Evangelicals & Politics: The Dangers Ahead

  

A group of evangelical leaders concerned about the future of evangelicalism, spurred by 80% of evangelicals having voted for Donald Trump in the last election, held a meeting recently at Wheaton College just outside Chicago. Whenever I see evangelical leaders concerned about unstinting support for Trump and the potential problem of having the Christian witness tied to him, I am usually encouraged. But I have my qualms about the political direction of some of Trump’s evangelical critics. Those who have… Read more »

Aggravate Schism or Heal It?

  

My study of C. S. Lewis’s correspondence has been primarily his letters to Americans. While one of my delightful projects for the future is to read all of his letters, I’ve only grazed the surface of those outside his American connections. I have noted, though, some of his correspondence with his Catholic friend, Don Giovanni Calabria. The Anglican-Protestant Lewis kept up a lively and friendly interchange with that friend. Some of those letters deal with the divisions in the church… Read more »

Compromises at the Constitutional Convention: Principled?

  

When is compromise right? When is it wrong? When I look at historical compromises, I try to apply this rule: A compromised principle leads to unrighteousness, but a principled compromise is a step closer to the principle’s ideal. Let’s take the Constitutional Convention as an example. The delegates who comprised the convention that led to our current Constitution had to grapple with a number of controversial issues. The two most prominent were how to carry out proper representation and how… Read more »

The Lincoln Tragedy

  

On the morning of April 15, 1865, Abraham Lincoln died in a house across the street from Ford’s Theater. The pandemonium of the night before still resonated through Washington, DC, and the news would soon spread throughout the country, both North and South. John Hay, Lincoln’s personal secretary, recalls hearing these words from Secretary of War Edwin Stanton: The nation mourned, and it wasn’t just the North that did so. Many in the South knew this was a tragedy for… Read more »

A Society with No Sense of Sin & Guilt?

  

What’s perhaps the biggest deception in our day that keeps people from getting their lives right with God? I want to draw from three C. S. Lewis writings to offer one possibility—a possibility that I think is far closer to a probability. In Lewis’s classic Mere Christianity, the path to establishing a relationship with God is clearly laid out: Christianity tells people to repent and promises them forgiveness. It therefore has nothing (as far as I know) to say to… Read more »

On Youth, Foolishness, & Mortality

  

I was reading in Psalm 39 this morning and this section jumped out at me: Show me, Lord, my life’s end and the number of my days; let me know how fleeting my life is. You have made my days a mere handbreadth; the span of my years is as nothing before you. Everyone is but a breath, even those who seem secure. Thinking about my mortality has become more prominent lately. Not that I’m in bad health or anticipating… Read more »

Seeing What Is Unseen

  

All Scripture is inspired by God. When you read it with an open heart, God’s Spirit can speak directly to you. What’s even more remarkable is that passages that you have read often can sometimes stand out in a rereading in a way they didn’t before. That happened to me recently when meditating on chapter 4 of Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians. Let me see if I can convey why this section was so meaningful this time. Since through… Read more »