As the world’s top diplomats, military strategists, and political leaders continue to construct a punitive global response to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, the internet is offering another diplomatic possibility: charm Putin and just ask him to stop. The past week has sparked an online trend of young social media users posting on Russian profiles simply...

Okay, fine, I’m vaccinated. I’ll admit it. As a writer, there is always a temptation to open with caveats, to carefully identify your location on the contours of the controversy you are about to wade into. You’ve probably done the same in countless conversations. And let me remind you, it’s the holiday season, so there...

While we were preoccupied with petty disputes and celebrity headlines, Twitter threads and Facebook drama, we became naive. From C. S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters, we are reminded of how a world of comfort lulls us into a loss of moral clarity and how real danger calls us back to conviction and charcter. The world...

According to ancient historians, most of the Jewish families sitting on that Galilean hillside listening to Jesus teach would spend every day of their lives on the edge of hunger and starvation. Some days were better than others, but they never escaped hunger for long. By some estimations, as much as 85% of a Galilean’s...

The Sadducees brought Jesus the most complicated question they could craft against him and his talk of resurrection. They imagined a family of seven sons in which each died passing along their wife to the next brother. They asked Jesus, “In this coming resurrection, whose wife will she be?” Jesus’s answer was simple, “You are...

I’m grateful to the team at The Gospel Coalition for publishing some of my thoughts on leadership and the identity of the pastor. I never liked the title “pastor.” My plan was to practice law and pursue politics. I was fascinated with leadership, and all those career tests told me I had a knack for...

As a pastor responsible for a congregation of believers, it’s been a tough week. There are hard decisions to be made and challenges to serving those who are most in need. It has been shared widely, but these words from C. S. Lewis have been a wise reminder of how Christians live not just in...

Previous Post in This Series: The Two Ditches of Toxic Masculinity: Noah and The True Complexity of What is Wrong With Men The Bible warns of man’s tendency to over-identify with his impulses of aggression and passivity, a topic I’ve explored at length in a previous article. But the Bible is also careful not to...

This articles was taken from my Christmas Eve message to Bent Oak Church: December 24, 2019. My kids have a little wooden nativity set that each year we assemble beneath our Christmas tree. This time of year, you see them everywhere—plastic ones illuminated in front yards, wooden ones set up in front of McDonald’s, some...

Previous Post in This Series: A Good (Definition of) Man Is Hard to Find: How We Define Manhood and Masculinity I’m aware; toxic masculinity is a phrase of extreme controversy. Wrapped up in the phrase are hotly debated ideologies, fueled by very different perspectives on what a man is and should be. At the center...