The greatest converting influence of all is a life which clearly and obviously is possessed of a power which can cope with the human situation in all its problems, in all its tragedy, and in all its pain. — William Barclay, Turning to God, p.41
So declare the Catholic bishops of Vietnam. I find it hard to see why, but that’s because I don’t think books that teach doctrine different from my own “dangerous.” I would call a couple of paragraphs in Barclay less than fully accurate, but there are some paragraphs that are positively brilliant, which is all one…
I’ve often said that I think people who become angry when their beliefs questioned are actually less confident of those beliefs, rather than more so. But that’s a pretty broad and inadequate statement, I think. I was discussing this with my wife recently, and we were wondering why neither of us get annoyed with people…
I was talking recently with a friend who commented that there are certain events that serve as anchor points for our faith. For me, despite all the drifting I’ve done since it happened, one of those points was the time when my father was healed. I alluded to this briefly in a comment on the…
A recent jury verdict against a group of hatemongers has brought up lots of questions. One that I heard was simply this: “The Bible says homosexuality is an abomination. How can you, as a Christian, claim that this group that protests at military funerals is not a good representation of Christianity?” There are a huge…
I think there are two major errors we can make as Christians: We can fail to have a message, and we can fail to be the message. If I follow the stereotypes I would say that liberals tend to fail in the first, and conservatives in the second. But I’m afraid we all tend to…
When I saw the post Virtual Gomorrah: Temptation, Technique, and Technological Progress on the evangelical outpost, I expected to be annoyed by calls for censorship. And indeed there are a few words that tend to annoy my libertarian approach, such as these: . . . My basic position is that while they are desperately needed…
