Exploring Faith and Spirituality

Religion

Modernity’s Hollowed-Out Search for the Good Life

Last year, as part of the Forming a Christian Mind project, I was invited by a group of Cambridge University students to help them tackle a couple of pressing questions. First, what does it mean to...

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Pastors: Ministry Resilience Comes Through Weakness

As another calendar year came to an end, I took time to review the previous 12 months. There were many things to celebrate. Yet the list of the challenges and struggles our pastoral team had faced ...

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How Your Investing Could Change the World

“Do any of us really want to be in the position where our retirement account grows in sync with the cancer ward?” That’s the question posed by Robin John about tobacco, responsible for 100 million...

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Why Are Medical Groups Now Opposing Gender Surgeries for Minors?

The Story: Within days of each other, the American Medical Association and the American Society of Plastic Surgeons have issued recommendations that gender-related surgeries for minors be deferred ...

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Editor’s Pick: 8 Books on Spiritual Disciplines

Raise your hand if you aren’t as consistent in spiritual disciplines as you feel like you ought to be. Most of us can identify opportunities to grow in our pursuit of Christlikeness. For those who...

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Find Sabbath Rest as a Family

A friend whose kids are older than mine once asked me if I’d seen a particular movie. I simply shook my head and replied, “I’m in that stage of life.” My friend had no further questions. He remembe...

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What’s the Point of Fasting?

My dad has been a runner for over a decade—he has completed more than 60 marathons, and he even ran the whole length of New Zealand solo in two months. I had always thought he was crazy, and I clai...

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‘Solo Mio’ and the Lost Art of Clean Rom-Coms

Have you heard that the rom-com is dead? The genre’s endangered status has been much discussed. Whether because of industry shifts toward IP-driven films, changing audience tastes, or a lower cultu...

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Relational Wholeness vs. Relational Idolatry

Codependency, dependent personality disorder, toxic relationships—these are popular terms in counseling and psychology. But as Christians, we want to understand how they fit with or overlap the sin...

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How Christians Can Out-Narrate Nietzsche

Primarily known today as a rebellious German intellectual, Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) was first recognized in his own time as a highly gifted classical philologist: a scholar who studies ancie...

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Let Orthodoxy Fuel the Fight for Justice

The call for justice reverberates from the Bible. Yet many Christian activists see their advocacy for justice as more significant than maintaining doctrinal orthodoxy. It doesn’t have to be this wa...

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Fighting Materialism in a Materialistic World

Melissa and Courtney talk with Jen Oshman about the lie that our worth is measured by what we possess. They discuss why we try to fill a God-shaped hole with earthly things and how to recognize m...

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New Research Confirms Jesus’s Miracles

In chapter 5 of his Gospel, Luke unfolds the following scene: Jesus is teaching in a crowded house, and a paralyzed man is lowered through the roof to ask for healing. Jesus answers by forgiving hi...

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Reading Romans 7 with John Newton

If you’re familiar with Romans 7, you probably know the passage either for the abject misery and debilitating condition of “the wretched man” (v. 24) or for the debate over that individual’s identi...

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How My Brain Injury Prepared Me for the AI Revolution

When I was 17, a speeding Lexus turned my life into a question mark. On a quiet street in Columbus, Indiana, just outside my parents’ driveway, I was riding my skateboard, showing my 9-year-old ne...

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Perfect Pitch Is Not a Fruit of the Spirit

As professional musicians, my wife and I love to visit churches when we’re on tour. It’s always interesting to see how different congregations do the work of ministry. Yet on one Sunday morning, we...

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Why Pastoral Ministry Is Worth Pursuing Today

Annually, I gather with two groups of senior pastors. We know and love each other well, so we talk about life’s heavy topics, laugh, and cry. At our gatherings, we each share: “Over the past year, ...

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Does Work-from-Home Mean Work-Without-Rest?

How can I find rest when work-at-home mode tends to imply that work never really stops? When I was on paternity leave after my second child was born, I developed a strange habit of wandering int...

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Phones in the Pews: Threat or Discipleship Opportunity?

The smartphone has reshaped nearly every dimension of life, and preaching is no exception. Pastors once served as the primary theological voice for their congregations, guiding people through Scrip...

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Struggling with Prayer? Ask God for Help.

Prayer is hard for me. You may not have expected that to be the opening line of an article on prayer. When we seek out resources on a topic, we typically want an expert opinion, tried-and-true tip...

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Finding Satan: The Origins of the Evil One

In recent years, interest has resurged in the role of heavenly beings in the Bible, including the “backstory” of God’s adversary (variously known as the Devil, Satan, and the Evil One). Much of wha...

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