culture on Accountability

In 1882—seven years before his descent into madness—Friedrich Nietzsche published a parable called The Madman . In the parable, a madman comes into a village on a bright, sunny morning holding al...

Our culture often suggests that we are “entitled” to a long, fulfilling life, and if that doesn’t happen, there must be someone to sue, someone to blame. When the word “cancer” is spoken, looking to t...

Pastor: Gracious Father, You have chosen us for a purpose – that we might bear lasting fruit for Your Kingdom. You call us to walk humbly before You and to share in the struggle with the least of thes...

The challenge each of these faced in their deconstruction—and what we may face—is walking the tightrope between becoming our own person and honoring our past. In The Homeless Mind , sociologist P...

A Western upbringing tends to stress questioning authority, which is always asking why, why, why.

One of the areas often missed in a lot of Christian apologetics is the social setting in which a person encounters the gospel. For example, it is far easier to espouse "rational arguments" f...

All crises are judgments of history that call into question an existing state of affairs. They sift and sort the character and condition of a nation and its capacity to respond. The deeper the crisis,...

Note from TPW: Kara Martin addresses life in the secular workplace, sharing insights to help you lead your congregations to understand their faith and work and also to bring the Kingdom into your o...

The problem is not recognizing the importance of the individual. The problem is the glorification of the individual. When the individual self is glorified over the greater good of the community, right...

Many in the church have turned their back on serious study, and have embraced an anti-intellectualism which refuses to learn anything from scholarship at all lest it corrupt their pure faith. It is ti...

The Oxford scholar and apologist C. S. Lewis... once closed a lecture to a group of apologists like this:  I have found that nothing is more dangerous to one’s own faith than the work of an apologis...

In modern Western culture we place a high value on work, which is fine, but one of the philosophical assumptions that can come with such values is that we assume that we own what we earn or buy. From ...

Customs are generally unselfish. Habits are nearly always selfish.

I found out the hard way that if we don’t disciple people, the culture sure will.

Edward T. Hall likened the effects of culture to an iceberg. Some aspects of a culture are overt, in clear view above the waterline, so to speak. But most are hidden deep below the surface, forming th...

Jesus is understood in the light of the assumptions which control our culture.  When “reason” is invoked as a parallel or supplementary authority to “Scripture” and “tradition,” what is happening is t...

I must register a certain impatience with the faddish equation, never suggested by me, of the term identity with the question, “Who am I?” This question nobody would ask himself except in a more or le...

Pop psychology is wrong when it tells you to look inside yourself and find your value. The magazines are wrong when they suggest you are only as good as you are thin, muscular, pimple-free, or perfume...

God built into the creation a variety of cultural spheres, such as the family, economics, politics, art, and intellectual inquiry. Each of these spheres has its own proper "business" and nee...

In an institutionalized church, the good has become the enemy of the best, and activity has choked out productivity.

Have you ever noticed that the phrases in our culture favor doubt over faith? The famed missionary and theologian Lesslie Newbigin pointed this out when we speak of “Honest doubts” and “blind faith”. ...

By failing to come to grips with how cultural dysfunctions deeply impact the health of the church, our leaders will continue to fail to discern an essential reality concerning the nature of change: Cu...

We are all to some extent the products of an exploitive society, and it would be foolish and self-defeating to pretend that we do not bear its stamp.

You don’t need to look far today to notice that personal identity is a do-it-yourself project. A gym near where I live advertises itself with the slogan: “Be Fit. Be Well. Be You.” A new apartment com...

September 2018 The Millennial Stereotype There is perhaps no stronger stereotype of the millennial generation than that of “entitled.” For those of us who were born between 1981-1996, we’ve been lab...

It is always crucial to remember that our beliefs are formed not only through reason and argument but also through social conditioning.

And the so-called real world will not discourage you from operating on your default settings, because the so-called real world of men and money and power hums merrily along in a pool of fear and anger...

To reach people we must appreciate and adapt to their culture, but we must also challenge and confront it. This is based on the biblical teaching that all cultures have God's grace and natural rev...

The overriding reason why we should take other people's cultures seriously is because God has taken ours seriously.

Culture shapes the way we order our life, interpret our experiences, and evaluate the behavior of other people.