culture on Dreams

Following the biblical pattern, the church has always assumed that God can communicate spiritual truths to people through their imaginations, especially through dreams and visions. Church history is r...

There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide. Albert Camus Two events recently collided in my mind and coalesced into this short essay: The first was a relatively in...

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...

We are people of desire. We want things. We long for things. It is primal to our nature to yearn. As Saint Augustine reflected, “The whole life of the good Christian is a holy longing. . . . That is o...

An Irish church once had a humorous yet insightful motto that gets at the heart of the pain that often accompanies our relationships: “To dwell above with those we love will certainly be glory. But to...

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,...

The sense that we will live forever somewhere has shaped every civilization in human history…the unifying testimony of the human heart through history is belief in life after death. Anthropological ev...

After the Enlightenment in the West, our collective imagination emptied the cosmos of supernatural life, as sure as industry emptied Cape Cod of cod.

Loving and grace-filled God, we confess that it is difficult to keep you first in our lives. There are so many urgent demands on us that we find it hard to focus ourselves on you. The culture around u...

In a culture, the most important things usually go without being said. We Westerners don’t talk all the time about being individualists or about the importance of efficiency or why we prefer youth ove...

We live in a culture where image is everything and substance nothing. We live in a culture where a new beginning is far more attractive than a long follow-through. Images are important. Beginnings are...

My suspicion is that we have simply lost our way. I suspect that our material longings are more largely formed by our culture than by the Christ and that our spending habits do not differ radically fr...

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...

For purposes of practicality and relatability, this series considers the Sea of Galilee to be a lake and classifies other fresh or mostly fresh water locations together under the same banner. Th...

There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations—these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat.

Preaching Commentary Dissolving the Divisions The Psalms divide—we would call it an over-simplification—the earth’s inhabitants into “Israel” and “the nations” (the earth). Psalm 98, quite interest...

Leader: God of mercy, we come before you with honest hearts. We bring not only our praise, but also our pain. We confess that at times we have lost heart. Hear now our lament, and kindle in us your ho...

Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared that we would become a trivial culture. . . . Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us.

Gracious God, we don’t live as Christ did. Although You give us specific instructions for an ordered way of life that stands out from the rest of the world, we settle for lukewarm Christianity. Our li...

A group of fourth-graders at a Christian school was given an assignment to draw what they would like to do if Jesus spent a day with them. After working diligently on their pictures, one little girl a...

The kingdom of God turns the Darwinist narrative of the survival of the fittest upside down (Acts 17:6–7). When the church honors and cares for the vulnerable among us, we are not showing charity. We ...

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...

Gracious God, in six days you created all things. On the seventh day you finished your work by resting. You also blessed and hallowed the seventh day, setting it aside as a day of rest. Teach me, Lord...

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...

A Notoriously Difficult Passage This passage includes one of the most iconic and quotable of Jesus’s interactions with his contemporary opponents. Jesus deftly steps out of a trap set for him by the ...

Ancient Lens What's the historical context? Dissolving the Divisions Generally speaking, the Psalms divide the people of the earth into two groups: “Israel” and “the nations.” Psalm 98 surpr...

The family has long been a haven in a heartless world, the one place immune to market forces and economic calculations, where the personal, the pri­vate, and the emotional hold sway. Yet. . . that is ...

The city is the fulfillment of the purposes of the Eden of God. The city is the fulfiller of the paradise of God... which is tied to the future city with the original, sinless past of Eden and its res...

Cultures like ours encourage us to consider all aspects of our lives in terms of self-interest. How do we cultivate a life marked by God’s love – a love that is always directed toward the needs of oth...

When my grandparents were in their eighties, their television developed a fault that made the screen permanently bright green. It was good for viewing garden shows or nature programs, but it was prett...