish Harrison Warren describes an encoutner her husband experienced while working on his PhD. While my husband, Jonathan, was getting...

The Christian gospel is rooted in langauge: God spoke a creation into being; our Savior was the Word made flesh. The poet is the person who uses words not primarily to convey information but to make a...

From 1992 to 1995 the world witnessed one of the worst civil conflicts, the Bosnian War. Three factions, each tied to a religion (Orthodox Serbs, Catholic Croats, and Muslim Bosniaks), began attacking...

In the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the ...

Lord, we come before you this day as part of the human family. Inspire us, O God; open our hearts. We come in our diversity to catch your vision of unity. Inspire us, O God; open our eyes. We ...

Truth consists in the mind giving to things the importance they have in reality.

Accept, O Lord, our thanks and praise for all that you have done for us. We thank you for the splendor of the whole creation, for the beauty of this world, for the wonder of life, and for the mystery ...

New Testament Mountains Like the Old Testament, the New Testament has plenty of references to mountains.  There’s the Sermon on the Mount, obviously.  Jesus often went onto hills or mountains to pray...

Ancient lens What’s the historical context? A Structured Complaint The Psalmist organizes his complaint against God in three sections. The first two sections dramatize the complaint (vv. 1-11 and...

Introduction During my time in seminary (and the year after I graduated) I spent a lot of time at a church in southern New Jersey. It’s actually how I met Scott Bullock, TPW board member and creator...

Leader: Sing to the Lord a new song! Sing to the Lord, all the earth. Sing to the Lord! Bless his name! Proclaim his salvation from day to day! Declare his glory among the nations, his marvelous works...

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...

The following article was originally written for the author’s denominational newsletter as part of the celebration of Asian Pacific American Heritage Month. It is meant to provide some insights into t...

As we conquer peak after peak we see in front of us regions full of interest and beauty, but we do not see our goal, we do not see the horizon; in the distance tower still higher peaks, which will yie...

Let us not mock God with metaphor, analogy, sidestepping, transcendence; making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the faded credulity of earlier ages: let us walk through the door. …………………………...

The truth is rarely pure and never simple.

In the struggle with falsehood art always did win and it always does win! ... And no sooner will falsehood be dispersed than the nakedness of violence will be revealed in all its ugliness – and violen...

Art is the lie that enables us to realize the truth.

Truth without love is brutality, and love without truth is hypocrisy.

Truth enjoys but a short time of triumph between two long eras — in the first of them it is condemned as paradoxical, in the last is despised as trivial..

Truth’ [is] what we think it is at any given moment of time.

Truth, like gold, is to be obtained not by its growth, but by washing away from it all that is not gold.

Truth carries with it confrontation. Truth demands confrontation; loving confrontation, but confrontation nevertheless.