Anxiety has a way of enveloping children in an endless loop of worry they can’t escape, Goff explains. For some, it’s the fear of throwing up at school or of being separated from their parents. For others—particularly those who’ve learned how to navigate technology—it’s becoming aware of realities such as sexual assault, suicide, or terminal illness, and then beginning to incessantly fixate on whether those kind of scenarios could possibly happen to them.

“If your heart veers toward reputation over reality, toward applause over substance, D.A. Carson’s Memoirs of an Ordinary Pastor could be the most important book you read in 2017. It’s the story of his father, Tom Carson, an unheralded twentieth-century Canadian pastor who served humbly for almost six decades.”   Many of us lived as... Continue Reading

Given the rapid moral and cultural decline of our country, the idea that “America is a Christian nation” is designed to stem the tide.  It is a way of pushing back against the secularization all around us by reminding people that things were not always this way.  It reminds people that Christians were, at one... Continue Reading

Studies have shown that childhood gender dysphoria does not inevitably continue into adulthood. An overwhelming 77 to 94 percent of gender dysphoric children do not become adults with gender dysphoria. Given this, it’s social, medical, and psychological malpractice to push young children to lop off or sew on body parts and take highly charged cross-sex hormones that can further destabilize their prepubescent bodies and minds, especially when they are highly likely to regret what grown adults pushed them into before they were able to sort through such life-altering decisions.

Episcopal bishop John Shelby Spong, author of Why Christianity Must Change or Die, was among those who argued that churches should become more liberal in order to survive. But Haskell says his research was definitive: “Conservative Protestant theology, with its more literal view of the Bible, is a significant predictor of church growth while liberal theology... Continue Reading

“Most wives keep this burden a secret, assuming it’s only their husband who is struggling. No one else is in the same boat. Yet thoughts like these only compound the shame and the suffering. Sadly, the problem is extremely common.”   On a whim, I invited a new friend over for lunch. As we watched our toddlers run around... Continue Reading

Planned Parenthood thinks “Choice on Earth” is the message of Christmas. Maybe it is in a Christmas culture more identified with the shopping malls than with the churches. But maybe this year Christians should follow the footsteps of the “other” man at the manger.   A few years ago the Planned Parenthood Federation of America... Continue Reading

Christians must understand the new politics not only to give moral guidance but to make sense of Gospel preaching. We must counter not only traditional atheism, materialism and rationalism, but spiritually pagan Oneist thinking. The Gospel begins with God the Creator, Maker of all things, who is distinct from what he makes. The good news of the Gospel is that in his incredible love the Creator condescends to take on flesh and become the Savior of fallen human beings. The paganization of politics can only end in chaotic destruction of the good.

Most evangelical pastors I know would shake their heads at all of this. Southern Baptist leader Russell Moore tweeted, “Paula White is a charlatan and recognized as a heretic by every orthodox Christian, of whatever tribe.” Yet increasingly one wonders whether modified versions of the prosperity gospel — religion as personal therapy for our best life now — has become more mainstream than we realize.

And I daily tip toe through it all. Pitfalls on the left. Pitfalls on the right. I want those in more liberal cultures to know that their cry for social justice was God’s idea first, who made all of mankind in His image and names the care of orphans and widows as the purest form of religion. I also want to affirm a conservative understanding of human life before birth and the value of sexual faithfulness and the harm that sexual promiscuity causes to both individuals and communities.