Over the last several years, I have become increasingly concerned about the explosion of teenage suicides. How do we explain this? According to Timothy Keller in his book, The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism, the Danish … Read more
I love the Apostles' Creed. It is a succinct summary of a great many of the beliefs that I hold as a Christian. I call it an "executive summary". Nevertheless, it is obvious that no mention of Jesus' earthly life is made in the Creed … Read more
I am in the middle of a very interesting general-interest course on the life cycle of stars. To simplify and condense the subject, the current theory is that stars are formed within clouds of stellar gases, the detritus of dead stars. … Read more
Many of us know what a scourge Alzheimer's disease is. While cancer in its various forms seems to dominate the attention of our aging congregation right now, we have also had our share of Alzheimer's and dementia victims. The despair, … Read more
I host a weekly lectionary Bible study. Our study is truly ecumenical, with four Presbyterians, one Baptist, one Gospel Church member, and, until just a couple of months ago, one Anglican, a lady whom I will call Susan. She was a recent … Read more
I host a weekly ecumenical lectionary Bible study. The people who attend are Christians of all stripes, and so are the versions of the holy Bible that they bring with them. We may have four or five versions in use at one time, and we … Read more
I sometimes think that we Christians can get a little too smug about what we would and would not do. It's not surprising. After all, we have the benefit of hindsight. We have our Bibles and two thousand years of Christian tradition behind … Read more
I am — or rather, was — a walker. I guess I got into it when I started timber cruising (topographic and timber quantitative surveying) for various logging companies on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada, during summers in my high … Read more
I don't know if Liu Xiaobo, the Nobel Prize winner, is a Christian or not. If he isn't, he's putting on a pretty convincing, hard-to-follow act, giving us a fine example. Mr. Liu first came to the notice of the … Read more