I recently read an article saying only Christians, among all followers of all religions, begin with the premise humans are inherently evil and flawed. This I knew, but the authors went on to say the Fall itself could be boiled down to an act of pure spite. Satan knew he was doomed, and he wanted to take us down with him. That left him a single course of action: make our first parents sin at all costs, make them share in his fate of damnation, not because they had done anythin

My Bible has a permanent crease at Hebrews 11, the "Faith Hall of Fame" chapter. I'd love to say it's because I'm just so holy that I read that chapter every day, but it's really because that's just how my Bible seems to have been made. (Maybe that's a sign that I should be reading that every day.) Hebrews 11 is the perfect testimony of the faithful, that great cloud of witnesses, but one phrase in particular always stands out, and that's v. 38a: "the world was not worthy of

"The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry," as the saying goes. I'm not sure if my blogging schedule is a "best laid plan," and I doubt mice had anything to do with it regardless, but it has nevertheless gone awry. Beginning next week, to better accommodate my schedule, I will switch to writing on Tuesdays and Thursdays instead of the current M-W-F schedule. I think that will work out better for everyone. We often make mistakes with our plans, but I feel like we typi

If I didn't have to, I'd probably stop keeping up with the news. Every day, it seems, something happens to make me want to pull out my hair. Last Tuesday, for example, it was announced Penn State would no longer have a homecoming king and homecoming queen -- because "king" and "queen" denote very specifically a man and a woman, and they can't have that. Meanwhile, a journalist claims the pope denied the existence of hell, and the ACLU is trying to stop a Kentucky law limiting

All week, as we edged closer to today, Friday the Thirteenth, I've seen many posts on social media saying something like, "No, I'm not superstitious. I am a little stitious, though." That seems to sum up a lot of people. To be fair, many are outright superstitious; I have an aunt, for example, who is terrified of Friday the Thirteenths (so, naturally, I remind her of all of them). Most people aren't that bad, but they still get uneasy when a black cat crosses their path, they

With a degree in English, I've read a lot of poems. My favorite, though, is Percy Shelley's "Ozymandias." I met a traveller from an antique land, Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand, Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them, and the heart t

Last week I had to buy more white t-shirts. My existing supply had been around for almost a decade, and I had began to notice I had about as much hole as shirt. Despite the fact they were giving up the ghost after a long and well-worn life, I was far from happy about having to buy more. I had irrationally expected those shirts to last forever, to do the job I needed them to do indefinitely. They did not. So, grumbling all the while, I bought another pack of cheap t-shirts to

While I was growing up, my parents watched a lot of detective shows -- Perry Mason, Matlock, Murder, She Wrote, Simon & Simon, Quincy M.E., Magnum, P.I., you get the idea. Some of the shows I enjoyed, but I don't think I ever actually solved a case. (Mom, however, got them almost every time; probably still does.) The detective story was invented by Edgar Allan Poe, and in the 200 years since, it has exploded both on screen and in print. From The Maltese Falcon to Murder on th

Easter is a fifty-day long season, and today is the first Monday of Easter! That means you're allowed to continue greeting people with "Christ is risen!" for over a month, which is really a pretty nice way to say hello. It also means we continue to focus on the resurrection and its implications for many weeks, and even then, I occasionally wonder if we can fully grasp it. As I said in both services yesterday, the resurrection of Jesus Christ changed everything. Our world hasn