What the heck is going on in Syria? If you are like me, you have a problem keeping all the players straight, and the unfamiliar Arab names don’t help. Thankfully, the Syrian President has a relatively easy name to remember, Bashar al-Assad, but keeping track of who’s who and which side they’re on is a real challenge. Frankly, even when I can keep track, I’m very skeptical that I am getting anything close to ...

I hate Abercrombie and Fitch. It all started a few years ago. A member of my youth group worked at one of their stores in a suburb of Chicago. I was minorly troubled that she was employed at the store. But what really flamed my loathing for Abercrombie was when they asked her to model their clothes for their catalogue. She told me about their offer and I responded in the only way an over-protective youth pa ...

Mother’s Day is not primarily a call for sentimental reflection about our mothers. It’s a call to disarm. It’s a call to nonviolence. It’s a call to follow the God of nonviolent love, not the violent Caesars of our world. Finally, Mother’s Day is a call to peace, justice, and love for all of creation. Only when our lives are patterned in that way can we live out Howe’s dream to “solemnly take counsel with e ...

How will the human species continue to evolve? That was the question posed earlier in the week by CBS’s Sunday Morning in a segment called “The Future of Evolution.” But before looking to the future of human evolution, Sunday Morning briefly examined its history. This was a wise direction for the segment, in my opinion, because before we speculate on what we’re evolving into, we need to know what we’ve evol ...

In his post "Lattes for the Common Good", Tripp Hudgins states that working for the common good starts in mundane places, like a coffee shop. These are the places where we practice neighborliness. Here’s Tripp’s brilliant point: I wonder if one of the things that we can think about in terms of the common good is learning to practice neighborliness in the inconsequential moments so that when we face the bigg ...

What do you say in the face of evil? The stories from yesterday’s attacks at the Boston Marathon are heartbreaking, gut-wrenching. One in particular stands out to me. A woman was waiting for her husband to cross the finish line when the bombs exploded. For three hours she searched frantically for him, not knowing if he was alive or dead, not knowing if he was frantic and looking for her. Her voice cracked a ...

Isaiah calls for peace today, not in the distant future. The book's authors' three political themes tell the people of God to broker peace, compassion and understanding. "Turn your swords into ploughshares." With North and South Korea staring each other down, insurgency in Mali, threats of post-election fighting in Kenya, and violent clashes in Syria, there's never been a better time for humans to remember ...

Does violence rule our species? The barrage of international conflicts now in the headlines seems to suggest that violence may be the one language we have in common. Though we all speak it fluently, very few of us learned it in school. We didn’t have to study its “vocabulary” and “grammar rules” – no, it was much easier than that. Humans pick violence up by immersion and so we are all native speakers. From ...

Yesterday was Easter – the day we celebrated the Resurrection of the Son of God. It’s the day when we finally realize that God isn’t out to get us. In fact, three days after a bunch of people abandoned, betrayed, and killed him, Jesus came back. And instead of following the same old script of holy-revenge-in-the-name-of-justice (thanks to Saturday Night Live for that skit!) Jesus offered forgiveness and pea ...

The tragedy of the Steubenville rape case has provided a moral challenge to our nation. We are caught up in a highly emotional cycle of blame as we debate who the real victim is in this case. I find myself asking two questions: Why is our nation obsessed with the story and what does this story mean for us as individuals and as a culture? My Family I’ve always wanted a daughter. The problem is that adult Eri ...