Christians frequently talk about grace, love, acceptance, and freedom, and indeed, these attributes are abundantly available to the person who follows Christ. Unfortunately, however, within Christian group settings (“community” is the latest buzzword), rules abound, all the more insidious because they are never identified as rules. A believer just gets this idea, sort of, that he doesn’t measure up, that…

My niece has a friend whose son has tumors. At a recent visit to the children’s hospital, they passed by a little girl — 3 years old — surrounded by her stuffed animals. As my niece wrote on Facebook: “She was joyfully telling them all how much she would miss them, (saying) goodbye and how…

To depict me as High Anxiety is like describing coffee as black. Yep, it is, and yes, I am. But the beauty of coffee is that when you add milk, sugar, flavorings, whipped cream and sprinkles, these elements mitigate the acidity, turning the product into something palpable to drink, and the same can be said…

As a Christian and a human being, I avoid the word “should,” because it’s generally used by Person A against Person B, to get Person B to do what Person A wants. So when I use it, I’m serious. And I’m serious about a sentence that Christians regularly bandy about as a means to prove that…

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