Do we ever find ourselves becoming angry, sarcastic, or hostile when someone disagrees with our understanding of morality, the Bible, or the afterlife? If so, how do we explain our rush of emotion? Do we intuitively sense that anger will enable us to make a better case for our beliefs? Has our experience taught us […]
Jesus said that love for God is the first and greatest commandment, and that the second most important is to love our neighbor as ourselves (Mark 12:30-31). Moses anticipates such faithfulness to God when he says, as a matter of first importance, that Israel was to have no other god but the One who rescued […]
On the way home from work last night, I saw this billboard on one of our busiest streets. The prediction has been showing up around the country. According to the sponsoring group, judgment day, and the end of the world as we know it, comes on May 21, 2011. Look close. The sign promises “The […]
Claiming to be a follower of Christ, the Apostle Paul wrote that without love, our words are like meaningless noise (1Cor 13:1-3). He followed up saying that “Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. Love does not demand its own way. Love is not irritable, and it […]
Why do we punish ourselves for old regrets long after we believe God has forgiven us? The question stuck in my mind after a conversation with someone I’ll call TC. TC described himself as being in recovery for multiple addictions. A couple of times he said, “My problem was forgiving myself. I found it a […]
Many of us know what it’s like to find ourselves on a steep roof or on some other slick incline of mud, ice, or loose gravel. So when someone uses the argument of “the slippery slope” to caution against taking even a small misstep in a dangerous direction, we do more than understand the warning. […]
Yesterday, I read an article in USA Today about a Christian leader who removed his name from a group that supports the rights of Muslims to build mosques in their communities. The article went on to explain that the person was responding to those who felt that the Interfaith Coalition on Mosques crossed the line […]
One of the books we’ve talked about in the last couple of posts, Why Men Hate Going to Church, is hard to do justice to by quoting a few of the author’s emphases. Murrow’s chapters are full of irony that, as I read, kept me off balance from beginning to end. He had me arguing […]
One of the reasons I have been so intrigued with Murrow’s book, “Why Men Hate Going to Church” is that his work explores the interrelationship between spiritual character and the real and perceived nature of masculinity and femininity. In the middle of such a discussion I find myself in wonder of both the self-evident nature […]
“Why Men Hate Going to Church” by author David Murrow stayed on my desk, unread for a long time, because it looked like an overstatement. But then I started reading and was intrigued by his suggestion that, of the world’s major religions, only Christianity seems to have a problem getting men. His assessment is that […]
