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Those Who Love Their Maker Delight in His Handiwork

The title of this reflection on God’s handiwork comes from an assertion made by the beloved London preacher of the mid-nineteenth century, Charles Haddon Spurgeon. It is from his commentary on Psalm 111—the Psalm of God’s Works, published in his seven-volume magnum opus, The Treasury of David. In the commentary, he continues the title’s assertion,…
October 9, 2026
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Vocations, Professions, and Our Motivations for Integration

It is a fundamental human urge to answer the questions: Who am I? Why do I matter? What is my life for? And because we are humans bearing the image of God, we have an indelible instinct that these questions of identity, value, and purpose have positive answers and that these answers have something to…
October 8, 2026
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You Are What You Feed (on)

The adage still holds true: “You are what you eat.” French author and gastronome Jean Brillat-Savarin astutely commented, “Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are.”  Although his comment was focused on the things we physically consume to fuel our bodies, it also rings true of the things in our…
October 7, 2026
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Reinforcement Learning: A Christian Perspective

A variety of large language models, commonly called “artificial intelligence” (AI), have seen increasing popularity and widespread adoption in recent years. In fact, the popularity of chatbots like Claude, Gemini, and ChatGPT has caused many to think that AI is synonymous with chatbots. However, AI comprises far more than chatbots, encompassing a variety of machine…
October 6, 2026
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Shrapnel Blast: Judging and Measuring 

“For with whatever standard you judge, you will be judged, and with whatever measure you measure, it will be measured to you.” - Matt 7:2  Matthew 7:2 has always fascinated me. It seems to sit at the juncture of some sticky Christian problems: Can you call out sin without judging? If we forego all judgment,…
October 5, 2026

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Theological Foundations for Creation Care: Replacing Apathy and Despair with Hope and Christian Virtues — A Review Essay (Part 1)

Andrew J. Spencer’s and Steven Bouma-­Prediger’s recent releases applying Christian theology to contemporary environmental problems share similar goals and face common constraints. As trade paperbacks, both books are intended to motivate an indifferent or skeptical Christian readership and theologically equip students to address hot-­button political topics. The authors self-­identify as Evangelical, utilize the language of…
December 11, 2024
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Shaping Witnesses: Baylor’s English Graduate Program

In the past year or so, six graduates of Baylor University’s English graduate program have published books about the arts of reading well and the value of forming Christian imaginations. Jessica Hooten Wilson (grad of 2009) published Reading for the Love of God: How to Read as a Spiritual Practice (Jessica has also published several…
December 10, 2024
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Sharing Our Screens

Recently I re-watched The Truman Show, the 1998 film about a man, played by Jim Carey, who discovers that his life has been broadcast to the world as a reality TV show. Though produced a quarter of a century ago, the movie’s critique of an “always-on,” surveillant media culture felt timely and spoke to my…
December 9, 2024
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Not Quite Exiles nor Never Much of an Eden: The Meaning of Vocation for the Professorate Thirty Years after the Publication of Mark Schwehn’s Exiles from Eden

The early 1990s saw a rash of books on religion and higher education, and Mark Schwehn’s 1993 Exiles From Eden: Religion and the Academic Vocation in America was a book unlike any of the rest. It begins with two memorable illustrations of the central problem Schwehn addresses. The first recalls a faculty get-­together at the…
December 5, 2024
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Be the Hope You Seek

A friend asked me not so long ago, “Where can we find hope in such uncertain times?” Many of us have been asking this reasonable and pressing question for much of the past five years. As Christians, we can easily recite a couple of the 140 Bible verses that, in various different stories and admonitions,…
December 4, 2024
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Christ-Animated Scholarship and Human Worth

Every once in a while, I come across an article or book that exemplifies the best of what Christ-animated scholarship can and should be. I recently came across one such article in the field of psychology that addressed the topic of human worth. The concepts of self-worth and self-esteem have a long history in the…
December 3, 2024
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“Apostle to the Disillusioned” — A Response to Tomáš Halík

I appreciate Father Halík’s response to my review of his book. Let me reiterate that it’s an impressive work replete with valuable insights and many nuggets of wisdom and sanity. Despite the criticisms that I offered, his and my analysis of contemporary Christianity/Catholicism overlap considerably. In wondering whether forces extrinsic to the church have caused…
November 22, 2024
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“Apostle to the Disillusioned” — A Review of Tomáš Halík’s The Afternoon of Christianity

When an influential priest (the Czech, Templeton-­award winning author, teacher, and theologian Tomáš Halík) criticizes “ecclesiastical authorities” while seeking to advance the agenda of another ecclesiastical authority (in-deed, the highest of them all: Pope Francis, to whom the book is dedicated), one can’t help but be hopeful for or at least curious about the future…
November 20, 2024