Resources from 2025
Gone are the remnants of the supposed cave that once entombed Christ for three days. One cannot imagine that there once stood a slope over the place where now a shrine stands, encircled during the visiting hours by pilgrims [...]
Children today seem to be caught in the middle of an impossible identity crisis. It’s a maelstrom in which they are simultaneously elevated as paragons of individual invention through mechanisms like gender ideology, yet absolved of personal moral responsibility for their choices. [...]
One of the benefits of the past ca. 75 years in Calvin studies has been the move beyond his Institutes of the Christian Religion to the reading of other portions of his corpus, which has provided a deeper understanding of his life and thought. This is true in particular of our understanding of Calvin on prayer. [...]
Several years ago, a young pastor stepped into the pulpit of a small, vibrant church. His heart was full of zeal for ministry, and his love for the congregation was obvious. But over time, subtle shifts began to take place. His sermons, once filled with Scripture [...]
Few Christians today doubt that our relationship to our civil governments has gotten at least more complicated, if not outright harder, in recent years. Still, we often do not know how to navigate that challenge very effectively. We can be left thinking that we simply [...]
The Roman Catholic church has been in the news a lot lately, most recently with the death of Pope Francis and the election of a new pontiff, Leo XIV. Leo XIV, formerly Robert Prevost, a cardinal originally from Chicago, is the first American pope and the first who belongs to the Augustinian order. [...]
I was drawn to this book by its subtitle, “Martin Luther’s View of Reality”—it might be because of my interests in the human mind, or simply because achieving a correct perception of reality seems particularly challenging in today’s culture. [...]
As you might’ve guessed, I’m not a mother. But I have known many over the years through my local church and my family—and then there was a rather unusual stretch of time where I worked for a pretty popular live chat service [...]
I doubt there will be a sudden run on “What Would Mary Do?” bracelets after this essay is published, but I’m going to make the claim anyway: The Mother of our Lord is a wonderful yet far too often underappreciated model of discipleship among today’s heirs of the Reformation. [...]
A few years ago, my friend Marieke Ude, Counselor at John Calvin Secondary School in Oswanka, Nigeria, encouraged me to write a children’s book about Byang Henry Kato (1936–1975). It didn’t take long for Kato to become one of my favorite theologians. [...]
During one of my first meetings with NAMI (National Alliance for Mental Illness) in relation to my son’s condition, the moderator listed some “Predictable Stages of Reactions” to a diagnosis of mental illness. The first stage, “Dealing with Catastrophic Events,” included shock, denial, and “hope against hope.” [...]
Nearly fifty years ago, Henry M. Morris, founder of the Institute for Creation Research, wrote an article detailing the parallels between the creation week in Genesis 1 and Holy Week in the Gospels. In one week, the world was made; in the other, remade. [...]
Whenever we come across the well-known Bible story of Abraham allowing Sarah to be taken as a wife by Abimelech in Genesis 20, I expect most of us are shocked primarily by the fact that this is the second time Abraham got himself and Sarah into trouble by lying [...]
We are in Lent, and the historic disciplines of the Christian church are being practiced and encouraged all over the world. Fasting and almsgiving, prayer and meditation are all part and parcel of this blessed holy season and have been for nearly two thousand years. [...]
At the recent news of a famous minister’s fall into the sin of adultery, two laments immediately surfaced: 1) grief over the stain on Christ’s name, the damage done to spouses and children, and the harm done to the church; and 2) a predictable chorus of Christian voices recommending a foolproof remedy [...]
