Deconstruction isn’t a trendy thing to do, but it is a trend that is happening at scale in our country and passing from person to person. Anecdotally, when I look up various hashtags on TikTok, th...
There's a humorous, apocryphal story about a man standing by a river. On the opposite bank, a woman calls out, "How do I get to the other side of the river?" The man replies, "YOU A...
Pentecost . . . The Holy Spirit fills the disciples and they speak in tongues they likely do not understand themselves. It is an uncontrolled public witness – uncontrolled by human agendas – as well a...
A Christianity that reflects its culture, whether that culture is Smith College or NASCAR, only lasts as long as it is useful to its host . That’s because it’s, at root, idolatry, and people turn from...
Galatians 5:14, Matthew 12:1-8, John 4:1-26, James 1:27, 1 John 4:20-21, Matthew 23:23, Mark 12:30-31
The only clear line I draw these days is this: when my religion tries to come between me and my neighbor, I will choose my neighbor…Jesus never commanded me to love my religion.
This is what Jesus does. Jesus makes life better. Jesus brings the better wine. He takes empty religion and ritual, and brings it to life for everyday people. He takes what many deem holy (like the wa...
In this excerpt, author David Zahl challenges the common belief that religion is “in decline.” He argues that while Westerners, particularly younger generations, may be distancing themselves from the ...
As sensitive and broad-minded humans, we must never allow ourselves to be in any way judgmental of the religious practices of other people, even when these people clearly are raving space loons.
Holy God, we confess that we have focused too much on our religion, and not enough on our hearts. We confess that we might sit in church on Sunday, but the Gospel does not emerge from our lives the re...
Mark 2:23-28, Mark 3:1-6, Acts 12:12, Acts 12:25, Acts 15:37-39, Colossians 4:10, 2 Timothy 4:11, Philemon 1:24, 1 Peter 5:13, Mark 1:14-15, Mark 2:1-22, Exodus 20:8-11, Deuteronomy 5:12-15, Exodus 34:21, 1 Samuel 21:1-6, Luke 11:37-54, Mark 2:1-17, Genesis 1:26-31, Genesis 2:1-2, Genesis 3:null, John 19:30
Context Authorship of Mark Mark’s account of the story of Jesus is commonly held to be the earliest of the four canonical Gospels. Early church tradition identifies the author as Mark (or John Mark)...
Job 38:1–11, Jonah 1:4–17 , Exodus 14:21–31 , Mark 4:35–41, Acts 27:13–44 , John 20:24–29
It was late October 1991. The crew of the fishing boat Andrea Gail , out of Gloucester, Massachusetts, had taken the vessel five hundred miles out into the Atlantic. A cold front moving along the...
In his post-apocalyptic novel The Road, McCarthy tells a story about a father and son traveling in search of civilization,. In a bleak, desolate world devoid of any human civilization, McCarthy descri...
Disagreement is refreshing when two men lovingly desire to compare their views to find out truth. Controversy is wretched when it is only an attempt to prove another wrong. Religious controversy does ...
Lord, we confess our failure to hold fast to the message we have received. Forgive our wayward hearts for seeking after false forms of good news in place of the true message of the gospel. Forgive u...
In 2014, researchers at Northwestern University, Boston College, and the University of Melbourne published an article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , a prestigious academ...
Have you ever heard of the forensic science theory known as Locard’s Exchange Principle? Named after the "Sherlock Holmes of France," the French criminologist Emile Locard, this theory sugge...
1 Peter 1:8-9, 2 Corinthians 5:7, Mark 9:24, Ephesians 2:8-9, Romans 10:17, Hebrews 11:6
In a quiet hospital room in North Carolina, an eager young doctor with a bright future evaluates his elderly patient with not much future left at all. She has a terminal heart condition, inoperable. A...
Let us, then, cultivate an attitude of courage as over against the investigations of the day. None should be more zealous in them then we. None should be more quick to discern truth in every field, mo...
In this short excerpt, pastor and author Austin Fischer summarizes the late 19th century book Flatland as an analogy for the often-one-dimensional faith that exists our time: tIn 1884, an English sc...
We're not trying to prove the character of God through science. That's a bad idea. What I'm trying to do is clear away the misunderstandings, the debris that prevent people from accepting ...
Is God just a nice person who created the world, tells us to be “cool” to people, helps out with some of our problems (but otherwise leaves us alone), lets us do what makes us happy, and then takes us...
We all know that there are regions of the human spirit untrammeled by the world of physics. In the mystic sense of the creation around us, in the expression of art, in a yearning towards God, the soul...
The atheist author Richard Dawkins, who wrote, “The universe, at the bottom, has no design, no purpose, no evil, and no other good. Nothing but blind, pitiless indifference. DNA neither knows nor care...
In this fictionalized pastoral counseling session, the Episcopalian Priest Robert Farrar Capon shares some eternal truths related to the nature of religion—and in conclusion, how Christianity differs....
Other major world religions are still centered in the same general geographic area from which they originated except for Christianity. Even more intriguing, the center of Christian growth continues to...
Exodus 5:1-21, 1 Samuel 8:4-22, Isaiah 1:10-17 , Matthew 23:23-28 , Galatians 3:26-29, Psalm 146:3-9
One of the gravest dangers to the Christian faith is its wholesale appropriation of the larger culture. When this happens, the citizens of those places cannot recognize the difference between their cu...
Yes, religion is a crutch. But it’s not my own personal crutch. It is Adam’s crutch. It’s the human race that walks (if it walks at all) with a limp. And so when Sunday morning comes around I drag old...