Memory is crucial to living well.  It is how we learn from the past to navigate the present and live into a better future. History is memory beyond the individual level.  It is the preserved memory of our species.  What we remember and whether or not we remember has a

Let’s work backwards in history on this one. You can turn on the news almost any day now and hear American lawmakers demanding that social media platforms censor “hate speech” even more than they already do.  If you didn’t know that the major social media platforms and Google curate what

A longer and more precise rewording of the title could be, “Saul & How Kings & Governments Get Their People to Murder For Them.” How does one person murder hundreds, thousands, or even millions of other people? They get other people to do it for them, often lots of other

This one comes out of a great conversation I had with a wonderful Christian friend of mine this past week about the Bible and our views of God. One of the things I get to do as a pastor and as a Jesus Follower is work really hard on healing

This might upset some folks at the beginning, but it is important and headed to a good place. Identity politics is quite the rage these days.  I think it is well intentioned but doesn’t lead to the place its adherents long for. Identity politics is the trend in viewing and

I had this surprising conversation with my six-year-old daughter the other day.  She is quite a talker with fascinating ideas about almost everything.  For some reason the topic of the moment was how to make the world a better place and how to get people to make good and right

I’m pretty sure when most people think of the Ten Commandments – if they think of them at all – they don’t think, “Wow! What a vision!” I suspect that most people’s thoughts run more along the lines of dismissive irritation – with rules, with authority, etc. – and a

Aleksandr Sozhenitsyn was a captain in the Soviet Army during World War 2 and also spent eight years in the Soviet gulag prison system.  More importantly for us today, he is the author of one of the most important books ever written – The Gulag Archipelago (link to an abridged

Here is a confession – I get pretty frustrated about prayer sometimes and angry and frustrated with the ONE I am praying to. I know I’m not supposed to. After all, I’m a pastor and a longtime Christian.  I think the expectation is that I’m supposed to have unwaveringly serene

There are tons of encouraging verses in scripture.  Perhaps one of the most well known is found in Jeremiah 29:11: ‘For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future.’