A Point on Which to Fix After spending years in Nazi concentration camps and somehow finding purpose in an otherwise hopeless situation, Dr. Viktor Frankl said, “Those who have a ‘why’ to live can bear with almost any ‘how.’” Dr. Frankl was quoting from Nietzsche in an attempt to formulate a theory about human […]

  External Compliance Recently, I was driving on the highway and noticed a car streak passed me at 80 miles an hour in a 60 mile an hour zone. A couple of miles up the road, I saw an orange sign that read, “Construction Ahead.” As I passed the sign, I saw the same […]

Proverbs 3:5–6 (NRSV) 5 Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not rely on your own insight. 6 In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths. The Experiment.   An experiment was done were rats where trained to press a blue button to obtain a piece […]

Recently I saw a TV ad that asked a simple but profound question, “What would we be like without our mountains?” The ad then goes on to connect people achieving great things with a particular beer. Though the ad’s goal was simply to sell beer, the question itself is a profound one. What would […]

The new year is a great time to begin new habits, new goals, and renewed hopes for the coming months. To accomplish these things, it’s important to have some kind of “plumb line” that keeps our aim true. Paul did this in his letter to the Colossians when he said, “For I decided to […]

One of the most common questions of all time is, “Why do bad things happen to good people?” Why do the righteous suffer?   Another question that sits like a book-end on the opposite side is,  “Why do the unrighteous prosper?” (Psalm 73). It is true that suffering can destroy you. It can overthrow your […]

After grieving the death of his wife, C.S. Lewis once said as he looked at her pictures, A really good photograph might become in the end a snare, a horror, and an obstacle What the writer meant was that what he really longed for was the real thing, not a copy of something. There […]

Some time ago, I called a close friend just to say hello. My call was not returned, so I called again and left a message. Again, my call was not returned. I then emailed a friendly, “Just checking up on you, buddy”, but got no response. My first reaction was “What did I do […]

In the science fiction movie Contact Jodi Foster plays, Dr. Eleanor “Ellie” Arroway, a SETI scientist who finds evidence of extraterrestrial life and is chosen by earth to make first contact. In a climactic scene Dr. Arroway is placed in a pod designed by the aliens but built by humans and then dropped through […]