When the church is functioning as Christ intended, it becomes a safe haven where we can be transparent about our struggles, as well as a hospice where prayer, encouragement and practical help are lavished freely on the suffering.
Most of us don't understand mental illness. It scares us. One quarter of Americans suffer from mental illness every year. How should the church respond?
Jesus would not save himself because it was God's plan that he would bleed and die on that cross as the final Passover sacrifice, ushering in a new and permanent covenant between humanity and God.
Support for same-sex marriage is gaining ground because of the kindness of ordinary Americans, and because we have failed to think critically about what marriage is really all about.
Our pride gets in God's way. We want God, at least some of God, but only on our terms. That was Naaman's problem. His pride was standing in the way of God's mercy, God's miracle.
When FDR realized that the liberation of Europe might destroy its artistic and cultural heritage, he ordered the Army to find a way to fight the Nazis while protecting Europe's art. The elite corps given that mission were known as the Monuments Men.
There are certain qualities to life that suggest God's authorship in the same way that an artist can be identified by his unique brush strokes and choice of subject matter.
On Easter morning, a small group of women visited the tomb of Jesus to mourn his death. Their grief was interrupted by astonishment and pure joy, as they peered into the darkness of his empty tomb.
What keeps most of us from accomplishing big, hairy goals is not so much the size of the goal itself as the hard-slogging discipline needed to overcome the obstacles that stand in the way.
God chose things the world considers foolish in order to shame those who think they are wise. And He chose things that are powerless to shame those who are powerful.
We're quick to put our trust in ourselves despite flawed judgment, inadequate skills and a checkered past. But when it comes to trusting God, we demand certainty, proof, and guarantees. What's wrong with this picture?
Heroism is always an act of love. It is a willful decision to put someone else's safety and well-being ahead of your own, to set aside self-interest and self-preservation for the good of another.
Faith is not an emotional impulse, but an intellectual decision. The big lie about faith is that it requires the suspension of rational thought. Faith comes through a process of testing the evidence. It never requires eliminating all doubt or suspending disbelief, but leads us to conclude that the evidence in favor of God outweighs the evidence in opposition.
What power can make me a better man, make friends of enemies, or free us from the chains that trap us in cycles of failure? The power of God within us.
The angel's announcement of the birth of Jesus to a group of shepherds was the modern equivalent of appearing in the midst of a homeless encampment under a highway overpass. What does this well known fact of the Christmas story tell us about God?
Authentic Christianity risks its very soul when it becomes too closely allied with any political power or philosophy. And yet, we must take the risk, get our hands dirty, and engage.
We experience a great many things in this material world that seem greater than the material phenomena they arise from. It seems they are more than just activities of the mind, as if they are rooted in something timeless, something transcendent.
When we carry our cross, we stand apart from the faceless mob. We will swim upstream against the current. We may appear foolish, even dangerous. We will be rejected by those who wish to cubbyhole Jesus as an interesting moral teacher whom history has passed by.
Southwest Airlines has recently amended its list of the Acts of God for which it is not liable. It's interesting that in this post-modern age, we still talk about the acts of a sovereign God.
We often hold reconciliation hostage to a demand for fairness, justice, compensation for our suffering... But the cross of Jesus Christ models an extravagant, even radical form of reconciliation.
While researching my family history, I realized that the Scriptures provide even better evidence about the historical Jesus than I have thus far discovered about my own grandfather.
It's ironic how much blind faith is required to live in the modern world. Technology forces us to put our complete trust in things we do not, and cannot, understand. We must live by faith or live in paralysis.
Secular ideologies have been responsible for more deaths and suffering than any other cause in human history. But in a courtroom in Cambodia, love is overcoming a terrible evil from the dark days of the Khmer Rouge..
Our lives are lived out in a rich cultural framework that has been created for us by the genius and hard work of countless men and women. We know this, even if we are often blind to the fact, or simply incurious about who it is we are indebted to.
At a time when America should be proud of the achievement of a certain black man, the politics of race threatens to incite us to war. Whatever the outcome on Nov. 4, it will be up to black and white Christians to set an example, putting aside our political differences to embrace each other at the foot of the cross.
Here's proof that life isn't fair: The "super wealthy" New York Yankees have won the World Series 26 times. The "middle class" Chicago Cubs haven't won in 100 years. What exactly is Congress doing to fix this World Series unfairness?
With all the recent political talk about the importance of experience, doesn't it seem ironic that Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch and so many other Wall Street juggernauts have been sailed into the rocks by some of our nation's most highly experienced corporate managers? Am I missing something?
God is (unhelpfully) invisible and apparently silent. When I am sitting on a rock in the desert sun, I may believe God is watching, I may even believe there are leprechauns hiding among the trees, but that hardly makes it so. Are we alone?
We desire beauty, but live in a time of great violence. It has always been thus in human history. It was just the same in Jesus' day, when he taught that the conquest of violence would happen through beauty.
We borrow everything we believe from someone else. All of us are persuaded by the words and actions of others, and once we are persuaded, we build our lives around their beliefs. Whose words move you? Whose philosophy guides you?
Every one of us adopts a framing set of beliefs that describe life's purpose and our duties. These framing stories may have been handed down to us by our elders or adopted from the library of modern secularism. They help us define truth and error. But how do we know our story can be trusted?
Sin is our failure to conform to the purposes God created us for. Sin is like a malfunction that causes harm to ourselves and others. But God came up with a remarkable kindness to deal with our malfunctions.
God is calling every one of us to abandon everything evil, everything sinful, everything unhealthy, everything that takes our attention away from God and his program. And he wants us to lean on each other for help.
"I'm for change" has become the rallying cry of the front runners in this year's election. Personally, I don't much like change, but the core of Jesus' message — his Good News and his New Covenant — was that it was time to change how we relate to God, and each other.
Dreams keep life interesting; they fuel a sense of expectation and wonder about life. We dream of love, of meaning and purpose, of life beyond death. Where do those dreams come from?
In 1913, former President Theodore Roosevelt began an expedition down an unknown river in the heart of the Amazon that would test the character of every member of his team.
They say that we're all creatures of habit. We have habits of thinking, of belief, of bias and perspective. We're certain that we know what's real, and what isn't. But do we, really?
Drug use in sports is out of control. Cheating needs to be punished. Marion Jones says she is seeking God's forgiveness, and asks us to forgive her, too. Should we?
Something in the Greek ideal of the hero still resonates with us today. We honor heroic deeds; we make heroes the central characters in film and literature. Why? Perhaps because the essential terrors of human existence have changed so little since the days of the Greeks.
In a recent speech before a convention of the United Church of Christ, Senator Barack Obama had some impressive things to say about his Christian faith and how it informs his politics.
Racial prejudice has become so ugly, so abhorrent, that we're tempted to simply wish it away. The early Christians found a better way — they left their bigotry at the foot of the cross.
Every day we encounter dozens of anonymous men and women, and for the most part we treat them as if they are beneath us, as if they have no dignity. Why is that?
Rachel Barenblat considers Joseph's request that his bones not be left in Egypt, and what it says about our own connections to family and our personal history.
Jesus claimed that he and God were partners. Buddies. The two of them had divvied up responsibilities, and Jesus was going to be there on the Day of Judgment, deciding who had been good and who had been bad. Is it any wonder the religious leaders thought he was dangerous?
If we are to escape becoming like Ted Haggard, we must make ourselves accountable to the community of believers by talking honestly about our temptations.
Our western love affair with libertarianism, individualism and egalitarianism has led many pedophiles to see themselves as victims of Puritan taboos, and a class of people being denied their civil right to have sex with children.
The incarnation of God into human history happened at one of the worst moments in the history of Judaism. Today, in the worst of times, Christ is here.
This faith in Christ, this life of obedience to an unseen God, is by definition a life of hardship and uncertainty, all in pursuit of a prize well worth the pain: a relationship with the eternal God, the God who loves us.
Either we go through life hardly giving our sins a second thought, or we go through life so burdened down by their awful weight that we can think of nothing else.
When one looks at other religions and their own venerated leaders, it's odd that we Christians have built our faith on a man who was executed for a capital offense.
We tend to hold romantic notions about family. In reality, families are like broken crucibles, and the children created in the furnaces of our homes are never perfect.
We tend to hold romantic notions about family. In reality, families are like broken crucibles, and the children created in the furnaces of our homes are never perfect.
Why do we pursue excellence? What pushes us to run faster, to jump higher, or to try to capture in the performance of an aria the perfect interpretation of the composer's inner vision?
Evolution should be creating life in every corner of the universe. Technologically advanced civilizations should be bombarding the universe with radio signals, just as we are. So... why is the universe so quiet?
The universe seems to have been carefully tweaked to support life. Like a gambler on a hot streak, life rolled seven after seven after seven after seven, to the point of nearly breaking the house.
Jesus claims to be our source of hope in desperate times. He claims to be our peace in moments of terror. He is calmness in chaos. He is wisdom in confusion. He is reassurance when panic sets in. He also claims that we, ourselves, can be a light to each other.
If God is loving, if God is powerful, why didn't he step in and protect his people from hurricane Katrina? Among the dead, the injured and the newly homeless, how many counted themselves as members of God's family of faith? Why did he ignore them in their time of need?
Progressives want to reshape modern culture by overturning centuries-old traditions. These traditions are not arbitrary moral conventions, but the result of thousands of years of social and cultural adaptation. Tradition is our community DNA.
Liberal pluralism cannot survive where there is no love. Universal human freedom is only possible when we agree to hold every human being in the highest regard, even when we disagree with his or her views.
In every corner of the world Christian missions, Christian humanitarian relief, Christian hospitals and medical services have brought the practical love of Christ to the suffering. Christians are global Samaritans, and places like Darfur make it perfectly clear that no other group is ready to step into the breach.
What Andrea Dworkin knew instinctively is that male-female relationships are terribly broken, the pieces so scattered and torn that no one seems to know what the thing ought to look like. She blamed this brokenness on men, and there she made a philosophical wrong turn. But if she failed to understand the root causes of the evil she witnessed, she did not fail to grasp the terrible price women were paying in a society that views them as sexual objects.
The Ebenezer stone represented a fresh beginning, a reversal of course for God's people. It also said something important about God: his mercies are everlasting; his covenant is forever.
More than anything else, we must learn how to serve one another in love. Serving enriches us, especially when the one being served is unable to repay the debt, except through gratitude, except through the very gift of life itself.
Non-conformity means pushing back. It means paddling upstream, against the current. Christianity is not for those who want to float with the tide. It's about swimming, not drifting.
Quantum theory seems to require us to step beyond the material to the metaphysical. It suggests a need for consciousness, for mind, for something that is more than just a collection of synapses in a glob of gray-matter. It seems to demand something transcendent, like God.
In sub-Saharan Africa, about 7.4% of all adults are currently HIV positive. Of the 3.1 million people worldwide who died of AIDS in 2004, more than two-thirds were from this same region. What would Jesus do?
Respite comes not from spiritual toil or mastery of our circumstances. Quite the opposite: it comes from relinquishing control and accepting the gift of peace from Jesus, our living peace.
If "get used to disappointment" became our mantra for defending against the hammer-blows of life, it would mean that we'd have to walk out on hope and climb in bed with bitterness and cynicism.
Among the reasons that Christians observe Epiphany is this: it is the first recorded instance of non-Jews paying homage to—yes, even worshiping—the Messiah of Israel.
If you can't accept the virgin birth, none of the other claims about Jesus are any easier to swallow—in fact, none of them make much sense unless you begin with a grand, eye-popping miracle right off the bat.
We who have grown up in the industrialized nations take literacy and written communication for granted. Imagine what it might be like to speak a language that has no alphabet, and no Bible?
The Democratic party, while chastising conservatives for their hawkish tendency to drop bombs on dictators and, collaterally, children, is meanwhile waging a much deadlier war on the children themselves.
Ray Kurzweil works in the rarefied field of artificial intelligence. He is pursuing the holy grail of engineering: a machine that can think like we do. Kurzweil is absolutely certain such a machine is possible—in his view, we ourselves are machines: thinking machines, spiritual machines. Are we biological machines? And if so, what are the implications for the future of the human race?
Islam teaches that Jesus was a prophet. Christianity teaches that Jesus was the Son of the living God. Judaism teaches that Jesus was just a simple rabbi caught in the jaws of Roman justice. So who is he, this Jesus, and how do we separate myth from reality?
When we talk about God these days, he is no longer the Lion of Judah: powerful, unpredictable, wild, uncompromising; he has become the lion at the kiddie zoo: arthritic, sleepy, senile, toothless.
The cross is a dirty bomb, terrible and full of fury, a symbol of the high stakes battle that is raging (invisibly) between Satan and God. In parts of the world where men and women do not enjoy the grace of religious freedom, Christians are being persecuted because of their faith in Jesus Christ. They suffer beneath the weight of the cross—and how does God call us to respond?
When we find delight in the gratuitous beauty of butterflies, birdsongs and sunsets, we are not meant to walk away—their Creator is waiting for a simple acknowledgement, a thank you.
Amazing grace... We Christians rarely fail to express our gratitude for grace. But what would life be like if we somehow lived that grace and gratitude every day?
The universe is an extravagant masterpiece conceived by a passionate and creative mind. God left his fingerprints everywhere: on the stars, the planets, and the cross.
The Christian faith is no mere creed to which we give mental assent. It is a transformational work by the Spirit of God that produces a Renaissance of the heart.
