RealClearReligion Articles

Trusting others presents massive challenges in our fallen world. Everyone has been corrupted by sin, and therefore fails to be fully faithful or trustworthy. As Proverbs 20:6 says, “Many a man proclaims his own loyalty, but who can find a trustworthy man?” While humans prove to be both distrustful and untrustworthy, God presents Himself as the One we can supremely trust for everything in this life and beyond the grave. We see an intentional emphasis in Scripture on the trustworthiness of God, but Scripture does not command us to have a blind faith. The Lord instructs us to trust...

Can anybody name one-square inch on the planet where Communism has done anyone any good? Anywhere? Not for the ruling elites, but for the people themselves? It doesn’t exist. How, then, do they continue to manage to create new recruits? Well, a story out of California last week explains one strategy. Writing for The Free Press for Free People, Francesca Block reports (3/7/24): “An activist group in California has paid nearly 100 public high schoolers $1,400 each to learn how to fight for racial and social justice.” This is the brainchild of a group called Californians for...

This month, we are starting a series entitled Suffering Servant, Risen Lord, as we celebrate the resurrection of our Lord, Jesus Christ. Over the next several weeks, we will look at different passages of Scripture relating to the purpose of Jesus’ death and resurrection. The first is Genesis 3, which is the account of humanity’s fall into sin through Adam’s transgression and the place where redemption and salvation became necessary. Prior to Genesis 3, we did not need a crucified and risen Savior because there was no sin.  When sin entered the world, though, everything...

Mother Cabrini is anything but frail. Despite suffering from a long-term debilitating lung condition as a result of nearly drowning as a young girl, the Italian-American saint exhibits a tenacious resolve, tending to downtrodden immigrants in New York City, while clashing against the powerful in the Catholic Church and City Hall. In short, the new film Cabrini produced by Angel Studios and directed by Alejandro Gómez Monteverde — the same team behind last year’s surprisingly successful yet controversial Sound of Freedom — offers movie audiences a “girl...

It seems like everyone is talking these days about Rob Reiner’s hitjob movie against the religious right. It makes “Christian Nationalists” into the bogeyman. Although I travel in the circles of Christian conservatives, I have yet to meet anyone who has actually yet seen Reiner’s movie. But I have seen a trailer for it. The thesis of the movie is that “Christian Nationalists” are bad and are trying to take over the nation and turn it into something we were never intended to be. Commentator Heidi Przbyla of Politico even told a panel on MSNBC that anyone who...

We have become a nation of rude people. Does that matter? I actually think it does because there is a link between manners and morals. As a grandfather of three little children, it’s so important to teach them to engage in good manners, to be grateful. I even write thank you notes to local places we visit, such as our unique South Florida butterfly attraction or a local farm tour, and have them each write something on the thank you card. Manners do matter, and I’ll explain why in a moment. In our documentary for Providence Forum, “The Beginning of Wisdom” — which...

Recently a picture of the 2020 AWANA Grand Prix displayed on my TV screensaver. As I looked at the image and saw many familiar faces of people sitting close together and kids smiling and playing, I reflected on how this event was the last major event we had as a church before the world shut down in response to the COVID-19 virus. Little did we know during the Grand Prix how quickly and drastically everything was about to change. In what seemed like an instant in March 2020, the entire world changed. Curfews were enacted. Many stores and restaurants were closed. All sporting events were...

Rosy Ryan (Sarah Miles) is not happy, yet she has everything: a good husband, Charles Shaughnessy (Robert Mitchum) whom she had been pining for; enough money; and her health. However, as a woman fixated on pursuing sexual transcendence, she finds her marriage more than disappointing. Her drama, which is at the center of the 1970 epic film Ryan’s Daughter that recently aired on Turner Classic Movies (TCM), is all-consuming. Meanwhile, in this intimate story, British filmmaker David Lean — who helmed such classics such as Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), Lawrence of Arabia (1962),...

Since we celebrated Presidents' Day recently, I thought it might be interesting to reflect on the faith of the first six men who held that office. Most of them were believers in Jesus and were not ashamed to say so. Several of these instances are not politically correct, but they are historically accurate. In 1779, ten years before he became the first president under the Constitution, George Washington was asked by Delaware Indian chiefs for advice on the education of three of their sons. Washington told them, “You do well to wish to learn our arts and ways of life, and above...

In the 1980s, Pierce Brosnan — famous for playing James Bond — starred in an action-adventure show called Remington Steele. As a fan of Bond and film in general, yours truly has explored the franchise’s history: from watching the behind-the-scenes featurettes to the 2012 documentary Everything or Nothing: The Untold Story of 007. In the latter, Brosnan talks about how Remington Steele was instrumental in landing the role of the famous British spy, but also, temporarily, kept him from wielding the Walther PPK until 1995’s Goldeneye. Anyone who knows me would probably...

In recent decades the quality of American education has plummeted. When you scan the headlines related to education, you realize how far we have fallen: A “non-binary” activist teacher promotes the woke agenda for kindergarteners and claims that the U.S. and Israel have “no right to exist.” Harvard, America’s oldest and most prestigious college (historically), now teaches a class on the pop singer Taylor Swift. Harvard’s tuition costs $75,000 a year. A Seattle high school teacher, who praised Hamas in class, failed a student on a quiz. Why? The student...

The blue lights and constant humming. The clammy warmth, the type of moist heat that comes from too many bodies in too small of a room. These are the sensations you will notice when you walk into a server farm, as I did, when I started work for a digital technology company.  It was May of 2016. At that time, it had been 34 years since Joseph Ratzinger, a prominent theologian of the 20th century, had written his article on security and technology titled, “Technological Security as a Problem of Social Ethics.” In that article, the future Pope Benedict XVI proposed that for...

Over the course of our study on God’s holiness, we have seen the significance of the Lord’s holiness when His creatures encounter Him, and the reverence and awe His holiness produces. We also have seen why His holiness has this effect upon us, because God is incomparable in His holiness, incorruptibly pure in His holiness, and holy in all His infinite perfections. God’s holiness has a certain and inevitable impact when He interacts with sinful people. God’s holiness results in His wrath on sinners who come to Him in their sins. However, God’s holiness does not...

Are parents who are concerned for their children’s education “haters”? Are they bigots? Do they deserve to be treated as “domestic terrorists”? The answer to all of these questions should be, “No.” But lately, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), a group that claims to be the last word in who are haters and hate groups in America, has now added Moms for Liberty to their infamous “map of hate.” This means, according to the SPLC, that right up there — or really, right down there — with the skinheads and the Ku Klux Klan is...

The 1993 classic Groundhog Day is one of the best depictions of Purgatory in any art form, alongside Dante Alighieri’s Purgatorio, the second chapter in the Italian poet’s Divine Comedy. Now a film that features a rodent named Punxsutawney Phil, small-town folks (some obsessed with WrestleMania), blood sausage, Sonny and Cher’s “I’ve Got You Babe” and a character known as “Needle-Nose” Ned Ryerson may not, on paper, appear to rival the complexity and gravity explored on the path Dante’s Pilgrim treks. Yet the movie transcends its romantic...

Few things are more important than knowing and understanding God’s holiness. Proverbs 9:10 says, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.” If we want to have any wisdom at all or if we want to begin to make any progress in understanding God and ourselves and the world, then we must seek to know the Holy One. After understanding what it means that God is holy, we are left with a significant question for consideration: how does the holiness of God impact His relationship with us as sinners? The Bible spends a great...

The lesson of Yad Vashem is especially poignant in the wake of last Saturday’s observance of International Holocaust Remembrance Day.  Walking through Yad Vashem a few weeks ago, I counted more attendants than visitors to the fortress-like museum on Mount Herzl’s western slope. Whether there or inside the Old City, or other fabled Jerusalem sites, an eerie, wartime quiet prevailed.  Yad Vashem has since 1953 immersed visitors in the lives of Jewish men, women, and children killed by the Nazis in the Second World War. Wading among the personal effects and historical...

In the last post, we studied what an encounter with our holy God looks like and how it changes us. True believers are filled with dread, awe, fear, and reverence upon encountering the holy God of Israel. This is completely antithetical to the world and sadly many evangelical churches that display a glibness and a lack of reverence and awe when it comes to our Lord’s holiness. Having seen what happens when sinners encounter God in His holiness, we want to answer the question, ‘What does the Bible mean when it says that God is holy?’ The Bible uses the word ‘holy’...

Around this time of year, we remember the infamous Supreme Court decision of Roe v. Wade of January 22, 1973, which condemned some 65 million preborn people in America to death in abortions. Although Roe was overturned, abortion is very much a pressing issue today. And it has been and continues to promoted in the name of “choice.” Pro-choice is a misnomer. Those who are pro-choice are in reality pro-abortion. Although the proponents call themselves “pro-choice,” many studies indicate that the majority of women who have an abortion felt compelled to seek the...