When he joins the Church the Christian steps out of the world, his work and family, taking his stand visibly in the fellowship of Jesus Christ. He takes this step alone. But he recovers what he has surrendered – brothers, sisters, houses, and fields.  I’m finishing up my journey through Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s classic The Cost…

To try to force the Word on the world by hook or by crook is to make the living Word of God into a mere idea, and the world would be perfectly justified in refusing to listen to an idea for which it had no use. –Dietrich Bonhoeffer Was I thinking I was trying to…

Tom Wolfe wrote an essay in 1976 called “The New Man and the Me Decade“. He described the narcissism he saw driving much of American culture at the time, noting the roots of the self-indulgence stretched back to choices made by the previous generation: “The saga of the Me Decade begins with one of those…

Ted (not his real name) saw me as a rival, set me up for failure, then watched from the sidelines as his manipulative plan unfolded. When I confronted him, Ted gave me the verbal equivalent of a cold shoulder, saying, “I’m sorry you feel that way.” Fast forward a couple of years. He was applying…

(1) The soccer ball was kicked by the player.  (2) The player kicked the soccer ball.   Sentence #1 is written in the passive voice. When the subject of the sentence is acted on by the verb, it not only mutes the action, but tends to distance both writer and reader from what is happening in…

“The Old Testament God is punitive and judgmental. The New Testament God is merciful and loving.”   A couple of years, megachurch pastor Andy Stanley delivered a sermon series that reminded a lot of people of an old, old false teaching that has dogged the church for nearly 2,000 years. I wrote about it here, noting…