Of all the Gospel writers, John spends the least amount of time on the early ministry of Jesus. Almost half of the book is taken up by Jesus’ last week. In contrast, the Synoptic Gospels give up to 80 percent of their space to the years of ministry prior to Jesus’ triumphal entry, crucifixion, and […]
If you grew up as a second-generation Korean American Christian, you might find these items in your grandmother’s household: a framed picture of Jesus Christ, calligraphic artwork of Korean sayings, and taeguk1 ribbons representing the three deities of Korean folk religion. Although you may not have noticed these items when you were younger, they symbolize […]
One fine day in Cana, God interrupted a perfectly decent wedding. He must have had a good reason for doing so; after all, he invented the wedding and took delight in such things. It appears, however, that he was reluctant to interrupt as he says it was not yet his hour. Nevertheless, when his mother […]
In my final year of college, as my master’s program and wedding approached, The New Yorker magazine came to me. It included a Bob Mankoff cartoon in which an affable lady editor sat at her desk across from a scruffy dude wearing a toga suggestive of Mesopotamia. A manuscript lay between them, and the caption […]
Insider Jesus: Theological Reflections on New Christian Movements by William A. Dyrness (IVP Academic, 2016) is a significant book. It received Christianity Today’s 2017 Book of the Year Award of Merit, which signifies a couple of things. First, it means that the book was recognized for merit (we will look more carefully into whether such […]
In 2002, M. Night Shyamalan released his film Signs, starring Mel Gibson and Joaquin Phoenix. It told the story of a former Episcopal priest turned farmer who one morning discovers a crop circle in his cornfield. The film eventually reveals that similar crop circles have appeared throughout the world, ultimately proving to be signs of […]
Authority is a dirty word in our current cultural moment, and perhaps even something of a joke. One need only think of that great American icon Eric Cartman1 and his constant injunction of “respect mah authoriteh!” to recognize the depths to which this concept has sunk in the public regard. I had a friend in […]
It must have been quite a scene. Coins were scattered. Cattle and sheep were running. Even the tables were overturned. And there, in the midst of this chaos . . . Jesus. Jesus had entered the temple courts in Jerusalem and witnessed the crass commercialism of the people. There in the temple courts, bankers were […]
The Matrix is everywhere. It’s all around us. Even now in this very room. You can feel it when you go to work, when you go to church, when you pay your taxes. It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth that you are a slave—born […]
In his latest release, Letters to the Church, Francis Chan offers an impassioned plea for the church in America to rediscover the biblical priorities of the early church. “We’ve strayed so far from what God calls Church,” he laments. “We know what we’re experiencing is radically different from the Church in Scripture. . . . We […]
Introvert,” “extravert,” “sensing,” “perceiving”—odds are you’ve encountered these terms or their source, the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI). In The Personality Brokers: The Strange History of Myers-Briggs and the Birth of Personality Testing, Merve Emre (a professor of English at Oxford University) provides a frustrating but ultimately thought-provoking account of the MBTI and its creators, Katharine […]
You can almost create the scene from memory, having seen it played out so many times for so many different reasons. A crime is committed. The guilty one takes to the airwaves to issue a mea culpa. The crowd surges forward, intent on enacting swift and unmerciful justice. But no amount of public shaming, isolation, […]
