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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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Violence and Pain, Moments of Grace: A Conversation with Amanda McCrina

This past August, Farrar, Straus and Giroux BYR published Traitor, the debut novel of Amanda McCrina. FSG describes Traitor as “a tightly woven YA thrill ride exploring political conflict, deep-seated prejudice, and the terror of living in a world where betrayal is a matter of life or death.” A native of Atlanta, Georgia, McCrina studied…
February 25, 2021
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Students and Vocation in the Present Tense

Some time ago, I noticed a poster on a departmental noticeboard at my university bearing the heading “Vocational Retreat.” It invited students to join a retreat at which alumni would share insights and experiences. The speakers, it promised, would address racial reconciliation, peace building, environmental sustainability, and advocacy. They would “give students practical advice about…
February 24, 2021
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Cinema: In the Beginning

Related to kinesis, Greek for movement, the word cinema resonates with the beginnings described at the start of the Bible. In the first chapter of Genesis we read, “And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.” According to Hebrew scholar Brian Smith, the verb translated as “moved” occurs only three times…
February 22, 2021
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The Social Dilemma

A recent Netflix documentary titled The Social Dilemma interviews several engineers who had helped build social media platforms, but who are now sounding the alarm on their creations. The film features prominent designers from Google, Facebook, and Twitter, including the engineer who created the pervasive “like” button and the inventor of the “infinite scroll.” The…
February 18, 2021
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For Ash Wednesday: On Clean Pain

It’s Ash Wednesday, a time of repentance, and I’m put in mind of an artist of sorrow. Rogier van der Weyden, a 15th-century Netherlandish genius, was known for many things (including an audacious portrait of himself as a saint), See https://collections.mfa.org/objects/31035  but his paintings of Christ’s death are his most profound. They are almost unrivaled…
February 17, 2021
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From Thick to Quick: Living the Golden Rule

After the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis in July 2020, I participated in a BLM protest in Harrisburg, PA. I brought along my copy of The Souls of Black Folk by Dr. W. E. B. Du Bois. I sat on a step of the State Capitol and read, aloud but quietly, the eleventh…
February 15, 2021