Careful, there…. “intelligent design” can mean two quite different things. First, and most popular in some circles, is the idea that evolution may be occurring much of the time, but that in addition God kinda “sticks his finger in” (my phrase) to stop, start, or alter what is happening. Science tends to object to this on rather simple grounds: there’s […]

“…to have a self, to be a self, is the greatest concession made to man, but at the same time it is eternity’s demand upon him.” – Soren Kierkegaard, The Sickness Unto Death This morning my dearling Carol read to me from a book by William Backus, Christian psychologist and faithful friend until his passing last year. The book’s title, […]

Exit one mile—meeting temptation on the straight and narrow   by Jon Trott (Issue #66)   Listen, PUNK! Stop your blubbering and take a look around. Here you are, stuck in a ditch ten miles from nowhere, and you don’t even know how it happened. Or do you? Blow your nose while I explain it to you. Somebody doesn’t like […]

C. S. Lewis in 1917, left, with friend Earnest Moore during World War I. Moore was later killed, as were many of Lewis' friends. Lewis, due a promise to Moore, cared for (for a time may have loved) Moore's mother. Threads of despair and fantasy are woven together in a poetic work C. S. Lewis, best known for his post-conversion […]

Six years ago… or was it longer?… I was asked to pinch hit with a Sunday Sermon (the JPUSA pastors were out of town or something). What I offered up was a sort of old-school “testimony,” rough-hewn and homely. Here it is, this time with photos and a few minor corrections.     A Montana farm boy that had two […]

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 […]

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. […]

For many years, I have held a little known French author as one of the most precious treasures literature ever produced. Francois Mauriac was either a Christian with an existentialist’s heart or an Existentialist with a Christian’s heart, though that description is also misleading. He was a diarist of human suffering. My dear late friend and mentor, Dawn Mortimer, introduced […]

What is it about the hard-boiled detective genre that I like? Well, as an amateur theologian, I think at its best the genre underscores the true state of humankind without God. Now, if you don’t agree with this, perhaps it is because you are a more whole person than I am. Or, perhaps I know something you don’t. Or something. […]

  The emaciated stop feeling hunger pangs; their bodies consume themselves. The Atheist says “I have no desire for God” – Who will send U. N. planes filled with nourishment to rescue him? The desert has hidden springs the human eye does not easily find. God is in plain view and I cannot see him; who is non-existent? who is […]