When I was a teenager, my parents became Amway distributors. This was an interesting turn of events, especially for my father who was a dedicated college professor on the weekdays and a pro-worthy golfer on the weekends. I’m not entirely sure what inspired this shift, but they were good at it. Dad put his exceptional...
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Who lives, who dies, who tells your story? So closes the final song of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s critically acclaimed musical Hamilton.[1] One of its main themes is the idea of ‘the narrative.’ Alexander Hamilton, Aaron Burr, and other historical figures fight for their legacy and place in history, knowing that will be determined, in the end,...
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What makes a book “good”? Is only overtly Christian literature worthy of filling the Christian mind and attention? And if this is the case, why does it seem like the majority of Christian fiction is unbearably trite and shallow? For many, the difference between the stories admitted into the canon of “literature” and the popular...
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Attempts to read straight through the Bible rarely make it as far as Proverbs. The descriptions of the tabernacle in Exodus often knock out the first group of would-be “Bible in a year” neophytes. If that doesn’t do, Leviticus is waiting, and after the surprising relief of Numbers being a delightful if also disturbing book,...
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Let me tell you a story… Since ancient of days, these words have held our collective imaginations captive. We all enjoy a good story: to be drawn into a compelling narrative; to be transfixed by flawed but sympathetic characters; to be swept away by conflict, tension, adventure; and finally, to be rescued by resolution, conclusion,...
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As an ordained minister within the Presbyterian Church in America, I “sincerely received and adopted the Confession of Faith and the Catechisms of this Church.” This is a reference to the Westminster Confession of Faith and the accompanying Westminster Shorter and Larger Catechisms. To many readers not from a confessional background, this may seem strange. ...
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