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I scrolled through my Facebook feed, one post after another. Photos of friends, pictures of coffee, quotes from famous people. Advertisements.  I stopped. There it was again!  The same ad that I had seen over and over for the past few months. I hardly ever paid attention to the ads on Facebook, except this one. This one. I didn’t even notice the product being advertised, but that didn’t really matter; it was the tagline that got wedged in my brain so firmly that it replaye …

On Ash Wednesday 2004, the eagerly-awaited movie The Passion of the Christ hit movie screens—but hit its viewers much harder. With ashen foreheads, Catholics across America cringed in their theater seats as they watched the portrayal of the intense whipping, beating, and stabbing of their Savior. Many in the audience openly wept as they peered at the screen and saw teams of Roman soldiers thrash Jesus’ body with whips with metal hooks. The scene was violent, portraying the …

It is an almost impossible question: What would you include or exclude if you were creating your own religion? What do you prefer to see in your Church unboxing, as you might prefer in a cosmetics or shoe unboxing? What would you click away from? The word religion necessarily conjures up the idea of a system of beliefs and practices that we do not, indeed cannot, make up. And with rare exceptions among genuine psychopaths or the most ardent ideologues, even people who explicitly eschew est …

As we approach the unapproachable God, we have to pass through his Ten Commandments. We examine our conscience to unearth ways we have said “no” to God. This is a practice that should be done often, certainly weekly, if not daily! To know our sins is not easy and to name them is even more difficult, so it takes constant practice. It also requires the cultivation of humility and self-knowledge to be able not only to say, “I have greatly sinned” but “here is how and …

Christian apologetics arose during a time of persecution in the 200s . . . and not much has changed between then and the 2000s.  What Rome started then, the secular culture continues now, but often in even more vile and vicious ways. Whereas a person living in the second century was utterly convinced that something numinous governed the universe and that truth was both discoverable and demanding, modern man mocks both of those realities: if there is a god, he must be a moral monster for al …