“What does your book say about evil?,” an attendee posed to panelists at the VA Fest of the Book event that I moderated. It was a lively event, not least because the composition of the panel led inevitably to passionate disagreement. As the psychiatrist who wrote of religion as a product purely of human physiology …
Does the Bible have anything to say about Japan’s devastating earthquake? Because I wrote about biblical responses to pain some years ago, people occasionally ask me what the Bible says about natural disasters. It’s discomfiting — not the question (it’s a good one, and I’m happy to discuss it), but the absence of a single …
That Sarah sure does have a way with words. Palin’s latest, not an “oops” moment but actually something she posted online, upped the righteous hackles of a lot of people and left others going, “huh?” So, what is it? In short: “blood libel” is an accusation originally and historically used as a means of inciting hatred …
I attended a funeral recently — “untimely,” one might say, because the man who died did so at his own hand. There was so much about it that defied expectation, defied logic. There’s the suicide itself, of course, an act that makes sense only to the person killed, if at all. But there was …
Ok, there are probably a lot of problems with angels, but consider this: If an angel steps in to change the course of events to benefit a person, there may be a downside for someone else. What should we do with that? Related, what about the person who simply is not helped by an angel …
Biologists in FL are working to preserve native species threatened by the catastrophic Gulf oil spill, and they’ve dubbed it “Operation Noah’s Ark.” Echoing that story in the biblical book of Genesis, Jack and Anne Rudlow are collecting what critters they can house in their Gulf Specimen Marine Lab to preserve and then release when the …
There’s something surreal about walking across the great plaza of the Louvre, riding the escalators under the modern glass pyramid, and coming face-to-face with Baal, etched in limestone some 3,500 years ago. That famous stela, discovered at the ancient city of Ugarit (now Syria’s Ras Shamra), depicts the storm god whose name became synonymous with wrongful worship …
When crises hit, many people turn to the Bible… and find many things. While some hear words of comfort, hope and promise, others hear words of condemnation, judgment and blame. The biblically-informed ‘>Pat Robertson blamed the Haitians for making a pact with the devil for which God is now punishing them. Some Haitians themselves see the destruction …
