Category: The Christian Spirit

Reflections on living as a disciple of Christ.

By This Shall All Men Know

  

Jesus gave His followers some very difficult instructions—at least, we seem to make them difficult. Sadly, one of the most difficult seems to be this one: Love One Another. This commandment is truly that: a commandment. It’s not just a good suggestion. When the world sees those who proclaim faith in Christ at each other’s throats, we undermine the Gospel message. Sadly, history shows Christians (or at least those claiming to be Christians) persecuting and even killing one another. In… Read more »

Teaching Narnia

  

I’m now a member of a church that has a strong education program. On Wednesday evenings, for an hour and a half each week, I’ve had the joy of teaching C. S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters and Mere Christianity (along with my book, America Discovers C. S. Lewis). I’ve now been asked—and have readily agreed—to teach The Chronicles of Narnia. I won’t try to cram them all into one semester; instead, I’ll divide them into a two-semester format, covering the… Read more »

A False Image of God

  

What is your image of God? What is mine? I think there are two false images (well, probably a lot more) that are opposites: the “good buddy” who is there to be my co-pilot (in which case He is only along for the ride—we still call the shots) or the far-away, unapproachable Being that is so very different from us that we can never understand Him. I’ll save that first false image for another time, perhaps, and focus today on… Read more »

The Source of True Humility

  

C. S. Lewis had a way of taking a concept and giving it new life, sometimes simply by illustration, other times by making sure we have the correct definition of that concept. Take humility, for instance. To the world at large, the word conjures up an image of weakness or some kind of constant self-belittling. Yet humility is actually a source of spiritual strength; neither does it mean one has no value. That’s never true in God’s eyes. Here’s how… Read more »

Radio Days: A Retrospective (Part 2)

  

Yesterday, I talked about some lessons I learned while working as a radio announcer right after college. One lesson I left for today. It has to do with dealing with people. Although I didn’t have a call-in program, there were some individuals who had the phone number for the radio station because they had been calling announcers there for a number of years to request certain songs be played. I inherited that tradition. The problem was that I was introducing… Read more »

Radio Days: A Retrospective (Part 1)

  

I guess I’ve always been a communicator, in one way or another. My undergraduate degree was in radio, TV, and film production. From the start, I wanted to use that degree in a Christian ministry. My first after-college job was with the Christian Broadcasting Network, at that time located in Portsmouth, Virginia. Although I began as a behind-the-scenes audio technician for the television station, when an opening occurred in the radio ministry, I immediately applied for, and was awarded, the job. I… Read more »

From the Portraits to the Original

  

The ongoing problem with humanity is not that we are so heavenly minded that we’re no earthly good; rather, it’s the opposite: we’re so earthbound that we’re no good to heaven. We keep thinking that this world that we see around us, and those who populate it, will fulfill all our hopes. If we think that, we are terribly off-base. “The settled happiness and security which we all desire,” remarked C. S. Lewis, “God withholds from us by the very… Read more »