Series
The Church and the Cultural Challenge
We Dare Not Defend Our Rights
There might be only one thing harder than uniting Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant church leaders: uniting liberal and conservative Catholics. The Obama administration managed to do both by requiring Catholic institutions to provide contraception, which violates church teaching. The united front eventually split when President Obama announced insurance companies would foot the bill instead. Even among most Catholics, contraception is hardly more controversial than Aspirin. Evangelicals, for the most part, don’t share the same qualms over the Pill as the Vatican. So why the alarm? Why do more than 300 religious leaders agree, “This is a grave violation of religious...
The Myths of Progress and Relevance
As we present the timeless good news to a post-Christian world, two related myths may need to be exposed in order to gain a wide hearing: the myth of progress, the widespread belief that most things are getting better; and the myth of relevance, the expectation that Christianity will confirm contemporary perspectives. The Myth of Progress A question confronts us on every page of the Bible. Who will I listen to: my cultural moment or God’s eternal wisdom? It is one of the most significant questions of the spiritual life. It was an ancient question as much as a modern—-but...
Tell Your Story, Tell It Well
Facebook bums us out. That news set the internet ablaze (or at least a-twitter) early last year, when a study in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin found that subjects persistently underestimated how dejected their friends were—-which made them more dejected in turn. Slate describes the origin of the study: [Lead researcher] Jordan got the idea for the inquiry after observing his friends’ reactions to Facebook: He noticed that they seemed to feel particularly crummy about themselves after logging onto the site and scrolling through others’ attractive photos, accomplished bios, and chipper status updates. “They were convinced that everyone else...
The Danger of Running a Spiritual Deficit
We need to get more saturated in the Bible, and we need to do it now. Philip Jacob Spener wrote in his book Pia Desideria in 1678, “thought should be given to a more extensive use of the Word of God among us.” Horatius Bonar wrote in his book Words to the Winners of Souls in 1859, “We must study the Bible more. We must steep our souls in it. We must not only lay it up within us, but transfuse it through the whole texture of the soul.” Christians always need the Word of God. But there are times...
