I haven’t been able to get the book Her Country by Marissa Moss out of my brain since reading the “State of Women in Baptist Life,” released in 2022. The book explores the decline of women on country radio through…
The Bible is a tool, not a weapon
A few weeks ago in one of our Wednesday evening worship gatherings, I told the story of an episode I watched of the TV show “Criminal Minds.” It opened with a car pulled off onto the shoulder of a road…
A meditation on death
My sister-in-law Faye died this weekend after a long and debilitating chronic illness. Not surprisingly, her husband of 60-plus years wondered why God allowed her to suffer. I don’t think God did. I don’t think God causes, allows or wills…
Live by the mouth, die by the mouth
There’s no disputing Donald Trump is the all-time champion mouth. He used his mouth to get elected president of the United States. Now, his mouth has been the primary culprit in a New York jury finding him liable for battery…
‘We have no king but Caesar’
Experience, circumstances and rereading Scripture often gives us a fresh look at very familiar biblical passages. One such passage from John 19:15 appeared in the expanded text from a recent Bible study lesson: “They therefore cried out, ‘Away with him,…
Best be prepared: The antidisestablishmentarians are coming for our consciences!
Remember the word we often heard at elementary school spelling bees — “antidisestablishmentarianism” — said to be the longest word in the English language? Well, it isn’t, not anymore. That honor now belongs to “acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene,” defined as “a tough rigid…
Loneliness is killing us
What more can we say of loneliness, the disease that afflicts modern Americans from depressed children to isolated elders? We know many of the causes: social disconnection, the decline of community institutions, the radical individualism we often mistake for personal…
We have been trained to see certain people as avatars of disorder who need to be eliminated
The killing of Jordan Neely is an apocalyptic event; it reveals something about our cultural moment that is at once illuminating and deeply unsettling. On May 1, Neely was killed on the New York City subway by a fellow passenger….
This article was written using Chat GPT AI
One of my professors recently asked me what I thought about Chat GPT, an AI generator that, among other things, students could use to complete assignments (without actually completing them). I told him I thought it sounded creepy and not…