When John Chrysostom looked toward baptism in the local church, his mother was delighted. But when he said he wanted to become a monk, she made him promise not to leave her as long as she lived. John obliged, but after his mother’s death, he moved to the country to become a monk. There, John apprenticed for four years to an elderly, Syrian ascetic. He sought holiness and spent two years in a cave, pushing his body and mind to the very limit, “continually standing, scarcely sleeping, and learning the Old and New Testaments by heart,” as was the […]

  During the autumn of 1942, during the dark days of the Second World War, the Christian writer and academic C. S. Lewis broadcast a series of eight talks on the BBC on Christian morality. When they were published the following year under the title Christian Behaviour,1 Lewis added four more short essays on other subjects, one of which was on Christian marriage. Here he explained that he was reluctant to discuss marriage, partly because the Christian doctrine on the subject was so unpopular. As he said:2

  When Bill and Margie went to see a lawyer, they did not expect to get spiritual advice. All they wanted was help filing for divorce. After disputes over how to manage their meager income, their roles in marriage, and how to raise their children, the couple tired of attempts at reconciliation. Compounding the problem, Bill was having an affair. Yet providentially they sought assistance from a charitable Christian legal service organization in New Mexico, where their lawyer refused to proceed with a divorce until he was satisfied that biblical grounds existed and that they had made reasonable attempts to […]

  German bombers dropped deadly cargo into Liverpool’s heart, and many buildings were destroyed. However, for Christians, one of the most significant casualties of the 1941 Blitz was Church House, containing one of the finest private theological libraries in England. It belonged to J. C. Ryle, the first Anglican Bishop of Liverpool.

  As any athlete knows, pain is information, and useful information at that. As attractive as a world without pain might seem, the reality is far from desirable. The absence of pain is a serious pathology, characteristic of leprosy. The leper’s great curse is that he cannot feel pain, so, without realizing it, he puts his hand in the fire, and it becomes burnt beyond use. His feet become damaged and infected without his knowledge, and untreated, they are ruined.

  6 And the LORD was sorry that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. 7 So the LORD said, “I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens, for I am sorry that I have made them.” Genesis 6:6-7 (ESV)

  A year after Hitler’s land-slide referendum confirming him as Führer in 1935, the German city of Berlin hosted the International Congress for Population Science. The aim of the conference was to bring together the world’s leading eugenicists, population scientists, and anthropologists. The meetings “marked the apex of international support of Nazi race policies.”1

  Aiden Wilson Tozer was a minister of the Christian and Missionary Alliance who served for almost five decades in the United States and Canada. He spent thirty-one years at Chicago’s Southside Alliance Church, whose congregation increased tenfold under Tozer’s preaching. Among his many books are The Pursuit of God, Knowledge of the Holy, and Success and the Christian.  In this passage he talks about the paradoxical nature of genuine Christianity.

  Peter Riddell is Professorial Dean of the Centre for the Study of Islam and Other Faiths of the Melbourne School of Theology in Australia. Today, the expression, “shari‘a” – as in “shari‘a law” and “shari‘a finance” – is heard with increasing frequency. It is important to get clear on just what shari‘a is, particularly since some Muslims wish to bring it to prominence and even dominance around the world.

  16 And I charged your judges at that time, ‘Hear the cases between your brothers, and judge righteously between a man and his brother or the alien who is with him. 17 You shall not be partial in judgment. You shall hear the small and the great alike. You shall not be intimidated by anyone, for the judgment is God’s…’ Deuteronomy 1:16-17 (ESV) In government halls around the world, the human figures representing justice are typically blindfolded and garbed in classical dress, bearing sword and scales. The ancient toga signifies the fixed, ageless nature of righteous judgment, which is […]