Jesus’ prophetic career seems to get off to a rocky start. Standing up in the synagogue in Nazareth, he proclaims that God’s reign, the final and definitive moment of divine judgment, is at hand. It ...
Jesus undertakes a baptism for the repentance of sin. Likely, this gives us pause. Jesus Christ is supposed to be the sinless one. Why would he receive baptism? What is to be forgiven? The early ...
For the Christian, sentimentality is a temptation. The sentimental person is so driven by the desire for strong affections, reducing nearly everything to kitsch or a nostalgia for some imagined past. This sentimentality can easily ...
Question: Why did Jesus praise the dishonest steward in Luke 16:8? At first sight it seems that Jesus praised him for being dishonest, which cannot be not the case. But I cannot find the real ...
Advertising tends to romanticize family life. Christmas meals are celebrated on pristine tables, while adults, teens and children share a bucolic feast. This romantic commercialization of the family can creep into our understanding of Jesus’ ...
Belief in the modern age is often misunderstood. First, we can see belief as an irrational leap into the absurd. When Bill Nye critiques religion, particularly Christianity, he reduces belief to such a leap into ...
On the Third Sunday of Advent, God gives us space to rejoice. Gaudete Sunday gets its name in Latin from the opening antiphons, taken from St. Paul’s letter to the Philippians, “Rejoice (Gaudete) in the ...
Clothing expresses our identity. It shapes how we’re viewed in the public sphere. The man who wears a flannel shirt, puffy vest and large plastic glasses appears as a hipster (whether or not he runs ...
Clothing expresses our identity. It shapes how we’re viewed in the public sphere. The man who wears a flannel shirt, puffy vest and large plastic glasses appears as a hipster (whether or not he runs ...
Question: God says to St. Paul in 2 Corinthians that whatever his “thorn in the flesh” was, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness” (12:7, 9). And in Romans, ...