Good and Evil and the Untrained Eye

In Matthew 13 Jesus tells a parable about a man with a wheat field. During the night, some guy with a really, really bad attitude snuck in and sowed some weeds among the wheat. Which is interesting because weeds are the kind of things that don’t need sowing. They just appear. But these aren’t ordinary...

Do Not Judge: What Did Jesus Really Mean?

Jesus said, quite straightforwardly, “Do not judge, so that you will not be judged.” (Matthew 7:1) Darn! We like the last part—I mean, who likes to be judged?—but judging others is so…satisfying. Maybe even fun. Certainly natural. It comes so easily to all of us. But that first part. There must be...

“Love Your Enemies”: Does God Do It?

A few years ago my parents became friends with a young man from their church who was studying to be a doctor in the Navy. He had finished medical school and was entering residency. He told them once that one of the things he did to prepare himself for residency was to intubate himself. I don’t know if it...