Free Republic

Putin is Russia's Jimmy Carter.

Watching Biden's response to the Hur Special Counsel report was enormously disturbing to me. I wasn't thinking about the exposure of classified documents or the maddening double standard at play in giving Biden a pass. The one thing that ran through my mind all during that speech was one unthinkable question: This man has his finger on the nuclear trigger?At a time when Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks so casually about using nuclear weapons in Ukraine, the thought of Joe Biden having to make a decision about our nuclear deterrent should give every American who isn't a Democratic Party partisan...

Vain Sayings? Q. Is saying “Oh, my God!” when reacting to a situation or story taking the name of the Lord in vain?Janet, Wakefield, Kan. A. While the phrase “Oh, my God” could be a prayer, it is not usually meant in this way. More commonly it uses the Divine name as a mere expression of surprise or exasperation. This is not a reverent or prayerful use of God’s name in most circumstances. The word “vain” means empty. And, therefore, the context you cite would usually seem to qualify as using God’s name in vain. However, in assigning culpability (blameworthiness),...

“Loving God with Our Mouth and Ears” (The Ten Commandments) We started off this series on the Ten Commandments with, obviously, the First Commandment: “You shall have no other gods.” There is but one God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, namely, the triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. There is no other. We should fear, love, and trust in this God above all things. So this is the First--and foremost--Commandment, the one that encompasses all the commandments and runs through them all. “You shall have no other gods.” That’s what we should not do. But Moses also...

My Catholic in-laws get together one Saturday each month to break bread and to pray the rosary. They always invite me and my wife to join them – in hope, I suspect, that my wife will return to the Catholic faith of her youth and that her husband, a lifelong Protestant, will convert. With the start of the new year, we decided we would attend the family’s very first montly gathering. And I very much enjoyed spending time with my in-laws. But during the almost hour-long, ritualistic praying of the rosary, I never felt the presence of the Holy Spirit....

You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the LORD your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments. — Exodus 20:4–6 (ESV) As the Mel Gibson extravaganza...