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Christians across the country are expressing concern as Focus on the Family’s “Plugged In” movie staff has released its review of the pornographic film “Fifty Shades of Grey”—especially that a critic at the professing Christian ministry watched the porn just to tell other Christians that they shouldn’t watch it. Plugged In said that it received an email from a follower who asked them not to review the film, and thus penned an blog post about the matter to explain its decision to watch and critique the material. “Fifty Shades of Grey is, without question, one of the most ‘popular’ elements...

February 17, 2015Tuesday of the Sixth Week in Ordinary Time    Reading 1 Gn 6:5-8; 7:1-5, 10 When the LORD saw how great was man’s wickedness on earth,and how no desire that his heart conceivedwas ever anything but evil,he regretted that he had made man on the earth,and his heart was grieved. So the LORD said:“I will wipe out from the earth the men whom I have created,and not only the men,but also the beasts and the creeping things and the birds of the air,for I am sorry that I made them.”But Noah found favor with the LORD. Then...

February 15, 2015: Islam claims to be the fastest growing religion in the world. That is true, but it’s mainly because Moslems are concentrated in countries with much higher birth rates (largely brought on by corruption and bad government). When you adjust for that and then look at just conversions you’ll note that Christianity and most other religions are converting Moslems at a much higher rate than the other way around...

"Praying always for you, Since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus, and of the love that ye have to all the saints, For the hope which is laid up for you in heaven" (Col. 1:3-5). Faith, hope and love, the great trinity of Christian graces, were the foundation of the Christian character of the disciples at Colosse. From these all the graces of the Spirit unfolded in a manifold and beautiful variety and completeness. Nowhere have we a simpler, stronger and more attractive picture of an ideal Christian life. I. THEIR EVOLUTION It was out of darkness. "Who...

A recent piece in the Huffington Post suggests that women were given short shrift in the Bible, citing statistics that show women relegated to silence and anonymity. The piece was exploring a book called Bible Women: All Their Words and Why They Matter, which was published in September 2014 by Rev. Lindsay Hardin Freeman, a female episcopal priest.

Eastern Michigan University students taped their mouths shut in a silent protest Thursday. The students wrote #ChapelHillShooting across the tape in honor of the deaths of three students from the University of North Carolina. Deah Shaddy Barakat, 23, his wife, Yusor Mohammad Abu-Salha, 21, and her sister, Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha, 19, were Muslim-American students at the University of North Carolina. They were shot Tuesday, Feb. 10, by their neighbor, Craig Steven Hicks, 46. The Chapel Hill police released a statement Tuesday evening citing a parking dispute as Hicks’s motivation. EMU Junior Layali Alsada and senior Zaeem Zafar created a flyer...

February 16, 2015Monday of the Sixth Week in Ordinary Time    Reading 1 Gn 4:1-15, 25 The man had relations with his wife Eve,and she conceived and bore Cain, saying,“I have produced a man with the help of the LORD.”Next she bore his brother Abel.Abel became a keeper of flocks, and Cain a tiller of the soil.In the course of time Cain brought an offering to the LORDfrom the fruit of the soil,while Abel, for his part,brought one of the best firstlings of his flock.The LORD looked with favor on Abel and his offering,but on Cain and his offering...

"And he is the head of the body, the church: who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead; that in all things he might have the preeminence" (Col. 1:18). "Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth" (Col. 3: 2). Each of Paul's epistles has an expression peculiar to itself. The Thessalonian epistles are characterized by the advent tinge, and shine with the glory of the second coming. Ephesians is the epistle of the "heavenly places"; Philippians of the sweetness of the Christian temper; and Colossians is the portrait of Jesus, and its keynote is...

February 15, 2015Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time    Reading 1 Lv 13:1-2, 44-46 The Lord said to Moses and Aaron,“If someone has on his skin a scab or pustule or blotchwhich appears to be the sore of leprosy,he shall be brought to Aaron, the priest,or to one of the priests among his descendants.If the man is leprous and unclean,the priest shall declare him uncleanby reason of the sore on his head. “The one who bears the sore of leprosyshall keep his garments rent and his head bare,and shall muffle his beard;he shall cry out, ‘Unclean, unclean!’As long as the...

While many Christians were in their local church hearing God speak in the reading, singing, and preaching of his Word, Katy Perry was preparing for the half-time performance of Super Bowl XLIX. I suppose for any artist this is a once in a life time chance and is probably the biggest venue they will ever play. According to recent ratings, Katy’s performance was the most-watched halftime show in history, with 118.5 million viewers. To whom does she attribute the success? Well, in her own words, to God. “It’s funny, I was praying and I got a word from God and...

ONE OF THE PUZZLING QUESTIONS likely to turn up sooner or later to vex the seeking Christian is how he can fulfill the scriptural command to love God with all his heart and his neighbor as himself. The earnest Christian, as he meditates on his sacred obligation to love God and mankind, may experience a sense of frustration gendered by the knowledge that he just cannot seem to work up any emotional thrill over his Lord or his brothers. He wants to, but he cannot. The delightful wells of feeling simply will not flow. Many honest persons have become discouraged...

Be thou exalted, O God, above the heavens; let thy glory be above all the earth.-Psa. 57:5 It is a truism to say that order in nature depends upon right relationships; to achieve harmony each thing must be in its proper position relative to each other thing. In human life it is not otherwise. I have hinted before in these chapters that the cause of all our human miseries is a radical moral dislocation, an upset in our relation to God and to each other. For whatever else the Fall may have been, it was most certainly a sharp change...

February 14, 2015Memorial of Saints Cyril, Monk, and Methodius, Bishop    Reading 1 Gn 3:9-24 The LORD God called to Adam and asked him, “Where are you?”He answered, “I heard you in the garden;but I was afraid, because I was naked,so I hid myself.”Then he asked, “Who told you that you were naked?You have eaten, then,from the tree of which I had forbidden you to eat!”The man replied, “The woman whom you put here with me— she gave me fruit from the tree, and so I ate it.”The LORD God then asked the woman,“Why did you do such a...

We live in strange times. When I became a born-again believer nearly four decades ago following thirty years as a Roman Catholic, not one non-Catholic Christian chided me for leaving the Church of Rome. In those days it was fairly obvious to evangelicals that the teachings and practices of Roman Catholicism were at odds with the teachings of the Bible. Yes, there were a few things, at least superficially, that Catholics and Bible-believing Christians held in common. The virgin birth of Christ, which involved the conception of Jesus by the Holy Spirit, is one example. Yet, regarding Christ’s miraculous birth,...

Astronomical sales of a tiny figurine of the Protestant reformation figure Martin Luther, have confounded its maker, Playmobil, by becoming the fastest-selling Playmobil figure of all time. The German toy manufacturer announced this week that the first edition of 34,000 pieces sold out in less than 72 hours, forcing the company to urgently request its factory in Malta to produce more of the so-called “little Luthers”. Fans have been warned that the next batch will not be available until the end of April. “...he had very modern ideas. He believed every person had the right to an education, including women...

There is nothing gray about whether a follower of Christ should see 50 Shades of Grey. This is a black and white issue. Don’t go. Don’t watch it. Don’t read it. Don’t rent it. I don’t even want to talk about it. Another blogger and I went back and forth for several weeks about how we could write a satirical review panning the movie and skewering those who think they need to see it in order to be relevant. We couldn’t do it. There was no way to make the humor weighty enough to sufficiently condemn such a vile film....

February 13, 2015Friday of the Fifth Week in Ordinary Time    Reading 1 Gn 3:1-8 Now the serpent was the most cunning of all the animalsthat the LORD God had made.The serpent asked the woman,“Did God really tell you not to eatfrom any of the trees in the garden?”The woman answered the serpent:“We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden;it is only about the fruit of the treein the middle of the garden that God said,‘You shall not eat it or even touch it, lest you die.’”But the serpent said to the woman:“You certainly will...

The guy whose behavior during the Nazi occupation converted the chief rabbi of Rome to Catholicism was working with the Nazis? The guy who was supposedly so silent and passive, at best, did enough that EWTN found a dozen paged of quotes from contemporary Jewish sources that were favorable to his behavior? A Pope who is defended from such accusations by a Jewish historian (formerly of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America) who not only debunks the claims, but describes Pius XII as the greatest friend to Jews of the 20th century? The man who, at his death, got this...

February 12, 2015Thursday of the Fifth Week in Ordinary Time    Reading 1 Gn 2:18-25 The LORD God said: “It is not good for the man to be alone.I will make a suitable partner for him.”So the LORD God formed out of the groundvarious wild animals and various birds of the air,and he brought them to the man to see what he would call them;whatever the man called each of them would be its name.The man gave names to all the cattle,all the birds of the air, and all the wild animals;but none proved to be the suitable partner...

NASHVILLE (BP) -- An article by a popular evangelical blogger arguing that the six "days" of creation in Genesis were not literal 24-hour periods has prompted discussion among Christians about the earth's age and whether orthodoxy necessarily entails believing in a young earth. Justin Taylor, senior vice president and publisher for books at Crossway, posted a blog article Jan. 28 arguing that there are "biblical reasons to doubt the creation days were 24-hour periods." The article, which was shared on Facebook 15,000 times during its first two weeks online, also noted famous people from church history who did not believe...