I’d be less
I recently read the autobiography of Andre Agassi, an American tennis player whose profession career spanned twenty years (1986–2006) and whose unorthodox apparel and attitude is widely credited with helping to revive the popularity of the sport by which he made his living. Agassi’s…
Here I stand
I recently listened to a recorded conversation between Christian author and speaker Skye Jethani and American journalist Jonathan Merritt. During an interview with Eugene Peterson last year, Merritt asked Peterson, a member of the liberal Presbyterian Church (USA), if he would consent to conducting…
As he is
An illustration in a 1916 edition of The Washington Post portrayed a group of Roman diners at a table with a large bowl beside each. The caption read, “The disgusting Roman custom known as the ‘vomitorium.’ After the banquet was over bowls were brought…
Footprints in the sea
In 2001, missionaries Jim and Roni Bowers were flying into Peru with their six-year-old son, Cory, and their infant daughter, Charity. A CIA spotter plane, part of an anti-narcotics program, identified the missionary aircraft as a potential drug runner, alerting Peruvian authorities of their…
God’s way
In August of 1996, a female gorilla housed at the Brookfield Zoo in Illinois, made international headlines after a three-year-old boy climbed the wall around the gorilla exhibit and fell more than seven metres into the enclosure. The boy suffered a broken hand and…
Every dark shadow
It seems that we live in a world of memes. According to Merriam-Webster, a meme, strictly speaking, is “any idea, behaviour, style, or usage that spreads from one person to another within a culture.” Most people have come to associate the word, however, with…
Reformation 500: Appealing to authority
As I stated previously, I am unconvinced that Catholicism should rightly be considered a cult. The Catholic faith is rooted in historic Christian truth. While this is true, I am persuaded that the truth has been so obscured by Catholic tradition that the foundation…
Reformation 500: Catholicism—Christless cult or Christian church?
This year celebrates the five hundredth year of the Protestant Reformation. While significant attempts were made earlier than 1517 to reform the Catholic Church (think Peter Waldo, John Wycliffe or John Hus), it was really the publication of Luther’s 95 Theses that kicked off…
Holy hatred: One who sows discord among brothers
In our ongoing consideration of the seven things that God hates, we have considered “haughty eyes,” “a lying tongue,” “hands that shed innocent blood,” “a heart that devises wicked plans,” “feet that make haste to run to evil” and “a false witness who breathes…
Holy hatred: A false witness who breathes out lies
The British poet John Dryden once wrote, “Truth is the foundation of all knowledge and the cement of all societies.” The God of the Bible is a God of truth, and in the list of seven things that he hates, we have already considered…