[Please read Journey into Islam first] Between 2008 and 2012 the Pew Research Center conducted 38,000 face-to-face interviews in over eighty languages of Muslims in thirty-nine countries spread out over Africa, Asia and eastern Europe. It is the most extensive and up to date survey of its kind and comparable

Relationships with other people can be some of the very best parts of life, but they can also be some of the worst. A difficult co-worker or boss can turn a really great job into an incredible pain. One obnoxious relative can turn an otherwise enjoyable family get-together into something

The short answer is no, not according to the Bible. I will post a longer explanation below because this deserves a fuller answer. First though I’m going to answer the question of “How is it that so much of Christian history and tradition hold that God will torture people forever

[I’ve written about this before, but it is an important topic that I thought could use a little updating] Not everyone interprets and understands the Bible or scripture the same way. People all over the world interpret the Bible from many different religious, political, and professional perspectives.  These people may

It was the strongly polarized responses to our church’s efforts to help out a family of local Muslim, Syrian refugees this past December (2015) that convinced me I needed to know more about Islam. A young family of three that had gotten caught between a federal policy that brought them

The angels declared almost two thousand years ago that God had broken into our world in a special way, that the savior of the world had come. Peace on earth was declared and it was foretold that this baby would save his people from their sins – save them from

[This is an excerpt from a sermon I recently preached.] Later on Jesus would grow up and he would tell this story that helps us understand the joy, the magic, and meaning of Christmas (Luke 15:11-32) . There was once a wealthy man who had two sons. His youngest son

Jesus tells us both to love our enemies (Matthew 5:44) and to love our neighbor (Matthew 22:36-40). I have spent a lot of years wrestling with what is the faithful thing to do when the two commands come into conflict. In violent confrontations is it right to use force to

I just found this in an old file folder.  I never published it but it was definitely something I needed to read again. Most of my life I’ve heard, “God’s timing is different than ours.” What people usually mean by that is that God doesn’t do what we want when

“Love” is used in so many ways by so many different people it would seem like it can mean almost anything. If it can mean almost anything depending on who is using it and how they are using it, then does it really mean anything? Is such an important word