Morality/Ethics

Ours is an age of rapidly rising social disintegration. Loneliness and isolation are major issues – not just for the elderly, but for every other age group as well. It would be naïve not to see some connection between these issues and the steady erosion of the classic concept ‘family’ in Western...

"I know what the Bible says, but how can I forgive that man, after everything he has done? And he isn't even sorry." It is a familiar question or comment, and perhaps the second most common and difficult that pastors hear (trailing only "How could God let this happen?") Both ask for help explaining...

Over the last year, I have interviewed a number of believers who are trying to love their neighbors and change the way work is done in their field. Listening to them, I have come to a clearer understanding of the way social reform works. Generally speaking, people who bring positive reform normally...

Throughout Genesis chapters 1 and 2, the reader understands that it is God alone who gets to determine and pronounce what is good (each of His created days - 1:10, 12, 18, 21, 25, 31) as well as what is not good (that man should be alone - 2:18). It is for this reason that God put a reminder, a...

My father's family escaped the Soviet Union in 1934, a few months after the United States established diplomatic relations there, in 1933. They had Russian roots and naively returned to visit an ailing relative in 1922. The Russians said "Welcome back, comrades," seized their passports, and kept...

Within the early verses of Genesis, we find not only the source of the universe but also the source of every woman’s identity. The story of our first mother, Eve, has much to tell us about the purpose of women on this earth. Imago Dei The first piece of Eve’s identity is the fact that she was made...

Historians now generally regard the 1900's as "the American Century." What do you suppose they will call the twenty-first century? Possibly "the Biotech Century," as new scientific discoveries enable the radical re-engineering of the human body. [1] Some futurists hail the coming of a technological...

How important are the first chapters of Genesis to our understanding of the whole of Scripture? What happens to our perspective if we isolate Genesis 1-3 from the rest of God’s Word? Richard Barcellos drops in. He’s written Getting the Garden Right: Adam’s Work and God’s Rest in Light of Christ...

In my next two columns, I want to tell the stories of men who seek integrity at work, men who strive to live by principles, and bring constructive change as a result. I will begin with a Christian businessman whom I will call Adam Ross. Ross is the CEO of Brick Corps, a large, rapidly growing...

Quite a while ago, I met a woman with whom I had attended a particular church several years earlier. At the time of our meeting we were both worshiping in different congregations. In the midst of the conversation, having discovered that I was reformed in my theology, she informed me that she too...