A female professor of Christian ministry just sent me a survey to fill out. I don't consider myself an expert in this area, but I certainly have tried to be responsible—this is one of those places where the battle over truth is fiercest in my generation. Here were my...
One of my walking buddies at work is a statistician who does data analysis for our company. Of statistics, I guess. I always enjoy talking to him; I like the way his mind works. I’ve long been interested in epistemology, the question of how we know—how we justify our...
Tell Your Children: The Truth About Marijuana, Mental Illness, and Violence by Alex BerensonMy rating: 5 of 5 starsFor every book there is an equal and opposite book. I read Smoke Signals by Martin Lee in preparation for my own small coauthored book, Can I Smoke Pot?...
A story in pictures. Because this new ESV Bible—the ESV Heirloom Single Column Personal Size Bible—needs only a one-word review: exquisite. Bloggers write words when none are needed, however, because the word-count of the internet is not yet full—so I will oblige with...
The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution by Walter IsaacsonMy rating: 5 of 5 starsSomehow some writers of biography end up sounding trite, both in their relating of their subjects' stories and in the lessons they draw...
From the difficult-to-watch documentary (available on Netflix), One Child Nation. So profoundly sad and sobering. For when Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law. They...
A young aspiring pastor recently asked other pastors in a Facebook group what kinds of doubts they’ve had about Christianity, and what they’ve done with those doubts. I replied… I went through a several-month period of doubt during my senior year as a Bible major at...
Calvin of Calvin & Hobbes fame was sometimes targeted for abuse by a bully, Moe. Unfortunately, Calvin's clever retorts usually came to him hours after Moe's initial taunts. I've got a parallel situation: a minor instance of woke bullying was directed at me a few...
A friend of mine is something of a seeker, entertaining and exploring Christian faith and often apparently inhabiting it—but still struggling in a move from darkness to light. That’s the best way I know how to describe him. He wrote me an eloquent letter in which he...
When I first heard the story below, about a New York City public school, I didn’t believe it. It seemed too convenient, like something concocted for a fundraising letter. My wife had the same reaction. I read the whole piece to assure myself of the reliability of the...
Rcently, against my better judgment and somewhat by accident, I became involved in today’s predominant form of public discourse: an online discussion with strangers. I found myself the lone defender of the fairly straightforward idea (it seemed to me at the time) that...
My company offers incentives to employees every year to read business books. By this means I have gotten through some self-helpy stuff I admit I would have disdained otherwise. To be honest, I feel icky when I read books that purport to lead you to a successful life...