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Hope During Advent
Feelings of loss and loneliness tend to well up in me at this time of year, which is ironic. For a Christian, next to Easter this should be the most joyous season. But I find my thoughts straying back...
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To Steal, Perchance to Tithe
Sometimes art imitates life, but sometimes it’s the other way around. Those of you who have already read Lost Mission may remember Tucker Rue, the founder of a storefront mission in a poor Southern...
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God of Discipline
Do you worship discipline? Two days before the Christmas that just passed, I had the privilege of giving a kind of commencement speech to a group of men who were graduating from a Salvation Army...
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You Can Be a Winner!
Win autographed copies my novels! Tim George, over at Unveiled, has a great contest going. Here’s a quote from his blog:“To kick off 2010, Unveiled is going to give an autographed library of Athol...
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Bad Theology
They say a blog entry should be short, but what can you do when a man like Pat Robertson causes such a mess? Some things take a while to clean up. Hopefully you’ll bear with me.If you somehow missed...
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God Laughs
It’s so easy to forget the way of things. Months ago I began to ask God to “enlarge my territory.” It’s the prayer of Jabez, which many will recognize as the title of a best selling book. I haven’t...
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It's Torah Time!
Where do you live? If you're anywhere near Laguna Beach, CA, I'd love to meet you. I'll be teaching a 13 week series on my book, The Gospel according to Moses, every Thursday night at 7:00. We're...
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Well Isn’t That Special?
Irony sometimes cracks me up. I belong to several email lists (loops, whatever) and on one of them recently I wrote a comment about Christians who claim to read fiction, but who actually seem to enjoy...
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Filthy Church
The American church is dying. The signs are everywhere: rampant hedonism, materialism, infidelity, superficiality, mediocrity, cowardice, compromise...the list goes on and on, but the one charge we...
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Saved and Lost
What can we do about this filthy church? The short answer is...nothing. No matter which way we turn, which path we choose, we ourselves can only contribute to the mess. On the other hand, God might...
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Proof of God
Jesus didn't pick His metaphors lightly. Jesus is the Word after all, so every word he spoke was chosen with complete precision. He could have picked any symbol in the universe, yet he said “turn the...
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On Beauty I
It was an obvious mistake. Long ago during my life as an architect I designed a restaurant’s floor plan with the front doors swinging inward. If there had been a fire and a crowd rushed out, those who...
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On Beauty II
It was a bad week. My last living aunt had passed away. Her name was Liz, and she was a hoot. If you’re old enough to remember Phyllis Diller or Carol Channing you’ll have a general idea of how much...
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On Beauty III
Do you know what beauty is? For fifteen years now I've been trying to create it in my novels, and although the finished product never seems to measure up to what I had in mind, I think it's important...
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Commit Literature
When I began writing my first novel in 1993, I made a decision that still guides my work today. I would not try to write “great literature.” I would instead content myself with a simple little story,...
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The Opposite of Art, first draft
Hey, remember me? I've been gone a while. On Wednesday I sent a good first draft of THE OPPOSITE OF ART off to the editor. As always, in the final months of work on a new novel it becomes impossible to...
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Peace On A Troubled Earth
And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about...
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Weigh the Soul
2011 marks the one hundredth anniversary of Dr. Duncan MacDougall’s experimental attempt to prove that we have souls. His results? We do, and they weigh precisely 21 grams.Color me skeptical.Whether or...
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The Worst List of All Time
I found something disturbing recently while looking for ways to promote The Opposite of Art. It’s a list over at GoodReads, called “The Worst Books of All Time.” In the top (bottom?) 50 titles or so, I...
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On Getting Lungs
To teach is to learn. I led a discussion on the Lord’s Prayer and the Proverbs last night, and gleaned many inspiring insights from the friends I was supposed to be teaching, but for me the most...
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