A Proposal for "Illegal Aliens"
The Hebrew Scriptures clearly call for the children of Israel to make room for the alien. The Israelites are reminded that they, too, were once aliens in a strange and distant land.
…Who loves the stranger...
Religionless Spirituality
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the Christian martyr, once prophesied from a Nazi concentration camp that there would come a day when there would be a religion-less Christianity. With ambivalence he looked into the twen...
Lose Yourself
As a college professor, I could always count on someone coming into my office around the beginning of May and telling me he wasn't coming back net semester. (It was usually a guy.)
I would try to be professio...
What Do You Mean by Sin?
From time to time, I have been asked in the academic classrooms where I have taught to define what I mean by sin. I always respond by saying, “Sin is what diminishes the humanity of another person and of the...
Why Christians Don't Like Jesus
As the Red Letter Christian movement came to be known, I realized it would never be accepted. This is because many Christians don’t really like the God that is revealed in Jesus Christ. They want the God tha...
Losing Faith: Life's Questions
There are both honest reasons and dishonest reasons for young people giving up on God, and there are remedies for both.
The most common honest reason cited for losing faith is that it becomes impossible to be...
Are Evangelicals Fixated on Homosexuality?
Sigmund Freud would have something to say about the ways in which we Evangelicals seem to be fixated on homosexuality. That fixation became abundantly clear to me a few years back when I was doing radio interv...
Remember the Widow
Most of us concentrate our ministries on reaching young people with the Gospel. However, sociological studies make it clear that, in the churches of America, the elderly are the most neglected, in spite of...
"What a Saviour" vs. "What a Preacher"
When I was in Seminary, I took a course in homiletics. During that semester, each of the students was required to preach a sermon to the rest of the class. When it was my turn, I was ready! My points were cl...
Stone Throwing at a Glass House
As the news of the financial woes of the Crystal Cathedral is heralded across the country and around the world, a host of critical voices have been raised, at times condemning the cost of building the Crystal...