“Click on the orange title of each Top 10 list and it will take you to brief descriptions of each book and other good books just outside the Top 10.”   If you’re thinking about giving books for gifts, here are my Top 10 books in 21 categories. Click on the orange title of each... Continue Reading

“Unlike some others, Middle East Christians have nowhere else to go. As a result of turmoil not of their making and beyond their control, these Christians are the region’s ultimate homeless. Should some sort of peace ever return, the likelihood is that maps will be redrawn, carving up the pie among larger ethnic groups. There... Continue Reading

“Pariahs, undesirables, the unlovely of the Jewish culture—all these gathered around Jesus. This disturbed the Pharisees and scribes, the dignitaries and clergy of the day. They had adopted a tradition that taught salvation by segregation: keep yourself away from anyone who is involved in sin; that is how you can secure your own redemption.”  ... Continue Reading

“Followers of Jesus are to be transformed by the renewing of their minds, demonstrate the mind of Christ, and discern, with biblical wisdom and guided by the Spirit, what it means to live faithfully in the 21st century. It follows, then, that our responsibility to those we disciple includes an element of getting them to reason... Continue Reading

“Religious belief is not necessarily a subjective human creation, especially when it is the product of divine revelation as in the cases of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. True belief, by definition, requires an ability to exclude ideas that are incommensurate with a faith’s core teachings, and for that reason, convergence is an unsatisfactory means to... Continue Reading

“Eschatology helps us to have a living hope in the midst of the humiliation of this present age.  Peter says that by the power of God we were born again “to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.”  The power of God, which brought about our spiritual life, also brings... Continue Reading

“For all true followers of Christ, obedience is never peripheral. At the heart of what it means to be a disciple of our Lord is living in loving devotion to God. But if such love is real, the acid test is obedience. Jesus maintained, “If you love me,you will keep my commandments” (John 14:15). Genuine... Continue Reading

“God showed his love for us, and Christ died for us, before we were birthed. God allowed our mothers to conceive; we were knitted together in our mothers’ wombs by the all-controlling hand of God. And while we were yet within our mother’s womb, God saw our totally depraved hearts. However, God loved us.”   Good news! The... Continue Reading

“The problem here is not that evangelicals empathize with Muslims or wear scarves on their heads. I myself have been known to wear a shemagh as an alternative to the standard pieces of colored cloth that men in the West tie around their necks. The problem is — once again — doing this in the... Continue Reading

“As the book’s title implies, the idea of faithful presence in particular undergoes serious critique. The authors here largely accept Hunter’s framework for how cultural change actually occurs, but most of them strongly dispute the adequacy of “faithful presence” (Hunter’s definition of it, at least) as a response to the cultural moment in which we... Continue Reading