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How Coaching Youth Sports Helped My Thinking about Christian Character

The most important activity that helped refine my view of character education was not taking classes on epistemology and ethics from Dallas Willard. Nor was it taking all my other Ph.D. classes that addressed virtue or moral development. It was coaching youth league sports. Granted, readings in philosophy, ethics, and theology led me to recognize…
June 25, 2025
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AI and the Grammar of Descent

Recently, there’s been even more press than usual about AI proliferation and its associated risks. The hype has been driven, in part, by the now infamous Ross Douthat interview with Daniel Kokotajlo, executive director of the A.I. Futures Project, in which Kokotajlo suggests that AI could take over civilization—and “then kill all the humans”—by 2027.…
June 24, 2025
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God Made All Nations from One Blood: The Origins of a Biblical Argument against Slavery

In 1526, William Tyndale’s ground-breaking translation of the English New Testament appeared. In this translation, Tyndale used a unique phrase that was not in John Wycliffe’s original English translation. Instead of translating a key passage from Paul’s sermon to the Athenians in Wycliffe’s original way, “ made of one all the kind of men” (Acts…
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Mirrors Transformed by Light:Meditations on the God Who Is Light

I’d like to propose a thought experiment -- one that may transform your understanding of something you see every day. Thought experiments can change the world, or at least your understanding of it. Einstein’s great scientific breakthroughs started with a thought experiment, something like this one. For our experiment, imagine how a mirror works. If…

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Teacher Dispositions: The Mind, Heart, and Soul of Servant Leadership

When I began reading Servant Teaching—Practices for Renewing Christian Higher Education, by Quintin Schultze, I felt like I had discovered a priceless jewel for which countless educators had searched for decades. Schultze addresses, with grace and humility, the theme of teacher dispositions. And, he does not just dance around the topic of character-based leadership, as…
January 31, 2023
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Whither Christian Civility?

In 2017, a group of about forty Christian communication scholars convened at Spring Arbor University to participate in a dialogical mini-conference on “Civility and Virtue in a Multicultural Public Sphere.” A year and a half into the presidency of Donald Trump, our conversations kept turning to the plague of incivility in our national discourse and…
January 30, 2023
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A Christian Reflection on Religious and Secular Iconoclasm

“So Paul, standing in the midst of the Areopagus, said: ‘Men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious. For as I passed along and observed the objects of your worship….” (Acts 17:22-23) Across my newsfeeds recently has come news of an “Exceptional trove of 24 ancient statues found immersed in…
January 27, 2023
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Book Review – Witness at the Cross: A Beginner’s Guide to Holy Friday

I double-checked the title; was “witness” singular or plural? With the answer—singular—the book’s thesis became crystal clear. Amy-Jill Levine invites each reader to be a witness, a witness to arguably one of the most monumental events in history, the death of Jesus of Nazareth. She lays bare each ancient witness’s actions and testimony, and encourages…
January 26, 2023
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Loving the Aliens: Building from a Strong Foundation (Part Three)

Developing a solid biblical foundation on the issue of multicultural ministry is essential if we are to have any meaningful discussion on how best to respond to undocumented workers. If God desires to bring to Himself a multiethnic community that will best reflect His glory, then we should be doing everything we can until then…
January 25, 2023
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Loving the Aliens: A Biblical Theology of Multiculturalism (Part Two)

To faithfully respond to a specific issue (like undocumented workers in America), we need to take a step back and see a bigger picture of God’s work as revealed in God’s Word. While the issue of undocumented workers touches on several topics (political, legal, economic, etc.), at its heart, talking about undocumented workers is about…
January 24, 2023
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ChatGPT and the Rise of AI

When I was a teenager, I purchased an early personal computer called a Timex Sinclair ZX-81 with money I earned from my paper route. I was amazed at how computer programs enabled me to build “castles in the air . . . creating by exertion of the imagination.”Frederick P. Brooks, The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on…
January 20, 2023
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The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity

We are in the middle of a run in the publication of “new histories.” In the five months after The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity was published, eight other books with “New History” in the subtitle were published in my library’s database, on topics from the evolution of mammals to Watergate. Hundreds…
January 19, 2023
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Who Is Your Favorite Heretic?

It is a healthy thing for Christian scholars to have some favorite heretics. I have a small group of them that I confer with occasionally. Most of them are long gone, so I have to communicate with them by going back to their writings. Some folks may think that the very idea of having favorite…
January 18, 2023