The Suburbs of Heaven

In my last post, I argued that Jesus’s whole point in telling the “Parable of the Unforgiving Servant” was to say to Peter (and to you and me by extension) that we shouldn’t have to ask how many times we should forgive someone when they sin against us. Knowing that…

The reason many of us struggle so profoundly with forgiving other people is either that we have never experienced God’s forgiveness for ourselves or that we have lost sight of it in our everyday lives and it no longer influences the ways that we think, speak, and act. In either case,…

In my last article, I explored two potential factors that make forgiving someone who has hurt us so incredibly difficult. I argued, first, that forgiveness is a relational category in the Bible, which means that it is always unto the restoration of a relationship; and I said, second, that forgiveness…

There is an old and familiar adage that we have been using in the English language for at least 500 years. Its Latin roots may go back even further than that. The adage seems to have been initially used in regard to the formulation of military strategy but quickly began…

Many years ago when I was in college I decided to invite a woman over to my apartment so that I could try to impress her by cooking dinner for her. In preparation for our date, I thought it would be a good idea to clean up because the sink…

For many people, the question of whether or not a virgin can give birth is in the same category as questions about whether or not pigs can fly or time can be reversed or the sun can be stopped from shining. But in each of these circumstances, we must remember…