Sunset.  Gusts sweep the horizon and gales swirl dust.  Leaves rustle; darkness creeps and captures the land. Night has fallen. A man is walking to a secret meeting. The man holds a Ph.D. in religion. He is known as the “Doctor.”  The Doctor has spent his life analyzing the enigmas of life: the mind, the […]

The New Testament book of 1 Peter is unique in that its author, Peter the disciple of Jesus, answers the 3  most pressing, important questions we have: What is life for? What do we do with suffering? How do we live? These questions are interrelated; the answers to each inform and guide the others.  Think

In the last two blogs, we considered what Jesus’ best friend, the apostle Peter, had to say about suffering in his letter that we call 1 Peter. Unfortunately, we will all encounter some sort of suffering, and we all will experience death. Suffering, evil, and pain all make our understanding of God difficult.  Why does

Christianity is different from every other religion in the world in its understanding that God suffers with the humans he has created. As John Stott wrote, “I could never myself believe in God if it were not for the cross.  The only God I could believe in is the One Nietzsche ridiculed as ‘God on

Out of all the ancient literature, the Old Testament character of Job is probably the person who experienced the most pain in life. In one fell-swoop, he lost all 10 of his children and his successful business, and soon thereafter he was inflicted with sores from head to foot. In that ancient text, a friend

Life is such a paradox. One minute we are rejoicing the birth of a new born; the next we are grieving the death of a friend. Some say death is just part of the natural process of living, but everything in us screams that death is not natural. Death is a train wreck of everything

History tells us that Simon Peter, the apostle and disciple of Jesus, was crucified by the emperor Nero in Rome in 64 AD. The reason: he would not renounce his belief that Jesus had risen from the dead, that Jesus was God in the flesh, and that through Jesus God was revealed as Lord of

The age old question haunts us: What is life for? Not just why are humans on this earth, but why am I here? What is my life for? The answers given by our consumer-saturated world leave us empty. We are told by “flat-earth” philosophers that there is no God, no Grand Narrative or Cosmic Story,

There once was a man whose life was a daily grind.  Every day, it was the same routine: Get up, go to work, come home, eat, visit family, go to bed.  Next morning: Get up, go to work, come back, eat, visit family, go to bed. On his way to work one morning, he thought

At the beginning of his ministry, Jesus traveled throughout Galilee, preaching “the good news of the kingdom.” He went up on a hill and delivered the “Sermon on the Mount,” talking not to the politically powerful or academic elite, but to the powerless, the poor and the people of the land. He tells them: “You