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by Mike Metzger & John Seel A difference with a distinction What’s the difference between Esperanto and E*TRADE? Other than the fact that you’ve probably never heard of Esperanto, there is a deeper difference between the two. It’s a difference with a distinction. Esperanto helps only a handful of people, while E*TRADE is part of…
Leveraging love The financial crisis gripping the country leaves some people desiring to decapitate a few capitalists. But the fact is, many who follow Christ are also culpable. For years we have wagged our finger at capitalism and consumerism, all the while ignoring “our most urgent missionary task,” according to one wise missionary. The task…
The rest of us When you think of Britain, you think tea drinkers, right? When you imagine China, you imagine communists, right? In both cases, you’d be partly right but mostly wrong. So when you hear that 94% of Americans believe in God, what do you imagine – an enthusiastically religious country? In this case,…
Cascading books Two bookends that bind American culture are the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Without them, our freedoms collapse like cascading books. Two bookends that bind American capitalism are Adam Smith’s 1776 classic An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations and… what else? Smith also wrote the…
Not in the numbers What’s the right number of kids for a family? How often should you kiss your spouse? Some questions require a mystical answer, not a mathematical one. This is why the proposal by college presidents to lower the drinking age is misguided. In fact, if finding the best drinking age is a…
Thinking horizontally You’re smart to take Labor Day lying down. Being horizontal is holy, since God tells us to periodically kick up our feet and take a break (Leviticus 23:3). But there’s another reason to ‘go horizontal.’ Today’s teens, twenty- and thirty-somethings think horizontally. Those who communicate a horizontal faith will connect better with younger…
A false virtue Dietrich Bonhoeffer knew within a month that he had made a mistake. Arriving in New York in 1939 to accept a position at Union Seminary, he wrote to a friend: “I shall have no right to take part in the restoration of Christian life in Germany after the war unless I share…
A false virtue… Christians are to “be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have” (I Peter 3:15). Has anyone recently asked you to give the reason for your hope? If the research is right, few Christians are asked and few can answer.1…
Arf??? Henri Poincaré’s flash of insight arrived as he boarded a city bus. Albert Einstein’s epiphany came as he imagined a boy riding alongside a light beam. When C. S. Lewis arrived at Whipsnade Zoo, he got a surprise – he believed in Christ as the Son of God.1 In each case, insight started with…
We Know the Tune, Not the Lyrics
Michael Metzger
October 13, 2008
Awakening from an abyss In March of 1985, Clive Wearing disappeared into an abyss. Struck by a brain infection in his mid-forties – a herpes encephalitis – Wearing was left with an amnesia that wiped out virtually his entire past. Yet, one faculty was left totally intact. When his wife, Deborah, accidentally discovered it, Clive…