During the last three years, I was engaged in the fight of my life—concerning depression—and I failed in significant ways. I had endured an extended depressive episode earlier in life, but in retrospect, had not learned the lessons from that episode that I should have learned. Thus, in my more recent episode, I was not [ Read More ]
In one sense, the Bible is about us. But in a deeper and logically prior sense, it is about God. Composed of sixty-six books written by numerous authors and multiple genres, it nonetheless exhibits the coherence and quality of a grand dramatic narrative. In it, God is the director, screenwriter, and main actor. As the [ Read More ]
As a political opinion writer and speechwriter, I am generally amused by many of the critical comments people leave on my website or my Fox News Opinion pieces; sometimes I am amused because the comments are insults, other times because they are patently inane. Yet, other times, the critical comments should be taken seriously because [ Read More ]
The sixth line of the Lord’s prayer is, “For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory.” It is a fitting summary because the entire prayer is about God’s kingdom, God’s power, and God’s glory. God is unspeakably majestic and powerful, and the kingdom he promises to consummate will radiate his majesty and power. [ Read More ]
Many contemporary thought leaders have spoken intriguingly about a future without Jesus or, to be more precise, a future in which the transcendent truths of the Christian faith hold little or no sway over society. More to the point, these thought leaders often pose as anthropologists who find Christianity dehumanizing and as tea-leaf readers who [ Read More ]
It has been said that harboring resentment is like ingesting poison and then waiting for the other person to die. Indeed, resentment rots the soul. It causes the soul, and in some ways the body, to wither on the vine. Thus, if we wish to keep our souls vibrant and our bodies healthy, we must [ Read More ]
The first line of the Lord’s prayer is, “Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.” Or, in more contemporary English, “Our Father in heaven, holy and wonderful and beautiful is your name.” It functions as the opening salvo of a payer that proceeds to instruct us on how to savor and honor [ Read More ]
Now that we have explored the concept of toxicity and delved into how we can identify people who are toxic to us, we can explore the concept theologically, employing biblical-theological categories to understand the phenomenon and to craft a faithfully Christian posture toward toxic people. As Gary Thomas writes in When to Walk Away, Scripture [ Read More ]
One of life’s greatest challenges is learning to deal with people who are draining, unsupportive, difficult, and adversarial; with people who are bent on systematically diminishing and finally destroying your inner life. In this series of posts, I will talk about how to identify and respond to the words and actions of such toxic persons. [ Read More ]
Some readers may be surprised to learn that pacifism is not a monolithic ideology. In fact, in Nevertheless: The Varieties of Religious Pacifism, Christian pacifist John Howard Yoder lists twenty-nine varieties of pacifism. Yoder’s list, which is confined to religious forms of pacifism, serves to illustrate the mind-boggling panoply of pacifisms on offer. For the [ Read More ]