Las Vegas and Our Culture of Violence

Note: This is adapted from a 2015 article I wrote after the massacre of nine African-Americans in a Charleston church. Sadly, I didn’t have to change much to adapt it. Once again we are reeling in the aftermath of another mass killing, the worst one in U.S. history. As usual, we also have to listen to the...

Free to be Your Best Self

I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. There are passages in the Bible that are hard to understand. We puzzle over them, read Bible commentaries, listen to Christian leaders we trust talk about them, and still we end up scratching our heads. This is...

God’s Offensive Love

God’s kind of love is the highest kind of love. It is unconditional, freely-given, abundant, never-ending, and steadfast through all circumstances. “What can separate us from the love of God?” Paul asks in Romans 8. “Nothing,” he says. Not the most powerful person on earth, now or in the future. Not death...

If Surrendering to God is a Biblical Concept, Why Isn’t it in the Bible?

We’ve all heard sermons and lectures about surrendering to God. We’ve sat through plenty of Sunday School lessons about surrendering to God. There are books about surrendering to God. We sing songs about surrendering to God: “I Surrender All.” It’s in our religious vocabulary. Surrender your life to Jesus....

The Only Real Reason to Read the Bible: Part Seven of “How I Read the Bible, And So Can You!”

When I interpret Scripture I go through a process, almost second-nature by now, that includes, suspending my assumptions about the nature of the Bible; not letting my previous instruction about a passage inhibit something new and different coming out; letting the original writers have their voice and their...

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