Sermon Illustrations on western culture

These days, music is everywhere. It’s on television and film, elevators and restaurants, public bathrooms and dentist offices. It’s in our cars and on our phones. With just a few taps to our screens, ...

In their excellent book Misreading Scripture with Western Eyes, E. Randolph Richards and Brandon J. O’Brien share the importance of recognizing the lens through which see the world: We speak as insi...

Where do you turn for marriage advice when you aren’t religious? This is becoming an ever-increasing question as western cultures become more and more secular. One option is to turn to the London-base...

Martin Lindstrom observes: When people viewed images associated with the strong brands-the iPods, the Harley-Davidson, the Ferrari, and others-their -their brains registered the exact same patterns of...

Noteworthy in this regard is the contribution of the Reformers, particularly Martin Luther, though John Calvin’s contribution is also very significant. Both called for a spirituality in the world that...

In his excellent little book, A Testament of Devotion , written almost a hundred years ago, Thomas Kelly describes the tension that all ministries must live in; the focus on this world or the wor...

Former Archbishop of Canterbury William Temple describing original sin I am the centre of the world I see; where the horizon is depends on where I stand…Education may make my self-centeredness less ...

We can learn a thing or two about discipleship and the discipline required of a disciple from our fourth-century monastic brothers and sisters. Like them, we do basic, ordinary activities every day. W...

Identities—what makes us who we are, the kind of people we are—is what we love. More specifically, our identity is shaped by what we ultimately love or what we love as ultimate—what, at the end of the...

People don’t rise from nothing. We do owe something to parentage and patronage. The people who stand before kings may look like they did it all themselves. But in fact they are invariably the benefici...

I wasn’t raised in a Christian family. I only entered the “Christian bubble” of a Southern Baptist youth group in junior high, where I pledged myself to abstinence before marriage at a True Love Waits...

As a black man, I pause when I see that Jesus was taken to Africa as a baby for refuge (Matthew 2:13–18). My blackness will not allow me to gloss over the Ethiopian man whom Philip cozies up to in Act...

Contemporary society assumes that we make a choice: one member of a household will be the “homemaker” and the other the “breadwinner” (i.e., in the marketplace generating income to sustain the home). ...

We delude ourselves into believing that if we can just get everything done, if we can only tie up all the loose ends, if we can even once get ahead of the crush, we will prove our worth and establish ...

I am not perfect, and I will struggle with the “old Jim,” who was and is influenced by American culture, narratives and values. But the key is that identity comes before behavior. We almost always do ...

In their excellent book, Invitation to a Journey , M. Robert Mulholland and Ruth Haley Barton describe the foundation of life as being spiritual in nature. This means we are constantly be “form...

The award-winning and now venerable filmmaker Wim Wenders recently put out a new movie called “Perfect Days.” It was filmed in Japan and follows the daily life of Hirayama, a cleaner of public t...

You can only build an effective Christian life when you have a “settled core”: an inner self “hidden with Christ” (Colossians 3:3). When you go to the gym or a Pilates class, your instructor might enc...

I am among the minority of people who are hardwired (genetic science now demonstrates this) to loathe cilantro. I can’t stand it. I call it the adolescent of herbs: notice me, notice me, NOTICE ME! To...

It was this…intention that made the primitive Christians such eminent instances of piety, that made the goodly fellowship of the Saints and all the glorious army of martyrs and confessors. And if you ...

The word eccentric comes from a combination of the Greek terms ex (out of) and kentron (center). When combined, ekkentros means “out of center.” The term gained currency in the late Middle Ages, when ...

The wonderful word master used to describe the person who is at the top of his or her craft, whatever the profession. It was a title that one could work toward and with some degree of confidence ascri...

Tertullian was an early church leader (a bishop in Carthage) in North Africa. His voluminous writing and ministry have led many to acknowledge him as the father of Latin Theology/Western Theology. Ter...

Perhaps the greatest irony in the life of continual comparison is that while it involves so much attention to the attributes and gifts of other people, it’s actually quite self-focused. From that hype...

Sharan Merriam and Carolyn Clark, in their fine study Lifelines , effectively show that life is fundamentally about two things—our work and our relationships. And maturity is found in having the c...

In the Middle East both the main protagonists embrace religions where forgiveness has never been seen as a duty, let alone as a virtue, but rather as a kind of moral weakness—and by “moral weakness” I...

The political cartoonist and Op-Ed writer Tim Kreider has provided us with some insight into the “world of outrage” we currently inhabit. A world that has been amplified by the dawn of the Internet an...

The word vocatio can also be translated voice. Man, that says a lot. Your vocation is your voice. The Quakers have a saying about calling that I love: Let your life speak. Finding your calling is abou...

Andrew Carnegie rose to become among the world's richest individuals through his steel empire. In the midst of this acquisition of massive wealth at just thirty-three years old—Carnegie conducted ...

Paul give us an excellent example of what looking at people from a worldly point of view looks like in Philippians chapter 3: If someone else thinks they have reasons to put confidence in the flesh, ...