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Finding God in the rubble
Note to the reader: These thoughts on “natural evil” apply as much to yesterday’s devastating tornado in Joplin, Missouri as they did to the Haiti earthquake of January, 2010. Faith seeking...
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The Necessity of a Future Tense
In many ways, Al Truesdale’s If God is God, Then Why? (Beacon Hill Press, 2002) is a helpful book. Originally written after the Oklahoma City bombing in 1996, Truesdale updated the book following the...
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James Dobson’s strange theology of Sandy Hook
James Dobson, Ph.D., well-known child psychologist On December 14, 2012, a gunman entered Sandy Hook elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut. After a shooting rampage, 26 lay dead, among them mostly...
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Comfort or hardscrabble? Comparative views on evil and suffering
Young boys in the Muthare slum of Nairobi, Kenya If you want to chew up a church in America, hire a missionary who has just returned from Africa. When you’ve witnessed abject poverty and the resilient...
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My Times are in Thy Hand
William F. Lloyd, composer of “My Times are in Thy Hand” I’m one who travels by jet, a lot. Those who – as one of my Ivorian students put it, “vivent dans les avions” (live in planes) – get over...
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Appreciation for a bridge builder
Lewis B. Smedes, the late professor of Christian Ethics at Fuller Theological Seminary, wrote fourteen books in his lifetime. I’ve read only one, his last, My God and I : A Spiritual Memoir (Eerdmans,...
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When happy-clappy just won’t do
Bill and Gloria Gaither’s hymn, “Because He Lives,” affirms Christian faith in a powerful way. Other Gaither songs (mercifully) have faded into obscurity, ditties like “Happiness” – I found happiness....
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No resurrection? No Christianity
I like Good Friday. There’s something about the love of God that you can’t miss when you look at the Cross. Last week, I entitled my blog: “No Cross? No Christianity.” But let’s imagine that Jesus had...
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Oord’s Uncontrolling Love of God: A Critique
Tom Oord’s The Uncontrolling Love of God: An Open and Relational Account of God’s Providence (IVP, 2016) has sold very well, including the Kindle version that has slept unread on my iPad for the past...
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Feelings in a pandemic
If I had titled this essay before August 2019, I would have chosen the title “Thoughts in a pandemic.” But I’m a hospital student chaplain this year, and “thoughts” seemed too cerebral. With the novel...
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