(OPINION) This week I want to talk about a pair of concepts that are typically used side-by-side in Christian circles, and which also strike me as among the more misunderstood and egregiously misused principles in the church lexicon. Understood rightly, they’d benefit everybody. Those two words are “sin” and “repentance.” Taken together, they suggest the idea that we’re all sinners who need to repent.
Read More(OPINION) An Arkansas reader says that when faced with some proposed controversial change to church’s tenets, he asks himself what would exemplify the two rules that Jesus calls the commandments from which all others originate and to which all others must bow. Namely, what would a loving, compassionate God expect of us?
Read More(OPINION) In my observation, core spiritual truths are applicable to nearly every arena of life, not just to religion but also to business, education or politics. They’re as beneficial to those who don’t believe in God as to those who go to church three times a week. I think of these as universal laws. They’re woven into the world we inhabit as surely as the law of gravity. One of these universal truths is the principle of balance.
Read More(OPINION) What happens with Pentecostalism today affects nearly everybody on Earth, not only spiritually but politically. Scholars and journalists usually point to the landmark 1906 Azusa Street Revival in Los Angeles as the birth of Pentecostalism. That revival introduced long-dormant gifts of the Holy Spirit written about in the New Testament — including prophecy, healing and speaking in tongues — to contemporary Christianity.
Read More(OPINION) Speaking for God can be a messy business. Very messy. No matter how sincere you are, you might turn out eventually to have been wrong. No matter how many Scriptures you cite to prove your point, those who disagree will trot out contrary passages to demonstrate why you’re tragically misguided — if not heretical.
Read More(OPINION) While political pollsters and the national media tend to lump under one banner those dreaded right-leaning “White evangelical or born-again” Christians, that banner actually includes an anomalous set of people with different belief systems and often competing goals.
Read More(OPINION) Lately, though, I’ve unaccountably become flappable, prone to crippling attacks of anxiety even when there’s nothing to be anxious about. This is new, disconcerting and mysterious. I’m not under any unusual stress, so I suspect this anxiety must be the result of some chemical shift taking place in my brain as I age.
Read More(OPINION) During the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, when we were all locked down, I suddenly had enormous stretches of time on my hands. I did a lot of reading. One thing I learned from all that reading was that I am, apparently, a jackleg Christian mystic.
Read More(REVIEW) Though “Eli Harpo’s Adventure to the Afterlife” author Eric Schlich comes to this tale from a different spiritual trajectory than mine — I’m a former skeptic turned Holy Roller preacher — I found myself caught up in Eli’s story. That’s partly the result of good plotting. By the end of each chapter, I had to see what would happen next.
Read More(OPINION) What did the Founding Fathers really believe about the role of religion in America? When Franklin, Washington, Adams, Jefferson and Madison appeared, they were trying to figure out what they believed personally about God even as they debated religion’s role in a fledgling nation. These guys didn’t fit into our 21st century boxes.
Read More(OPINION) Isaiah paints us a portrait of what true, godly leadership looks like. In the New Testament’s Gospels, God himself incarnates a human being who sounds a lot like Isaiah’s suffering servant. What a contrast between Jesus’ leadership and the leaders we promote to power in our own politics, government, pop culture, military and business.
Read More(OPINION) It occurred to me that although my grandfathers are long since gone, they’re not gone, either. Nothing lasts — yet, somehow, it does. It’s a paradox. They’re dead and they’re still alive.
Read More(OPINION) Mostly we butt into other folks’ affairs because we’re control freaks who need to fix, or at least feel superior to, everyone else. Or, like Dear Abby’s correspondents, we’re nosy. Or we reap some type of social currency from getting the inside scoop and then passing it along to friends. Or we hope to deflect attention from our own shortcomings by calling attention to someone else’s.
None of those is a good look, is it?
Read More(OPINION) Ever since I turned 35, I’ve tried to use this time of year to take stock, to evaluate where I’ve been over the previous 12 months, where I stand now and where I see myself going. Some years nothing much has changed. Other years much has changed, and I find myself contradicting what I’ve said previously. Here goes for 2024.
Read More(OPINION) I can’t say whether all the countless new gender permutations are legitimate. Maybe some are more social contagion or attention-seeking rather than biological predestination. Who knows? What really matters is that I’ve got grandkids. Five of them. Each unique in marvelous, remarkable, illuminating ways. And I love them.
Read More(OPINION) There have always been generation gaps and family conflicts, but today adult children may view estrangement from their parents as an expression of personal growth. This is something new and reflects how family life has changed over the past half-century.
Read More(OPINION) My dad, a minister of the gospel for 60 years, used to tell parishioners there was one thing they should never pray for: patience. “Tribulation worketh patience,” he’d say, quoting St. Paul’s letter to the Romans. “Anytime you ask the Lord for patience, you might as well be praying for trouble.”
Read More(OPINION) Few issues in religion have been as remarked upon and puzzled over lately as the rapid rise of “nones,” those who claim no religious affiliation. I’ve written about this before, I realize, but it’s a news story that just keeps developing.
Read More(OPINION) Love sure didn’t save the ’60s, but wouldn’t it be nice to imagine love might save us now? Yeah, I know it’s too much to ask. Humans by and large aren’t geared that way. But an old man can dream just as easily as a 9-year-old can. I think sometimes that part of what keeps love from winning on this troubled planet is that most of us don’t even understand what true love looks like.
Read More(OPINION) I finally got the coronavirus. But thanks to the luck of not getting it in 2020, say, and thanks to the hard work of public health officials, and thanks to vaccines and antivirals, I knew I wasn’t likely to end up on a ventilator or in a coffin, even though I’m an at-risk patient.
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