Jesus Was Neither A Pacifist, Nor A Peacenik and Christians Aren't Called To Be Either

"But woe unto you, scribes, and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye pay the tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgement, mercy, and faith: these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone." Matthew 23:23. 

The Section on Democracy From C.S. Lewis', "Screwtape Proposes A Toast"

Recently I finished reading C.S. Lewis' The Screwtape Letters.  So influential a book has this been for me, I have rather made it my heart's desire to make sure everyone read it.

Screwtape and the Matter of False Christianity

Recently, I wrote a post defending the practice of eschewing church. 

Though, as I try to do for each devotional post I write, I cited scripture throughout so as not to lean too heavily on my own opinion, yet it was, unsurprisingly ill-received. 

Church Attendance Is Not A Necessity For Christians

Look out - I'm about to make an argument against attending church. 

I know how unreasonable this might sound, but it's a topic with which I've been struggling lately, so I've got some definite thoughts bubbling up to share here. 

Anthropomorphizing Earthquakes

Oklahoma just had one of the largest earthquakes in recent record. 

Immediately, I began to see Facebook posts pinning the cause of this quake on fracking. 

First, fracking has never been the issue; injection wells (a separate part of the process) have been implicated in the cause of minor, localized earthquakes, but this in no way describes this 5.6 magnitude event felt as far as Wichita, Kansas and Houston, Texas. 

The Reason Behind The Power Of Prayer

Wednesday afternoon, my friend Nancy and I talked about the recovery of our mutual friend Molly, who was hit by a sudden, serious illness which caused her to degenerate into a comatose state in shockingly short order.  Desperately ill and near death in the ICU for nearly two weeks, she was finally diagnosed with and treated for a rare blood disease called HLH (Hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis).