For modern readers, Leviticus is one of the most grueling books of the Bible because of its long lists of rules, regulations and outlining of rituals that seem mostly irrelevant to today’s life. We do not sacrifice animals to atone…
What if grace is more amazing than we thought?
I once thought grace was pretty amazing — Jesus dying on the cross, all my sins forgiven, a guaranteed place in heaven after I died. But what if grace is even more amazing? As a child I learned about “Amazing…
Peter Makapela: One man’s journey from racial hatred during South Africa’s apartheid years to a voice of racial reconciliation
When he was 14, Peter Makapela and his cousin Xolani joined scores of other schoolchildren in Cape Town, South Africa, to protest miserable conditions in the area’s schools for Black children. It was 1989, the height of public resistance to…
Going public with Lent’s call to penitence
“Concealment makes the soul a swamp. Confession is how you drain it.” —Charles M. Blow They have treated the wound of my people carelessly. They acted shamefully, they committed abomination, yet they did not know how to blush. —Jeremiah 6:14-15…
What makes a genuine apology?
When my daughters were playing a ton of soccer, we noticed something interesting: They and their teammates apologized a lot. They apologized to their own teammates after making an errant pass, they apologized to the opposing player after a physical play,…
How I learned to care about social justice growing up Southern Baptist in Oklahoma
“How did you come to have a passion for social justice issues?” That was one of the questions put to me this week when the tables got turned and I was the interviewee instead of the interviewer. The answer immediately…
Two words, two virtues, to help America move forward
On Inauguration Day evening, I went to bed exhausted with the mix of the day’s emotions. Joy over the beginning of a new administration; relief there had been no violence; and sorrow — sorrow over all the human lives lost…
Prescription for a divided nation: Love and forgiveness
It didn’t surprise me in recent weeks to read articles like the essay Gene Weingarten wrote for the Washington Post in which he lamented the fact that “I find myself profoundly disliking and disrespecting almost half of my countrymen and…
25 years later, grace and forgiveness still rise from rubble of the Oklahoma City bombing
Author Jeanne Bishop explores the unlikely but redemptive relationship between two Christians – one the father of Timothy McVeigh, the perpetrator of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing; the other the father of Julie Welch, one of the 168 persons killed in the blast.