“Trauma” and “abuse”: two dark words that describe the experience of a vast number of devastated people throughout the world. Unless we rightly understand the psychospiritual impact of this ordeal, our Christian response, however good-hearted, may not be helpful. Our aim is to bring understanding where ignorance can be seriously damaging both to individuals who are not understood and to the whole body of Christ, where the disconnections caused by traumatic wounding make us corporately less than we are destined to be as “the fullness of Him who fills all in all” (Ephesians 1:23 ESV). There is a Light that no darkness will ever extinguish and a Life in him that death cannot destroy.
How can we talk to our non-believing, skeptical friends about things that matter? We want them to be more than just our friends. We want them also to have the opportunity to know, love, and worship Jesus. But if we over-play this, we risk driving them away. They might never want to have another awkward conversation with us again. But if we under-play this, our friends will never have the chance to hear about Jesus. Maybe they would’ve gladly believed in Jesus, if only we had told them, but we didn’t! So how can we get the balance right?
Weddings can be such fun, can’t they? And they come in all shapes and sizes from huge to intimate, from casual to formal. The last wedding I attended was a classic Southern one where the bride had eleven bridesmaids. We have also been to a wedding in the Armenian Orthodox Church, with robes, incense, color and pageantry. What struck me in particular was how the priest handled the Bible. It was handled with silk cloth. Human hands were not to touch the sacred book. What made this book so precious to him? Personal conviction? Tradition? Why should we value this ancient book?
Jesus of Nazareth has been the most influential person to walk this earth in human history. To this day, more than two billion people worldwide claim to be his followers, more than the number of adherents to any other religion or worldview. But just who was this individual and how can we glean reliable information about him? Explore the evidence for the historical Jesus and discover why Jesus of Nazareth matters.
How do we view homosexuality in light of a Christian sexual ethic? Perhaps this will come as a surprise, but homosexuality is not the focal point of the Christian sexual ethic. Rather, same-sex behavior is one of many sexual acts that fall outside of the context of a life-union between a man and a woman, including pre-marital and extra-marital sex, pornography, and so on. Christianity begins with a broader sexual ethic that affirms the good of physical creation and the good of our inherent sexuality. This essay engages the intersection of religious and sexual identities and the much-debated topic of Christianity and homosexuality.
Until the modern era, Christians largely took it for granted that Christianity is the one true religion for all humankind. By the late twentieth century, however, there were growing numbers of those identifying themselves as Christians who called for a radical pluralism in which Christianity is just one among many possible ways of responding to the divine. Explore the idea that all the major religions are more or less equally true and how Christians can respond to religious diversity today.
He took the blade. It was bright silver. He loved the way it glistened. It felt good in his hand. He cut deep into her chest again and again. He showed no emotion, no recognition of her humanity. She lay motionless, her life gone. He made no attempt to cover the body. Later that night over a beer he openly talked to a stranger in the bar about what he had done. The stranger felt ill….
What are we to make of this? Should someone have called 911? Should he have been arrested? Is this a Hannibal Lecter story? It all depends. To make sense of it, this narrative fragment needs placing in a larger picture or frame of reference. Frames of reference are keys to reading the world of our experience. Examine how to assess frames of references like postmodernism and discover what makes a worldview Christian.
Why is sex so fascinating? That’s one question. But why pay any attention to what Christians believe about sex? That’s quite another. And yet the very fascination of sex points to a religious dimension. Sex and religion have always been hard to separate—from the gods and goddesses of the religions of the Ancient Near East onwards. This thought-provoking essay explores why sex is so fascinating, what God says about sex, and how Christians can respond to sex in our culture today.