My wife and I recently returned from a visit to the Biltmore Estate in Asheville, North Carolina. George Vanderbilt, grandson of the famed shipping and railroad tycoon Cornelius Vanderbilt, envisioned and constructed his family’s palatial Southern Appalachian home in the late nineteenthcentury. Inspired by the Châteauesque architectural style of France and England, the 250-room Biltmore…

In 1840, the composer Robert Schumann wrote a lieder (art song) for his soon-to-be wife, Clara (herself an accomplished musician). He took his lyrics from the poet and linguist Friedrich Rückert. The result was a piece called Widmung (“Dedication”), considered to be one of the most lush and profound love songs ever written. It went…

I did not learn how to read until I was in college. Granted, I knew how to read various forms of fiction, history, my Bible, and devotional books, among others. But those were different types of reading. What I did not know how to read was a book that made an argument. It is a…

Mark Driscoll. Tony Evans. Bill Hybels. Ron Luce. Robert Morris. Ravi Zacharias. And now Phillip Yancey. These names once evoked respect, if not reverence, from the people who read their words, listened to their sermons, and gave to their ministries. Today, they stir grief, confusion, and debate. For many Christians, these public collapses have become…

After a good conversation on genetics with a dear colleague, I started pondering the following question: Isn’t it interesting how one’s training and worldview make such a vast difference in an approach to a topic? One thought led to another, and this is where I landed…  Even though the idea about differing worldviews can be applied to almost every topic in our world and our lives, I want to zero in on human genetics. That is, to consider the long sections of DNA that…

I offer you a close reading of a single line of text that startled me as I was perusing a seventeenth-century educational treatise. I am sitting at a writing retreat, drafting a research paper. Those who know me would be unsurprised to learn that the PDF open on my screen contains a work by John…