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The Covenant Is Breached On September 30, 2007, four prominent atheists—Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, and Daniel Dennett—met for a two-hour discussion, which was recorded and titled “The Four Horsemen.” In their conversation, the four discuss “the tough questions about religion that face the world today.” All four men...

Religious Ritual Is Rejected On August 28, 1963, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. addressed more than 250,000 people from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. “I have a dream,” he intoned, calling on the crowd to imagine an America where racial injustice no longer oppressed people. Part of his text that day was taken from Amos 5:24: “Let...

A Prophet’s Anger—and the Pity of God John Steinbeck’s novel East of Eden was published in September 1952; by November, it had skyrocketed to the top of the fiction best-seller list and has never gone out of print. The novel follows three generations of two families, including two brothers whose story parallels the biblical story of Cain...

See: The Faithfulness of the Lord In 2016, British citizens were riveted by a political drama worthy of Shakespeare. Prime Minister David Cameron resigned, leaving his Conservative Party in need of choosing his successor. Cameron’s antagonist Boris Johnson was considered a frontrunner for the post, with influential supporters including Justice...

The Day of the Lord On November 21, 2017, after a week of house arrest, Robert Mugabe, age 93, resigned as president of Zimbabwe. He had held the position since the country’s independence from Great Britain in 1980. Military leaders acted to remove Mugabe from power when it became clear that he was positioning his wife, Grace Mugabe, 52,...

A Jealous God Many parents have had a version of this conversation with their children: “If you don’t clean your room, you can’t have a friend over to play,” or “If you don’t return the car with a full tank of gas, you may not borrow it next weekend.” The child does not clean her room or return the car filled with gas—and then acts shocked...

A Shepherding God Kenneth Bailey, author of The Good Shepherd, was familiar with shepherding culture. He spent seven years as a child in the south of Egypt, returned years later to serve as pastor in rural Egyptian churches, and later lived in Bethlehem “where shepherds grazed their flocks around us.” Bailey brought these personal insights...

A Certain Future Twelve thousand people in twelve cities were interviewed for IKEA’s 2016 Life at Home Report. Each person was asked this simple question: “What makes a home a home?” Despite the respondents’ different cultures, ages, and ethnicities, four common elements of home were identified: comfort, safety, belonging, and love. As we...

All Have Sinned In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s classic novel The Scarlet Letter, we meet Hester Prynne. Hester is required to wear the letter A on her chest, the flaming scarlet symbolizing her sin of adultery. But Hawthorne reminds us that perhaps the symbol should not be worn by Hester alone: “If truth were everywhere to be shown, a scarlet letter...

The Perfect Sacrifice Jesus inaugurated the Lord’s Supper, also called the Eucharist or Communion, during His last Passover meal with His disciples. Today, Christians continue to observe the Lord’s Supper as part of corporate worship. Partaking together of the bread and the cup, which represent Christ’s body and blood, reminds us of our life...