“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?
The phenomenon of transgenderism not only provokes reactions, but inevitably raises questions – questions about what is real and questions about what is moral. The reality question boils down to this: Is it really the case that a person can be born with “the wrong body,” or is the person who feels this way simply confused at the level of their mind? The morality question follows on from this, but has numerous faces to it, as well as various legal implications. Perhaps understandably, differing answers to these questions tend to polarise people. This essay explores how we can we understand the transgender revolution from a Biblical perspective.
Becoming a thoughtful Christian means learning to think well and to think Christianly. And in noting these two points, we want to say that they must be both at once. Making this observation recognizes that it is possible to be thoughtful without being Christian, and that it is possible to be a Christian without being thoughtful. Frankly, in our current duality-promoting context, either of these would be easier for most people to contemplate. What is challenging is to be both thoughtful and Christian in vigorous and vital engagement with each other and interdependence among each other. We believe, however, that such integration is precisely what is needed at this time in the church and in our culture.
Lots of North Americans use the word sin only on dessert menus and when telling an inside joke. If they hear the word used seriously, they might conclude that they are in the presence of a Puritan. There are few contexts left in which the word is said and heard straight. Even preachers often mumble when it comes to sin. Yet most people would widely agree that the world is broken—that things aren’t the way they’re supposed to be. This essay describes sin, its real effects on humanity, and how Christians can contribute to human flourishing.
Can science provide answers to the ultimate questions of life? How unbiased is the scientific endeavor? Does science have any limits? These and other questions arise from the popular modern acceptance of naturalism, a belief that only natural laws and forces work in the world and that the supernatural does not exist. This timely essay explores science and the naturalistic worldview from a Christian perspective, suggesting ways for Christians to engage with science today.
What keeps people from flourishing today? For many college students, busyness not only weighs them down, it causes high levels of anxiety, fear, and depression. But a flourishing life is a life that both goes well and is lived well. This essay offers students a way of hope when they recognize that they will only flourish when they live in right relationship to God, their environment, their neighbors, and themselves. Explore how you, too, can have a flourishing life.
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.
It’s perhaps something of a surprise that almost none of the so-called New Atheists (like Richard Dawkins) has anything to say about arguments for God’s existence. Instead, they tend to focus on the social effects of religion and question whether religious belief is good for society. One might justifiably doubt that the social impact of an idea for good or ill is an adequate measure of its truth, especially when there are reasons being offered to think that the idea in question really is true. This essay presents five arguments for God’s existence that interact with the arguments atheists make for their beliefs.