john 18 on Rules

The man who prosecuted the infamous Manson family for their murders later wrote a book titled Helter Skelter. This phrase was taken from a song performed by a well-known rock music group. Manson...

T. S. Eliot once described the current human endeavor as that of finding a system of order so perfect that we will not have to be good. The way of Jesus tells us, by contrast, that any number of syste...

I’m not sure that I could have articulated the ground rules for the search for resilience the way I understand them today, but I must have intuited them nevertheless. Some of the basic ideas were thes...

Season 3, episode 21 of Bluey (an episode called “Tina”) opens with Bandit telling his daughter Bluey to put her plate in the dishwasher. When Bluey pushes back and asks why, Bandit replies, “Be...

Quickly—without checking Google or your Bible—name as many of the Ten Commandments as you can. Go ahead . . . I’ll wait. How did you do? If you struggled to remember them, you’re not alone. According ...

In Arkansas, it is illegal to pronounce Arkansas incorrectly. It is illegal to build, maintain, or use a nuclear weapon within Chico, California, city limits. In Connecticut, a pickle fit for human co...

The lesson that games can teach us is simple. Games aren’t appealing because they are fun, but because they are limited. Because they erect boundaries. Because we must accept their structures in order...

We didn’t have a lot of rules [at the food pantry at St. Gregory, an Episcopal congregation in San Francisco]. You could be a drunk or junkie, but you couldn’t volunteer if you were high. You couldn’t...

In Words We Live By, Brian Burrell tells of an armed robber named Dennis Lee Curtis who was arrested in 1992 in Rapid City, South Dakota. Curtis apparently had scruples about his thievery. In his wal...

Athletes come up with creative portrayals of Jesus that elude modern scholarship. Norm Evans, former Miami Dolphins lineman, wrote in his book On God’s Squad, “I guarantee you Christ would be the to...