What does “friendship” consist of? Who is, in the real sense, a “friend”? We use the term “friend” casually on face book and in other social relationships. We don’t want to hurt our “friends” yet are very willing to hurt God — Christ as the poor, the dispossessed, the hungry, the homeless. We are willing, for the sake of “friendship,” […]

When my mother died and was cremated, we six took her ashes and in the back yard of the house we’d grown up in formed a circle. We took my father’s ashes, which had been saved for just this moment, and carefully opened both of the thick plastic bags. And then we took turns removing from each bag a portion […]

Hatred is high-definition certainty. Hatred requires a very simple plot. Hatred’s purest dress comes only in extra-small; or to put it in astronomical terms, it is the big bang in reverse. Hatred as narrative requires victims and victimizers, the first playing the role of the second. Hatred’s first victim is the self-reflective intellect. Hatred and race are intimate for one […]

Forgiveness? How far? Corrie Ten Boom, imprisoned in the concentration camps for hiding Jews from the Nazis, lost both her father and sister there and survived herself due to clerical error which allowed her release. After the war, when she had begun telling her stories of faith and suffering, she spoke also on forgiveness. And one day God took her […]

So… when lethal injection doesn’t work due to the drugs being “unavailable” (due to companies not wanting their product linked with state-sanctioned murder)… Tennessee has now made using the Electric Chair mandatory. You know, that vicious obscenity that is a proven torture device? Seven other states — Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Kentucky, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Virginia, still authorize use of […]

“Do not question others’ faith just because you disagree with them. It adds nothing to the discussion and only causes strife.” – Charisma News comments guidelines “President Obama…. Would you allow me to share with you that I and scores of others have serious doubts about your conversion and the authenticity of your Christianity?” – Charisma News editorial (emphasis in […]

The older I get, the more obvious it becomes to me that thought processes I believed were rooted in cool, carefully constructed logic are in fact rooted in intuition and “feeling.” I respect the mind as much as ever, maybe moreso. But I am aware that no human being has or ever will think about issues of self-identity or meaning […]

Contrarian. Me. When someone loathes a theology book, I am immediately made curious to read it. When someone tells me, for instance, that liberation theology is just Marxism dressed up in religious rhetoric, I have to find out for myself. When someone says so-and-so “cannot be a Christian, because they believe [fill in the blank],” I have to find out […]

I have known Hoda Elsharkawi for some time, introduced to her via my cousin Karen who herself converted to Islam just 3 months before the horrors of 9/11/01. Hoda, her husband, and their children live near Boston. As someone who is Muslim, American, and a Bostonian, I believe Hoda offers a unique voice many Christians in America ought to consider. […]

My wife Carol told me about Philip Seymour Hoffman’s death-by-heroin at the age of only 46. Her voice trembled. Not a follower of Hollywood overall, she has tracked Hoffman through any and every movie he appears in. “My favorite actor,” she says simply. For me, Hoffman’s darker roles leave me relatively uninterested, even while I note his stellar ability to […]