The Background

Brian was a typical suburban teenage guy in the 11th grade. Brian was growing up in a family of achievers. Each had his niche in life firmly established. Brian’s dad was a ladder-climbing businessman. Brian’s mother was the ever-present keeper of the house, juggling schedules with the skill and detail of a mechanical engineer. Even Brian’s younger sister was smart and, to Brian, “almost” as popular as he was.

The Change

Through a series of events, Brian became a follower of Christ through the faithful witness of a friend. It seemed that overnight Brian had changed. Brian noticed that he would get uncomfortable with certain friends telling “those” jokes. On the basketball court, Brian became painfully aware of how often …

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If you have kids you face the challenge of equipping them in the new media saturated world. We can all relate that we don’t want our child to be “that kid.” You know, the kid who was never guided by his or her parent(s) to develop a filter for life. One of the crucial starting points in equipping a child with a filter is to see the clear and urgent need to help your child. This filter is not only about making God-centered choices, but also learning how to discern the landscape of modern culture. When teens see other teens slamming down media through all means possible, your child better have some perspective that you have …

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I find lists that seek to synthesize large periods of time (such as end-of-year lists) helpful in providing a birds-eye view of cultural development. While it could be said that lists such as this have more in common with the particular author’s viewpoint or bias, I would venture to affirm that a magazine such as Christianity Today holds a larger degree of impartiality.

The reason that I am citing this particular end-of-year list is that the majority of the top issues directly related to an exercise of authority. Only #2 and #6 move away from this distinction. This should come as no surprise to anyone. The issue of what gives a person or a group of …

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Christopher Hitchens says religion is absurd:

“If Moses and Jesus and Mohammed had never existed — let alone Joseph Smith or Mary Baker Eddy or Kim Jong Il or any of the other man-made prophets or idols — we would still be faced with precisely the same questions about how to explain ourselves and our lives, how to think about the just city, and how to comport ourselves with our fellow-creatures. The small progress we have made so far, from the basic realization that diseases are not punishments to the noble idea that as humans we may even have “rights”, is due to the exercise of skepticism and doubt, and to the objective scrutiny of hard evidence, and not at all …

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Stand To Reason reporting on a new study by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.

Where Have All The Christians Gone?
Moses vs. Jesus – Who is America’s Prophet?

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If Jesus were living in Atlanta, Georgia would he support the single-payer health-care model now being proposed? Wouldn’t Jesus be the first to stand up and applaud the notion of health care for everyone? After all, there is no one who is a bigger defender of the sick and needy than Jesus. Can you even begin to picture Jesus standing in favor of the big insurance and pharmaceutical companies?

Let’s start with considering the popular argument against our present health care system: it costs too much! Anderson Cooper pounded on this drum (along with many other statistics) in his September 2nd blog:

When you look at our spending on a national basis,

…

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The documentary COLLISION pits leading atheist, political journalist and author Christopher Hitchens (“God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything”) against fellow author and evangelical theologian Pastor Douglas Wilson on a debate tour arguing the topic “Is Religion Good For The World?”. Lives and worldviews collide as Hitchens and Wilson wittily and passionately argue the timeless question, proving to be perfectly matched intellectual, philosophical, and cinematic rivals.

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The following is an except from an update by Kris King (Coordinator for Missions) and Kevin Maner (Director of Missions) regarding our team in Panama.

This morning we headed to the Baha’i Temple in Panama City. There are only 7 Baha’i Temples in the world! The Baha’i believe that the world’s major religions are part of a single process for God to reveal His will to humanity. That we are all equal and will one day be a unified single race. The Baha’i’ community runs 10 schools in the region where they otherwise would not exist. These schools are only accessible by horseback or on foot. Our team went to the temple today to …

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I just peeked into the online memorial for Michael Jackson. I happened to catch the performance of Lionel Richie singing the song “Jesus is Love.” It was the worst thing I could ever hear at a funeral. Why? Because the picture of Jesus in this song is disconnected from the real Jesus contained in the Bible. Am I saying the Jesus of the Bible is not love? Hardly. What I am saying is that the type of love that this song is communicating is a cheap emotional concoction; a man-centered image made up in the mind of people who want to claim Jesus as their teacher or icon, but refuse to worship Him …

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I was first introduced to Malcolm Muggeridge through the teaching of Ravi Zacharias. Malcolm had a way of expressing the complication of culture in succinct and creative ways. The following is Malcolm’s caricature of the West’s ever-increasing nihilism and stands as a stark picture of a culture in a blind-hurry to become extinct:

…[I]t has become abundantly clear in the second half of the twentieth century that Western Man has decided to abolish himself. Having wearied of the struggle to be himself, he has created

    his own boredom out of his own affluence,
    his own impotence out of his own erotomania,
    his own vulnerability out of his own strength;

himself blowing the trumpet that brings the walls of his own city

…

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