No Man Can Tame the Tongue
How many terrorist victims were there in the attack on Charlie Hebdo’s Paris offices this morning? Before you scramble for the latest numbers, the answer is: None. Cartoonists, writers, and security...
View ArticleAmerica: A Form of Godliness
7-20-15 America is a land of many churches. America is a Christian country. Do these statements confirm each other? Did they ever? Are they less true today than in the past? The Supreme Court, in an...
View ArticleWhen NOT To Turn the Other Cheek
10-26-15 A Reformation lesson. The observance of Reformation Sunday also provides an umbrella over a discussion of “tolerance,” Christian charity, “turning the other cheek,” loving your enemies, and...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Gifted Hands
11-30-15 There has been a firestorm of chatter – accusations, distortions, smears, confusion, explanations – lately about Dr Ben Carson and elements of his biography. Whether he had violent tendencies...
View ArticleGod Won’t Fix This
12-7-15 “God Won’t Fix This.” This was the four-word headline splashed over the front page of the New York Daily News after the terrorist attack in San Bernardino. They printed four small photos,...
View ArticlePresidents Day and An American Caliphate
2-8-16 In a season, during this time, in American history, when traditions are being abandoned; myriads of concepts and lifestyles are “new normals”; and basic assumptions are no longer basic nor...
View ArticleThe Big Lie About Evangelical Voters
2-15-16 This crazy political season is notable for several things. First… its craziness. Second, its politics; that is, we have a virtual saturation of political arguments, political bitterness,...
View ArticleWhat IS a Christian?
2-22-16 Some of the most pleasant travel experiences of my life have been atop the ancient wall surrounding the small city of Lucca in Tuscany. I have stayed in the Medieval town a number of times in...
View ArticlePeople of Faith Ask, To Trump Or Not to Trump
5-9-16 I have been asked many questions these days about the proper attitude and informed decisions to be made by Christians and people of faith about the elections this year. To be more precise, I...
View ArticleWanted – a Declaration of Dependence
7-4-16 Our recent essay concluded with a question posed by the successful Brexit vote, wherein the United Kingdom voted to end its membership in the European Union, and the certainty that many other...
View ArticleThe Evil of Two Lessers
10-3-16 Ever since as I was a young boy, I heard adults talking about elections, and resignedly saying that they would, sigh, be voting for the lesser of two evils. I picked up the mantra when I...
View ArticleThe Election, “Acts of God,” Acts of Man
10-10-16 This week an enormous storm brushed by the United States. It was a long time building, it moves deliberately, and forecasters say that it likely will circle around and hit again, causing even...
View ArticleSlippery Slopes
10-17-16 Once upon a time there was a president named Franklin Delano Roosevelt. No… I will start this story earlier, and in another way. Once upon a time there was a different America. Different than...
View ArticlePraying for Revival? Forget It.
10-24-16 Democrat Vice-presidential candidate Tim Kaine grew up in Kansas City KS. Recently, that city’s Archbishop, Joseph F Naumann, described the senator as a “Cafeteria Catholic” for picking and...
View ArticleAre We Damned If We Do, Damned If We Don’t?
10-31-16 One of the opportunities afforded blog essayists is to see how many “hits” we attract; how readers find you; and what links they wander to. Some people respond with messages; some to the...
View ArticleWatering the Tree of Liberty
11-7-16 For a few weeks here, I have been pointing my usual concerns to the presidential election. It has been a legitimate detour because the choices – the crises – we face are more momentous than any...
View ArticleA Little More About Veterans
11-14-16 The thing I like most about holidays is that they remind us, at least one short day a year each, of things worth remembering or commemorating or honoring. The thing I like the least about...
View ArticleA Leader Anointed of God?
1-16-17 Four years ago this week my wife lay dying. She had been sick for a long time – all her life, really – but in recent years the diabetes and heart attacks and strokes and cancers and heart and...
View ArticleWe Love Him for the Friends He Has Made
1-23-17 A quick, virtual GPS for some readers: this essay will be entre nous – between us, assuming some common ground; not arguing to change minds or convert anyone. Nor even to persuade; only some...
View ArticleFrienemies
1-30-17 “The old order changeth,” and sometimes it changeth pretty dang fast. With the sum of human knowledge doubling every 17 months, they say – whoops, this just in: it doubles every 16-1/2 months –...
View ArticleBullets and Ballots
6-19-17 The subject of this essay has been on my mind for some time, and was outlined before the assassination attempts at the Republican baseball practice this week. I will not intone about the “need...
View ArticleWe See Our Power; God Sees Our Values
7-24-17 1. Last summer, learning about Michigan trip by trip, I visited Grand Rapids and the Gerald R Ford Presidential Library. I came away with a new repect for the modest accidental president. This...
View ArticleFaith, Hope, and Clarity
8-21-17 Do we need one more essay or column on the cultural/political divide in our country? When certain points of view have not been articulated, I think so. Crowds gather to vent their spleen in...
View ArticleThe New Puritanism
11-13-17 Curioser and curioser. Usually I cite the Bible here; often Theodore Roosevelt or Abraham Lincoln. Today it is Alice’s turn, from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. And I am well aware that...
View ArticleChanging Laws… or Minds… or Hearts
11-27-17 If you have been visiting with this Junior Jeremiah of late, you know that I am persuaded that our problems in America, in the West, in the church, are well nigh intractable. I am afraid that...
View ArticleWalls
12-4-17 In that day this song will be sung in the land of Judah: We have a strong city; God makes salvation its walls and ramparts (Isaiah 26:1). At this time of turmoil and fast-moving events –...
View ArticleOf Trojan Horses
6-25-18 We are reaching full employment in America, the experts say. I know one job category whose openings are greater than the number of workers or applicants these days: Jeremiahs. Biblical...
View ArticleWhere Have All the Average People Gone?
10-1-18 Statistics don’t lie, we are told; but statisticians do. More dispositive is that our perceptions often are more aggressive than the biased sources. The corollary is true, I fear – that our...
View ArticleToday’s Civil War Re-Enactors
10-8-18 There is a coming conflict in America, a war – a civil war – whose first battles are being waged already. The contentious nomination, debate, and confirmation of a Supreme Court justice has...
View ArticleA Memo to Secularists
4-29-19 News item: The murder of more than 320 Christians at Christian churches on Eastern Sunday in Sri Lanka is claimed by Muslim plotters to be an attack on Christianity. News item: Hillary Clinton...
View ArticleEasy Is Getting Harder Every Day.
10-5-20 How many of our mothers tried to teach us about wise choices with that time-tested question: “I suppose if so-and-so jumped off a bridge, you would too?” Remember? Well, either a lot of...
View ArticleBe Not Deceived. God Is Not Mocked.
2-8-21 Grace is an essential component of life, of a well-ordered, just, and joyful life. It is not only a promise or goal. Its alternative is a life of bitterness, defeat, unhappiness, unforgiveness....
View ArticleDancing on Graves.
2-22-21 Rush Limbaugh died this week. Death is an eventually that comes to us all, but Rush had the somewhat unique disadvantage of knowing several months ago that his time was nigh. “Disadvantage”?...
View ArticleThe Prince Of the Air.
3-1-21 Let’s discuss children, if you have any; or grandchildren. Or yourself, reader, if you are a young adult with friends or siblings. You look around and, increasingly, everyday life and its...
View ArticleTwo Cheers For the Red, White, and Blue
7-4-21 This title might seem blasphemous to patriots. Those who know me and my works and my essays know that for the old red, white, and blue I would cheer three hundreds times, and I have. There are...
View Article
