I appreciate the comments on my previous post. I think we all agree on the need to proclaim repentance as part of evangelism. Both John the Baptist and Jesus began their preaching by saying “Repent, for the Kingdom of heaven is near” (Matthew 3:2, 4:17). In Acts, Peter called for repentance in [...]

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I’m six chapters into Philip Yancey’s new book, Prayer: Does It Make Any Difference? I’ve been Yancey’s biggest fan for many years, and this book delivers all the good stuff I expected.
Today I ran across an interesting insight that Yancey borrows from Haddon Robinson. Picture the Garden of Gethsemane. Three men [...]

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Shane Claiborne has an interesting article (part 1 of 3) today at Out of Ur, the blog for Christianity Today’s Leadership magazine. I’m currently reading Claiborne’s book The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical. I like the book because, aside from a few sophomoric references, Claiborne defines “radical” in the correct sense [...]

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When I was a kid, I was a committed Christian and I was really into science fiction. It didn’t take me long to see the tension between the two. My favorite science fiction writers (especially Isaac Asimov) were atheists. Their vision of inter-galactic travel and settlement of the universe had no place for [...]

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This headline caught my eye: “Rabbi claims holocaust dead ‘deserved it’”. Read the article and you’ll see that the headline is only slightly sensationalized. The rabbi is Ahron Cohen, an Orthodox Jew from England who recently spoke at the controversial holocaust conference in Iran. Cohen isn’t a holocaust denier, but he [...]

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This is the weekend that the next big Bible film opens in theaters. The Nativity Story stars sixteen-year-old Australian actress Keisha Castle-Hughes as Mary. Castle-Hughes starred as a Maori girl-who-would-be-tribal-chief in the wonderful Whale Rider a few years ago. And fans of 24 will recognize the actress who plays Elizabeth - Iranian-born [...]

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If you’ve got some time and patience to invest, here’s an extremely enlightening article by New Testament scholar N. T. Wright called God, 9/11, the Tsunami, and the New Problem of Evil. Wright challenges prevailing views on war, God’s role in the world, and interpreting evil in light of the gospels. Well worth [...]

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A. W. Tozer said that every Christian must learn to bear one of two pains; either the pain of double-mindedness, or the pain of the crucified self. The pain of double-mindedness is the pain of a tooth-ache that lasts a lifetime. The pain is always there, filling you with resentment, anger, and envy. [...]

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“Human beings are explanation generators.”

So says Daniel Taylor in his book The Myth of Certainty (p. 22). He says that we generate explanations about what life means to give us security, and that (and this is the interesting and scary part) all explanations for life are self-verifying. That means that they all seem [...]

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For many centuries after Christ, Christian pilgrims in Europe found spiritual meaning in traveling to the Holy Land, especially to the birthplace of Christ. The rise and spread of Islam didn’t interfere with these peaceful pilgrimages. But as the year A.D. 1100 approached, things changed. Seljuk Turks, aggressive and warlike converts to [...]

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