Category: Blog

“I’ve made a very conscious effort to train myself in the visual tradition of the church. I’m stocking my head with the symbols that Christian artists have used to portray the mystery visually.” Jane Redmont is the author of When in Doubt, Sing: Prayer in Everyday Life (HarperCollins, 1999), a readable and wide-ranging exploration of…

There are thousands of self-help books on the market. People are feverishly attempting to come to grips with who they are in this confusing world. Not only can you read books on self-help you can watch Dr. Phil on television or listen to Dr. Laura on the radio. Yet, I often find when I am…

I have attended a number of churches in a number of different states and countries over the years and one thing that they often had in common was a spiritual life simplified into lists. For example, to be a good Christian I was told to (1) attend church each Sunday (morning and evening); (2) to…

There are some people whose lives incline you to listen seriously to whatever they say. Samuel M. Zwemer (1867-1952) was such a person and lived such a life. So his little book, Taking Hold of God: Studies on the Nature, Need, and Power of Prayer (Grand Rapids, Mich: Zondervan, 1936), had my attention simply due…

In his 1965 book How to Be Rich: The Success Secrets of a Billionaire Businessman, J. Paul Getty (1892-1976) tells the story of how he quit smoking. On a vacation in France, he woke up at two A.M. in his hotel room, craving a cigarette. Finding none in his pack, none in his jacket, none…

Recently, it has seemed impossible to follow sports without reading about some one who was caught cheating. We have the whole baseball debacle with Barry Bonds et al., and, of course, Pete Rose’s betting scandal. I was very excited to see Floyd Landis’ amazing win at the Tour de France—only to see it tainted by…

“Worldliness is an immense number of allowable details issuing in an unallowable end.” — Frederick W. Faber (1814-1863), Self-Deceit: A Comedy On Lies, A Way Of Overcoming Them

In Colossians 1:10, Paul prays that the Colossians would be able to “walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him.” In its original Greek, it’s a a rougher sentence, reading something like this: “to walk worthy of the Lord in all pleasing.” Most responsible translations do something to smooth that out,…

It is obvious that the beginning of the semester is just around the corner. I am seeing freshmen excitedly wandering the halls with bewildered looks on their faces. They are looking forward to the new experiences that await them here at the university. Their sense of expectation is almost palpable. This time of year being…

Some things are worth thinking about, and some things just aren’t. Some subjects repay closer examination, and the longer you spend meditating on them, the more they reveal their own richness and unfold their conceptual complexity. Other things have the opposite effect: the more time and effort you put into pondering them, the more you…

The redoubtable Dustin Steeve linked recently to a Christianity Today review of the book Captivating: Unveiling the Mystery of a Woman’s Soul, by John and Stasi Eldredge. The reviewer, Agnieszka Tennant, doesn’t recognize herself in the descriptions of woman offered by this book, decked out in “pop psychology, sentimentality, eisegesis, and clichés borrowed from Harlequin…