Divided or United? In recent days our nation has witnessed the cowardly actions of those who promote hatred, bigotry, prejudice and a message of racial superiority. This is not the Good News Jesus preached. St. Paul once challenged a church struggling to get along and set apart their...
“This is significant,” said John Perkins as he looked out on a group of thirty Twin Cities area pastors. It was, he said, the equal participation of black and white that struck him as unusual.
We had met with Dr. Perkins at the midpoint of a journey to some of the most important...
The primary role of the Old Testament prophet was not predicting the future, but telling the truth. Prophets can be cranky. They can make us feel uncomfortable. They ruin dinner parties reminding us of things we’d rather forget.
Dr. Martin Luther King was a modern day prophet. He spoke...
A friend emailed me this week with a thought on faith and doubt. He’s a thinker and, like many, struggles with doubt. Over the years he’s been helped by the answers theologians and philosophers have proposed to his questions. He has also told me that he views faith as a relationship...
A New Year’s Challenge: Just five minutes a day. That’s all it takes. For what? To connect with God. To find peace, meaning and purpose in life. To acquire wisdom and guidance for daily decisions. To discover strength to face difficulties and hope for eternity. How? By reading...
The Ten – works of faith and fiction that have influenced and moved me (plus a few runner ups)
Mere Christianity – C.S. Lewis: Cliché? Sure, but no one so consistently gets to the heart of a matter and says it so memorably. Once finished, move right on to The Screwtape...
Wednesday morning the most contentious political election in our lifetime will be over. Both campaigns predict dire consequences if their candidate isn’t elected, but I’m not buying it. That isn’t to say it doesn’t matter who wins. But it doesn't matter nearly as much as...
Is honesty the best policy? Of course it is. Or at least that’s the conventional wisdom. But the philosopher Immanuel Kant disagreed. Honesty, he argued, isn’t the best policy, it’s the only policy. Kant was concerned that if we only focus on what “works,” it will...
Why Heaven Matters
For some time, I’ve become increasingly convinced that our culture undervalues the hope of heaven.
The images of harps and clouds and guys in white robes seems odd and unattractive. Of course that’s just a caricature. But heaven is difficult to describe. A place...
Be Inauthentic
You’re probably thinking “typo,” or that I’m totally wacked, but I’m serious. Like tolerance, “authenticity” (or put another way, “being true to yourself”) is a core cultural virtue. To be honest I cringe when people talk...