In the April 2007 issue of Sun, a literary magazine, the editor featured an interview with John O’Donohue, an Irish poet/philosopher and former priest.…
Discernment Exercise: Offensive Magazine Cover?
The editor of Discipleship Journal, a bi-monthly magazine published by The Navigators, reprinted a piece by me in their January/February 2007 issue. It appeared…
Discernment Exercise: Loving Lesbian Neighbors
As Christians we believe that living faithfully before the face of God includes treating non-Christians as persons made in the image of God. As…
Discernment Exercise: Would Jesus Smoke?
I remember three things about the church I attended from 1976-1979. The first involves scary pastor-portraits in the hallway. The second, roller skating to…
Discernment Exercise: Cobelligerency without Belligerency – Loving Believers Who are Simply Wrong
In Lake Wobegon, Garrison Keillor notes, car ownership is a matter of faith. Lutherans drive Fords, bought from Bunsen Motors, the Lutheran car dealer,…
Discernment Exercise: Listening to Music with Discernment
In the past few years there have been several movies whose soundtracks made more money than the movies themselves. While it’s true that there…
Discernment Exercise: Sound Bites for Jesus
I’m not tense, just terribly alert. It’s as BAD as you think and they ARE out to get you. Suburbia: where they rip out…
Discernment Exercise: Discussing Taste Tastefully
Unless you never talk about art with people, or carefully limit all discussions of aesthetic taste to those who are precisely like yourself, you’ll…
Discernment Exercise: Can We Vote Christianly?
Unless you really like politics, it’s rather hard, sometimes—let’s be honest—to get very enthusiastic about most elections. The constant barrage of commercials, the phone…
Christian Faithfulness in a Time Famine: Discernment Exercise
This past week I found myself, once again, busily paging through my daily calendar as I stood with friends, as they paged through theirs,…