human nature on Christian Values

Survival requires more than the basic biological necessities we readily acknowledge—oxygen, food, and water. It also demands something less tangible but equally vital: hope. When hope vanishes, the hu...

Man is pushed by drives. But he is pulled by values.

Before my mentor, Dallas Willard, passed over to glory, I asked him what he thought about the rapid rise of the Christian spiritual formation movement. He said, “It is a wonderful thing, but my fear i...

With a graciousness and an understanding of human weakness that only God can exhibit, Jesus liberates us from alienation and self-condemnation and offers each of us a new possibility. He is the Savior...

First, we do not believe that strong convictions cause incivility. Instead, we believe poorly formed convictions cause incivility.

Human flourishing is first and foremost a flourishing of relationships—our relationship with God and with others. But human flourishing is also a product of fruitful work that reflects our God who wor...

A man needs three conversions: first of the head, then of the heart, and finally of the pocketbook.

The scholastics used to say: Homo non proprie humanus sed superhumanus est —which means that to be properly human, you must go beyond the merely human.

The South African politician Nic Diederichs—a prominent leader during the apartheid era—once made a rather provocative observation: God, he said, dislikes deadly uniformity. I hate to admit that I lik...

Every human being, each in their own way, has the same glory, and this glory is incomparably greater than the glory of any distinction they could struggle themselves into.

Have you ever found yourself reading the Bible and you came across a scene that is horrific, filled with awful violence or scheming swindlers or ethical blunders, and you find yourself unsure what to ...

[Speaking of crucifixion] It seems almost inevitable to me that Jesus should go through this kind of darkness. . . . If you think of Jesus as God disguised as a man, then this will have no meaning for...

What is the matter with us is a question as old as time. Many philosophers and prophets believe they have an answer, but so too does holy scripture. According to the Dutch-Canadian philosopher Al Wolt...

Some skeptics today speak about “evolving” from a primitive condition, but the Bible (Romans 1:18-32) sadly portrays a  descent  rather than an ascent. The result has been given the theological term “...

The journalist Andrew Sullivan has some strong words of advice for the modern church,  If the churches came to understand that the greatest threat to faith today is not hedonism but distraction, p...

We admit that the same nature exists in every race, and the same virtue.

The anthropologist Desmond Morris has written: ‘Human beings are animals. They are sometimes monsters, sometimes magnificent, but always animals.’ That statement is correct as far as it goes. We are c...

In the blockbuster 2017 Marvel movie Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 , the protagonist Star-Lord (Chris Pratt) meets his absentee father, Ego (Kurt Russell) who turns out to be an alien, a "Cel...

When Tara and I learned we were pregnant for the first time, we went right out and bought a crib. You might have done the same. The act of selecting, purchasing, and assembling a crib is deeply cathar...

On the day I was born, the doctor who delivered me inscribed my birth records with a firm hand: seven pounds, eleven ounces, twenty-one inches. It was the first legally attested evidence that I was no...

Historically the West has tended to throw its chief emphasis upon doing and the East upon being. . . . Were human nature perfect there would be no discrepancy between being and doing. The unfallen man...

Even deliberately nonreligious people pray at times. Studies have shown that in secularized countries, prayer continues to be practiced not only by those who have no religious preference but even by m...

When we cannot find the words to pray, we are not faithless. We are feeling the fact that we are both embodied and vulnerable.

The daily e-newsletter 1440, tries to share regular stories of human kindness. This one, from Carl G. in Noblesville, Indiana, is quite touching:  My daughter just got married and was on Southwest...

The one essential condition of human existence is that man should always be able to bow down before something infinitely great. If men are deprived of the infinitely great they will not go on living a...

Worldviews are like belly buttons. Everyone has one, but we don’t talk about them very often. Or perhaps it would be better to say that worldviews are like cerebellums: everyone has one and we can’t l...

Men have never been good, they are not good and they never will be good.

For prayer exists, no question about that. it is the peculiarly human response to the fact of this endless mystery of bliss and brutality, impersonal might and lyric intimacy that composes our experie...

When he died, he sent his Spirit to teach us the intricacies of the art of living. That’s why his Spirit is the only One who can fill our spiritual vacuum, helping us become truly human.

No person has ever walked our earth and been free from the pains of loneliness. Rich and poor, wise and ignorant, faith-filled and agnostic, healthy and unhealthy have all alike had to face and strugg...