Category: Religion
The Hardest Thing About Thankfulness
Think of someone important to you. Your wife or your mother or your professor. Maybe they’re important because of something they’ve done for you, or maybe it’s just because you like them. If you really...
Thirty Seconds in a Thousand Years
Eighty years after the fact, you’re lying on a worn mattress with now-thin pillows under your sun-freckled baldspot and your hand is propped higher than the rest of you. Why? Because it’s being held by...
“Listen First” — LGBT at a Christian college (and a high-five for my alma mater)
When most people think about Christian universities, they think of stingy, closed-off bubbles where the students are a homogenous mass, and homogenously crazy (the sort of crazy that the young and spiritual are often assumed to...
When Prayer Becomes Gossip
Prayer is our most intimate time with God, and corporate prayer means we’re allowing others into that intimacy. We already know not to abuse prayer. We know when we pray with others, we should be...
Why Aren’t More Christians Being Baptized?
We’re all familiar with talk of decline in the American Church. Fewer members. Fewer young people. And, in some cases, a departure from orthodox doctrine for a hipper, updated theology. I don’t worry much about...
Monsters and sheep
The world is home to monsters. Jekylls and Hydes. Normal by day, terrors by night. People who lose their morals, controllably at first, and soon uncontrollably, in daylight hours, no potion required. Only sometimes, the monsters...
Fruits of the Spirit and spiritual disciplines
This is the second of two posts about spiritual living. The first post is about spiritual gifts and natural talents. The second post is about the fruits of the Spirit and spiritual disciplines. __________________________________________________________________ To...
Spiritual Gifts and Natural Talents
This is the first of two posts about spiritual living. The first post is about spiritual gifts and natural talents. The second post is about the fruits of the Spirit and spiritual disciplines. __________________________________________________________________ Not...
Numbers matter
Whenever we pray for our church to grow, we always pause for a second before adding a little disclaimer at the end so no one takes us the wrong way. God, please bring new faces...
Egypt’s Christians: Fellow pilgrims
This is the third post in a four-post series called Egypt: The Brotherhood, the Christians and the Americans. The first post lays out the major groups in Egypt. The second post looks at what’s next for the Muslim...