Category: Misc.

It is easy for teachers and administrators to focus on the task of teaching outcomes (assessment and evaluation) and not on the students themselves. The problem is that it is difficult to think about a classroom full of students as 25 discrete people with radically diverse learning styles and personal needs. It is much easier…

Paul’s encounter with the risen Jesus on the road to Damascus was unique, probably because of the unique ministry he was called to. We live in “the church age,” the age when Jesus Christ is seated at the right hand of God the Father —the martyr Stephen in his dying vision looked up and saw…

Dead men do not keep working —but Jesus does. Dead men do not add anything to their list of accomplishments, but Jesus has extended his. The gospels end, and Jesus goes right on working. Choosing the apostles was something Jesus did very early in his ministry, but in Acts 26 we see him laying hold…

In the twenty-sixth chapter of the book of Acts, Paul makes his defense before king Agrippa. “Speak for yourself, Paul,” said king Agrippa. Paul was hardly the kind of person who needed a special invitation to speak for himself. He was outspoken by nature, and he’d been warming the bench in prison for a long…

I was living in Dallas, Texas when Sheryl Crow’s “Everyday is a Winding Road” single began making its rounds on the radio. I heard it often because I spent so much time in my car driving from one pool cleaning job to the next. Its a catchy song and one that I still like to…

Christians have a lot to say, but to proclaim the gospel you can’t just say every Christian thing that comes to mind: you have to put the emphasis on something in particular. Protestant evangelicals stand in a great tradition of Christian faith and doctrine: we are surrounded by a cloud of witnesses to the one…

Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) is widely recognized as the greatest theologian America has yet produced. He wrote epochal books and preached sermons that still echo in our cultural memory from the Great Awakening. One of the least important things he ever wrote is a fun bit of juvenilia known as “The Spider Letter,” a descriptive essay…

This semester I have the great opportunity of teaching a whole class dedicated to Augustine’s Confessions. This Christian classic is an amazing example of a literary masterpiece and it is also one of the most theologically dense books that I have ever read. Leading three hours of discussion on each of the individual books of…

“Devotional book” is not usually a term of approval, even among those of us who use them. “Devotionals” can connote fairly lightweight religious reading, a thought for the day, a little something that fits on one page and reminds you to keep the right attitude. But the Dutch Reformed pastor Andrew Murray wrote almost nothing…

Every theologian who wants to think biblically has to believe in providence. Like it or not (and after all, why not like it?), the Bible is about a God who rules and governs world events, from geopolitical reversals to the fate of little birds. This God is not surprised by how things turn out, is…

Jesus died for me. Anyone who believes this simple sentence has entered the sphere of Christian faith, and has learned the one thing that God is concerned to teach his human creatures, in order to bring them into his school for all further lessons. “Jesus died for me” is knowledge that can be grasped by…

When I come home from the office after a busy day of work I know that my six year old daughter will scream “daddy” at the top of her lungs, and start running at me. She follows this up with what I would call a “leap of faith” into my arms. I have learned from…