life on Lying

There’s a somewhat naïve belief among some that, in general, most people are inherently good. While many Christians may not fully embrace John Calvin’s doctrine of total depravity (which I believe is ...

O Lord, you have searched me and known me. You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from afar. You search out my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all ...

We will rise From the destruction From the ruins From the sin and isolation We will rise Building strong foundations Bridging the breach Making a way, a highway to our God We will rise in our ce...

You have searched me, Lord, and you know me. You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar. You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my w...

I’ve often shared the story of my first experience of solitude and silence at the beginning of 1990. It was led by one of my mentors, Wayne Anderson, as part of a class I was taking at Fuller Seminary...

My question—that which at the age of fifty brought me to the verge of suicide—was the simplest of questions, lying in the soul of every man…a question without an answer to which one cannot live. It wa...

How many shortcuts have been justified with the best of intentions? At the sentencing for her role in the 2019 college admissions bribery scandal, actress Lori Loughlin addressed the court:  “I mad...

The world, in fact, is not as it had been represented to us. Things are not all right as they are, and they are not getting any better. We have been told the lie ever since we can remember: human bein...

Satan is a liar. He wants to steal our joy and replace it with hopelessness. When we're up against a struggle and we think we can't keep going, we can change that by praising God. Our chains w...

I once had the opportunity to speak briefly to a large Mormon audience at the Tabernacle in Salt Lake City. I told them that I feel badly about the fact that we evangelicals often tell Mormons what th...

Jesus – Savior, Friend, and Lord: When we’re lost, confused and anxious – You are our Way. When we misunderstand – and are misunderstood, when we are lied to and lied about, and when we lie or b...

At a recent gathering of seminary professors, one teacher reported that at his school the most damaging charge one student can lodge against another is that the person is being “judgmental.” He found ...

You never know how much you really believe anything until its truth or falsehood becomes a matter of life and death to you.

When I get honest, I admit I am a bundle of paradoxes. I believe and I doubt, I hope and get discouraged, I love and I hate, I feel bad about feeling good, I feel guilty about not feeling guilty. I am...

The greatest hazard of all, losing one’s self, can occur very quietly in the world, as if it were nothing at all. No other loss can occur so quietly; any other loss – an arm, a leg, five dollars, a wi...

Fear is a manipulative emotion that can trick us into living a boring life.

Jesus, forgive my false following my misplaced priorities my misuse of power my mistreatment of your good gifts Forgive me for believing destructive voices Forgive me for using you instead of loving ...

It's in our biology to trust what we see with our eyes. This makes living in a carefully edited, overproduced and photoshopped world very dangerous.

Repetition is the reality and the seriousness of life

The noonday devil of the Christian life is the temptation to lose the inner self while preserving the shell of edifying behavior.

Our life and our death is with our neighbor. If we win our brother, we win God. If we cause our brother to stumble, we have sinned against Christ.

Richard Mouw, the former president of Fuller Seminary and a professor of philosophy, shares an amusing anecdote from a lecture by the esteemed Catholic ethicist Charles Curran. During his talk, Curran...

Myth becomes myth not in the living but in the retelling.

But if I am to let my life speak things I want to hear, things I would gladly tell others, I must also let it speak things I do not want to hear and would never tell anyone else! My life is not only a...

Lord of grace and truth: You meet us where we are. And when everybody lies to us, you speak with candor and honesty about what’s good, right and true. We can trust you–and we do. That’s why we can rej...

I have a word for you. I know your whole life story. I know every skeleton in your closet. I know every moment of sin, shame, dishonesty and degraded love that has darkened your past. Right now I know...

When Lazarus left his charnel-cave, ⁠And home to Mary’s house return’d, ⁠Was this demanded—if he yearn’d To hear her weeping by his grave? ‘Where wert thou, brother, those four days?’ ⁠There lives no ...

Personal storytelling—the kind that reveals who we are and what we care about—is the most potent and effective way to connect with the world around us.

God hath given to man a short time here upon earth, and yet upon this short time eternity depends: but so, that for every hour of our life (after we are persons capable of laws, and know good from evi...

I say my prayers, I read a book of devotion, I prepare for, or receive, the Sacrament. But while I do these things there is, so to speak, a voice inside me that urges caution. It tells me to be carefu...