Survey the landscape of American Christianity on any given Sunday and you’ll find plenty of evidence that God is on the throne, we’re walking in victory, and Satan’s utterly crushed.  There are lots of praise choruses about our victory and God’s goodness, along with clapping...

You sit across the coffee shop with a white turban, each crease folded with care, undulating like lines in the Mombasa sand at low tide. I watch you sipping espresso and fiddling with your phone, and I realize there are no enemies. Only others who are really us, but for the gap of knowing. If only we...

My church is offering what might be an unusual parenting class. There is a psychology professor in town who goes to our church, and we’ve got her presenting a Sunday School class that emphasizes adolescent brain development. I suspect that this class is unusual for two reasons. First, most parents...

I had, subconsciously, edited Satan out of the Nativity accounts. It was an honest oversight; I wasn’t intentionally revising my theology to be cool, hip, and twentieth century. There was that time I was at the wrong end of an exorcism. And the Evangelical subculture had wore me out by promoting Satan...

I wake this morning intending to skip rope in the backyard forest, but as I sip my morning coffee, the sunrise is too inviting for such confinement. I’ll run the stairs at the Aqua Theater while the sky gives me a light show to ease the pain. As I’m jogging down to the lake, the husky pup...

Paul had claimed he learned to be content in every situation. As Acts closes Paul shows us that the freedom of a Christ Follower isn’t measured by the absence of chains or prisons, but by one’s capacity to love God and humanity in the face of all resistance. By reasonable human standards Paul wasn’t...

I know. You still haven’t thrown out that fruit fly-infested jack-o-lantern and I’m offering you another Christmas meditation. By the time Black Friday rolls around you’ll wanting to weave the shopping flyers into a rope with which to hang either yourself or me. It won’t matter. Please...

The Bible: Maybe the most dangerous idol? In Exodus 20, the very first of God’s ten commandments is His declaration that we must “have no other gods”, and right on the heels of that, we’re warned against “graven images”, which is a warning against fabricating gods...

I’m working on a book about Christmas and I’ve been wrestling with the ugliness of what Biblical scholars call the Slaughter of the Innocents. I hate that Jesus came to Earth in a way that caused countless infants and children to be murdered by King Herod. In fact, I struggle with the Bible...

Yesterday was one of those “take one for the team” days.  I was up at 4:30 AM, at the church office by  6 AM, and on my way home by 1:30 PM. My wife sings in a local acoustic trio and was up for two awards (Female Vocalist and Acoustic Band) in the Rock Erie Music Awards, a local awards...