My Body Is a Temple, Not a Fighting Machine

Why I left a promising boxing career behind after coming to Christ. I was born on a Sunday morning in Milwaukee, a first-generation Puerto Rican American. My mother often told me I had received special graces because I was born on the Lord’s Day. I was baptized and confirmed in the Catholic church and regularly attended Sunday Mass with my mother and sister until I was about nine years old. Eventually, they stopped going, but I continued this weekly ritual. I prayed to God for help,... Read More

Why Bad Things Happen to People, According to 6,500 Americans

On the problem of evil, Pew’s pandemic philosophy survey finds few Americans blame God or doubt God’s omnipotence, goodness, or existence. Sorry Job, Epicurus, Augustine, and Hume: On the “problem of evil,” most Americans don’t think much of God’s role. Long before Rabbi Harold Kushner’s When Bad Things Happen to Good People got Americans talking about theodicy in the 1980s, these famous thinkers wrestled with explaining why an all-loving, all-knowing, and... Read More

Heaven and Hell: Americans Answer 20 Questions on Who Goes and What Happens

Pew’s afterlife survey also asks 6,500 people about universalism, reincarnation, fate, answered prayer, and interacting with the dead. Many American evangelicals love C. S. Lewis’s writings yet balk at his depiction in The Last Battle of Emeth, the soldier who gets to enter Narnia’s heaven despite having followed the god Tash and not Aslan the lion. Yet such theological inclusivism (often misrepresented as universalism) is now supported by a quarter of evangelicals and a... Read More

Cómo las Escrituras siguen sorprendiéndome

Cuando era niña, guardé la Palabra de Dios en mi corazón. Ahora, sale a la luz cuando menos lo espero. Mi papá solía cantar por la casa todo el tiempo. Conoce unos ocho versos de cada canción pop alegre que se ha escrito desde finales de los 40. Cualquier parte que no se sabe, simplemente se la inventa. Conozco algunas de sus canciones inventadas mejor que las versiones reales. Esas canciones todavía me vienen a la mente, y a veces se quedan pegadas a mi mente... Read More

Disowning ‘Evangelical’ Is a Denial of Responsibility

If our movement is carrying reputational baggage, then we have no choice but to own it. Not long ago, I asked Tim Keller to give a guest lecture in a university class I teach, in which nearly all the students come from secular backgrounds. Most have no contact with evangelical Christianity other than what they’ve seen in the news. After rehearsing some of the reputational damage evangelicalism had sustained, especially in the post-2016 cultural environment, one student asked,... Read More

Prompted by Ravi Zacharias’s Abuse, Missions Organizations Are Urged to Assess Accountability

Outgoing president of the International Conference on Missions says leaders on the wrong path depend on Christians who don’t want to know. A megachurch pastor who was mentored by Ravi Zacharias warned 4,000 missionaries, ministers, and church leaders at the International Conference on Missions (ICOM) on Friday about the dangers of not holding leaders accountable. “Those who are on the wrong path are depending on you to give them the ultimate benefit of a doubt,” said Jeff... Read More

Two Kidnapped Missionaries Freed in Haiti

Christian Aid Ministries asks for continued prayer for 15 in captivity. An Ohio-based church organization says two of 17 abducted members of a missionary group have been freed in Haiti. Christian Aid Ministries issued a statement Sunday saying the two “are safe, in good spirits, and being cared for.” It said it could not give the names of those released, why they were freed, or other information. The group from Christian Aid Ministries were kidnapped by a gang after visiting an... Read More

There’s No Good Plan to Stop 100,000 Opioid Deaths a Year

The Christian call to hard friendship in a national emergency. 100,000 Americans died from April 2020 to April 2021 due to opioids, according to numbers released this week from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The majority of the deaths have come via fentanyl, which accounted for more than 75 percent of all fatalities. Most of the time fentanyl has been used in combination with drugs like methamphetamine or cocaine. Who were those who lost their lives? According to The New... Read More

Christian Florist Settles Legal Battle With Same-Sex Couple

After eight years, the 77-year-old Washington state grandmother is retiring from her business and her religious liberty fight. A florist in Washington state who was in an eight-year legal battle that reached the US Supreme Court will retire after settling with the same-sex couple whose wedding job she refused. Barronelle Stutzman of Richland, Washington, announced the settlement Thursday, saying she has paid $5,000 to Robert Ingersoll, The Tri-City Herald reported. She said Jesus... Read More