mass shooters & herod the tyrant
13 - 08/19 /13:24
Herod the Great died a slow excruciating death. The first century historian Josephus claimed that as death drew near, that tyrant made cruel arrangements to insure his death would be a time of mourning. Herod had leading figures from throughout his realm arrested, ordering that when he died, they should be executed.
Herod wanted people to suffer when he died. He demanded mourning at his death. Herod craved attention and, like today’s mass shooters, was willing to use violence to gain it. Fortunately, his son Archelaus and sister Salome vetoed the tyrant’s last wish. Read More…
Herod wanted people to suffer when he died. He demanded mourning at his death. Herod craved attention and, like today’s mass shooters, was willing to use violence to gain it. Fortunately, his son Archelaus and sister Salome vetoed the tyrant’s last wish. Read More…
hate enhances self-esteem
15 - 07/19 /14:27
Professor Sartwell of Dickinson College opines that our culture is increasingly proficient at vilifying people who disagree with us. This PhD of philosophy claims the taste for hate is a perverse, intentional pursuit of pleasure.
There is pleasure in hating. In fact, it enhances self-esteem and is self-congratulatory. Hating accomplishes three things simultaneously: Hate pronounces its superiority over the hated person. Hate pats itself on the back, as well as those who smartly agree, for its proper thinking. And hate professes thanks for being unlike those who disagree. Read More…
There is pleasure in hating. In fact, it enhances self-esteem and is self-congratulatory. Hating accomplishes three things simultaneously: Hate pronounces its superiority over the hated person. Hate pats itself on the back, as well as those who smartly agree, for its proper thinking. And hate professes thanks for being unlike those who disagree. Read More…
the idol of our age
25 - 06/19 /11:45
The Christian ideals of love and charity are being distorted. Daniel Mahoney, author of The Idol of Our Age, writes, “There’s an increasing conflation of Christian teaching with a humanitarian political agenda,” that’s reducing Christianity into just another instrument in the social justice orchestra. This conflation depends upon a “deeply problematic interpretation of the Gospels.”
Mr Mahoney’s book is resonating with diverse Christ-followers—Orthodox, Catholics, Protestants, Evangelicals, Charismatics and believers in-between. Read More…
Mr Mahoney’s book is resonating with diverse Christ-followers—Orthodox, Catholics, Protestants, Evangelicals, Charismatics and believers in-between. Read More…
crushing liberty
03 - 06/19 /17:00
Thirty years ago millions of Chinese people dreaming of liberty occupied Tiananmen (Heavenly Peace) Square in Beijing. Protestors transformed that politically sacred space into a democratic zone, creating a heady—if naive—hope among protestors. Arts students erected a goddess of liberty statue, aligning its determined face opposite the huge portrait of Mao located atop the rostrum on the Tiananmen Gate.
Thirty years ago a father sat beside his hunger-striking daughter, daubing her brow with a cool cloth. “My generation never dared speak out, much less to act out what we believed,” he sobbed. “Now my daughter’s doing it for me.” A Peking University student claimed, “There’s no way the Party will ever get things back into the old bottle! Just look around us. History’s sweeping them away!” Read More…
Thirty years ago a father sat beside his hunger-striking daughter, daubing her brow with a cool cloth. “My generation never dared speak out, much less to act out what we believed,” he sobbed. “Now my daughter’s doing it for me.” A Peking University student claimed, “There’s no way the Party will ever get things back into the old bottle! Just look around us. History’s sweeping them away!” Read More…
loneliness epidemic
23 - 05/19 /17:01
“I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that our kids are on the precipice of a loneliness epidemic.” That’s what Sima Sistani said at the Future of Everything Festival about millennials and Generation Z.
Part of the problem stems from the way social-media channels communication. Instant-messaging services and social-media platforms allow us to delay responding to friends until convenient. For kids that convenience creates a time-lag—a void that feeds anxiety as they await a response. They may send digital-message threads to many sets of friends, and then spend time anxiously glued to their device waiting or perhaps dreading responses. Read More…
Part of the problem stems from the way social-media channels communication. Instant-messaging services and social-media platforms allow us to delay responding to friends until convenient. For kids that convenience creates a time-lag—a void that feeds anxiety as they await a response. They may send digital-message threads to many sets of friends, and then spend time anxiously glued to their device waiting or perhaps dreading responses. Read More…
human-capital value of moms
13 - 05/19 /11:15
~ Adapted from an article by Elizabeth Shine, a Hong Kong-based writer and communications consultant ~
I’m not a mother, and at 48 I’m unlikely to become one. My whole professional life, I’ve been leaning in. It wasn’t until things went badly wrong that I realized the human-capital value of a group of women modern society tends to ignore or dismiss—stay-at-home-moms.
As a global management professional, I’ve lived and traveled all over the world. In 2015 my life exploded. On a dark April afternoon in Dubai, I was swept up by a perfect storm of issues with my job, my investments, my health and an emotional entanglement. Something had to give. I resigned my job and entered a period of physical, financial, emotional and spiritual hell. Read More…
I’m not a mother, and at 48 I’m unlikely to become one. My whole professional life, I’ve been leaning in. It wasn’t until things went badly wrong that I realized the human-capital value of a group of women modern society tends to ignore or dismiss—stay-at-home-moms.
As a global management professional, I’ve lived and traveled all over the world. In 2015 my life exploded. On a dark April afternoon in Dubai, I was swept up by a perfect storm of issues with my job, my investments, my health and an emotional entanglement. Something had to give. I resigned my job and entered a period of physical, financial, emotional and spiritual hell. Read More…
Resurrection Inconsistencies
17 - 04/19 /13:03
Critics of Jesus’ resurrection make much of inconsistencies in the New Testament accounts. While the four Gospels agree that women discovered the empty tomb, they record very different accounts of what women experienced at the tomb. However, most perceived inconsistencies fade when readers remember three facts. Precise time-keeping did not exist. Telecommunication did not exist. And we cannot know how many women went to the tomb.
What follows is my suggested sequence of events of Resurrection Sunday. Read More…
What follows is my suggested sequence of events of Resurrection Sunday. Read More…
declaration of faithful disobedience
27 - 03/19 /12:41
2004 the Chinese periodical Southern People Weekly (南方人物周刊) compiled their “50 Most Influential Public Intellectuals of China.” Included was Wang Yi, a pioneering human-rights attorney. 2005 Wang Yi converted to Christianity and began serving in a house church. 2008 at the Conference for Global Christians in Law he was awarded the “Prize for the Contribution to Promoting Religious Freedom.” That same year in Chengdu he founded a house church, Early Rain Covenant Church.
12/9/2018 Wang Yi and 100 members of his church were arrested by Chinese authorities. The government simultaneously banned all reporting about these arrests. 3/25/2019 The NY Times reported Wang Yi and his wife remain in custody.
After he’d been detained for 48 hours, Early Rain Covenant Church released Wang Yi’s “Declaration of Faithful Disobedience.” The following is adapted from his declaration: Read More…
12/9/2018 Wang Yi and 100 members of his church were arrested by Chinese authorities. The government simultaneously banned all reporting about these arrests. 3/25/2019 The NY Times reported Wang Yi and his wife remain in custody.
After he’d been detained for 48 hours, Early Rain Covenant Church released Wang Yi’s “Declaration of Faithful Disobedience.” The following is adapted from his declaration: Read More…
just do something
04 - 03/19 /09:39
Jesus was once the guest at a dinner party hosted by Simon, a religious leader. Several of Simon’s friends were present, there to take the measure of this miracle-working rabbi. As was common in the 1stCentury diners did not sit on chairs but reclined on couches.
While Jesus dined, and was plied with questions, an uninvited woman snuck into the house. Under normal conditions such a woman would have been kept out. But so many people clamored for a look at the miracle worker—so many wanted to catch a few of His words—that this dinner resembled a public square more than a home. Read More…
While Jesus dined, and was plied with questions, an uninvited woman snuck into the house. Under normal conditions such a woman would have been kept out. But so many people clamored for a look at the miracle worker—so many wanted to catch a few of His words—that this dinner resembled a public square more than a home. Read More…
lies & fantasies
18 - 02/19 /12:41
~ Adapted from a written opinion by Lance Morrow, senior fellow Ethics and Public Policy Center ~
As a teenager in the 1930s, my mother was an idealistic, card-carrying member of the Communist Party. When she quit the party, her Philadelphia cell declared her “an enemy of the people.” My father was an editor at the Saturday Evening Post in the days after World War II, when America imagined itself as a Norman Rockwell painting.
Absorbing the points of view of both my parents, I became a journalist. When I started it wasn’t considered unprincipled for a journalist to be able to see both sides of an issue. My double-mindedness persists in the Age of Trump. And what I see are the passions of the 1930s replaying themselves in 21st-century variations. Read More…
As a teenager in the 1930s, my mother was an idealistic, card-carrying member of the Communist Party. When she quit the party, her Philadelphia cell declared her “an enemy of the people.” My father was an editor at the Saturday Evening Post in the days after World War II, when America imagined itself as a Norman Rockwell painting.
Absorbing the points of view of both my parents, I became a journalist. When I started it wasn’t considered unprincipled for a journalist to be able to see both sides of an issue. My double-mindedness persists in the Age of Trump. And what I see are the passions of the 1930s replaying themselves in 21st-century variations. Read More…
greatest sermon challenge
11 - 02/19 /13:44
Early in his New Testament gospel, Matthew recounts Jesus’ invitation (actually it’s an expectation—even demand) for two fishermen to follow Him with the promise, “I will make you fish for people.” The question arises if all followers of Christ are to “fish for people.” Or is evangelism for only select Christians? After all, Jesus doesn’t promise to make the next two people He called, “fish for people.”
Matthew follows Jesus’ challenging four fishermen to follow Him with a brief transition paragraph that leads into His sermon on the mount. Might fishing for people and the sermon on the mount be connected? Read More…
Matthew follows Jesus’ challenging four fishermen to follow Him with a brief transition paragraph that leads into His sermon on the mount. Might fishing for people and the sermon on the mount be connected? Read More…
Iranians converting to Christianity
05 - 02/19 /12:49
According to NPR, in Turkey and across the Middle East and Europe, Muslim refugees eager to emigrate to the West are converting to Christianity.
Sebnem Koser Akcapar, a sociology professor at Istanbul’s Koç University, reports, “The numbers of Iranian refugees converting have grown tremendously.” But the professor believes many are professing religious persecution as an angle to emigrate to the West. Read More…
Sebnem Koser Akcapar, a sociology professor at Istanbul’s Koç University, reports, “The numbers of Iranian refugees converting have grown tremendously.” But the professor believes many are professing religious persecution as an angle to emigrate to the West. Read More…