The War and Women’s Human Rights Museum (aka “Comfort Women Memorial”) in South Korea is a powerful place of remembrance. Specifically, in a small building (it’s literally the size of a large American house) located near the tourist hotspot of the Hongdae neighborhood, the museum is filled with painful stories of women who were forced…

The sun beats down and the head swims. Lips are parched. Eyes see spots. Legs list and stagger, barely able to hold up the body’s weight. Everything seems both too bright and too dark at the same time. The heart cries out with a silent scream, “I hate you, I hate you, God of my…

Differences of opinion have always been part of life. Spouses, family members, co-workers, neighbors, and church members have had spirited conversations about politics, theology, social issues, and even sports. This is especially true of students in our classes. In one study, college students were asked to keep a journal of how many disagreements with friends…

Last year, I hosted a chocolate-tasting lab for a large group of honors students. I provided them with several types of chocolate, and together we went through a slow process of reaction, evaluation, and comparison. Their specimens for consideration included: Hershey’s milk chocolate, a very fine 72% dark chocolate, an increasingly bitter 80% dark chocolate,…

Social psychologist, Jonathan Haidt, has once again secured a spot on The New York Times Best Seller List with his latest book, The Anxious Generation. In this work, Haidt offers evidence-based insights into the psychological and sociological rationales leading to increased anxiety in Generation Z compared to Millennials.  Specifically, he investigates the cultural, social, and…

In the first part of this essay, I described how the twenty-first-century discovery of the oldest paintings on earth in Indonesia – including the Sulawesi warty pig – illustrates the main points of Darrel R. Falk’s On the (Divine) Origin of Our Species.Darrel R. Falk. On the (Divine) Origin of Our Species. (Wipf and Stock Publishers,…

Cave paintings and rusty ochre brushstrokes appear on the cover of Darrel R. Falk’s recently  published book, On the (Divine) Origin of Our Species.Darrel R. Falk. On the (Divine) Origin of Our Species. (Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2023). These earliest examples of art call out to us today. Falk describes the European cave paintings in the…

This past year, I have seen headlines flash across the start page of my Microsoft browser’s newsfeed that featured articles about the supposed chemical origin of life. Was it the result of aliens seeding our planet billions of years ago – a theory called Panspermia? Or an asteroid bombardment with trace amino acids and nucleic…

Halfway through the school year, I was asked to step into the elementary school principal role in an acting capacity to cover for a medical leave. I am sure it must have felt like a jarring experience for our teaching team to have their leader abruptly taken from them, or worse-yet, like one of the…

“Our textbooks today are much more focused on practical things.” The student’s comment, offered in a class on world language pedagogy as we discussed historical examples of language textbooks, stood out as requiring more response than I quite knew how to pack into the moment. It was true and it was false, depending on the…