“Come, let us go down there and confuse their language, so they will not be able to understand each other” (Gen 11.7). The news cycle had moved on. The Flood was a such divisive event and we couldn’t let that happen again. It was time for good news and unity. So we wandered east to Shinar. Everyone was excited to build a new world that promised to keep us all […]
I was born in October 1973. By bird-and-bees math, I was conceived (yuk!) in January 1973 when seven of nine Supreme Court justices gave birth to twins: Roe v. Wade and Doe v. Bolton. On January 22, 1973, Roe was born just minutes before Doe and abortion took its first constitutional breath. You could say we have all grown up together in the neighborhood. They have accomplished far more than […]
“We live in a culture that has replaced soul with self. This reduction turns people into either problems or consumers. Insofar as we acquiesce in that replacement, we gradually but surely regress in our identity, for we end up thinking of ourselves and dealing with others in marketplace terms: everyone we meet is either a potential recruit to join our enterprise or a potential consumer for what we are selling; […]
In the 21st century the holiday season begins when summer ends. Stores capitalize on the Halloween-Thanksgiving-Christmas-New Year’s Eve sales boon. The summer landscape transforms into a graveyard that quickchanges into the North Pole. Spider webs give way to icicles. Zombies concede the lawn to reindeer. Strobe lights dim into candles. Tombstones become nativities. Ghostly shrills quiet into carols. Candy corn is replaced by walnuts and cheap suckers by candy canes. The slide from ghoul […]
In November 2016 I tagged along with a Catalyst Missions team to Kupang, Indonesia (across the Timor Sea from Australia). Indonesia is as beautiful as it is Muslim. In fact, at 200 million adherents it’s the largest Muslim populated country on earth. It was my first ever international trip, much less international missions trip. I was like a newborn discovering for the first time details that soon become familiar. It wasn’t just an […]
I didn’t vote for Donald Trump. We live in a “red” state where the Republican candidate could’ve spared 650,000 third-party votes without affecting the outcome. We could’ve helped loosen the media’s stranglehold on the two-party system. And we could’ve helped to field more promising candidates in 2020. In reality, a vote for Trump in Tennessee was 2/3 wasted instead of 100% useful for electing a good president. But, that’s not my […]
“In the same way the chief priests also, along with the scribes and elders, were mocking him and saying, ‘He saved others; he cannot save Himself. He is the King of Israel; let Him now come down from the cross, and we will believe in Him. HE TRUSTS IN GOD; LET GOD RESCUE him now, IF HE DELIGHTS IN HIM; for He said, “I am the Son of God.”‘” (Mt 27.41–43) Tell me if […]
White cops, Dead black men. Black snipers, Dead white cops. White, black, brown, or olive, Cain by any other name is still Cain (Gen 4.1-8). A spear. Brother-killer. The antithesis of God’s son (1 Jn 3.11-12). The spirit of antichrist that is already in the world (1 Jn 4.3). Most white cops don’t shoot black men. Most black men don’t snipe cops. Nevertheless, we exchanged God’s world of […]
Eugene Peterson wrote in 1983, before the Internet and smartphones: “The puzzle is why so many people live so badly. Not so wickedly, but so inanely. Not so cruelly, but so stupidly. There is little to admire and less to imitate in the people who are prominent in our culture. We have celebrities but not saints. Famous entertainers amuse a nation of bored insomniacs. In famous criminals act out the […]
The current Powerball estimate is over $1 billion and counting. It’s no wonder a recent article in The Atlantic cited this staggering statistic: “According to the North American Association of State and Provincial Lotteries, lotteries took in $70.1 billion in sales in the 2014 fiscal year. That’s more than Americans in all 50 states spent on sports tickets, books, video games, movie tickets, and recorded music sales.” The article concludes: “In an age […]