Theology, opinion, fiction, and the occasional limerick.
The other day, around the dinner table, I had a talk with my boys about race. Here, in the form of a letter to them, is the gist of our conversation. Dear Michael and Nathanael, The time has come, I think, to talk to you about race. I really wish the world were in a…
In the part of Brazil where I live, it doesn’t take long for people to figure out that I’m not Brazilian. In the olden days of yore (roughly six months ago), the first question that followed the revelation of my American nationality would be something like “What part of the US are you from?”, “How…
Thanksgiving is dead. For all practical purposes, as a time when society as a whole pauses to thank God for His manifold blessings, it does not exist. And it didn’t die of natural causes either. It was brutally murdered by a three-headed beast which, by the way, is also killing society as a whole. Thanksgiving…
The other day it occurred to me that it had been a while since I checked for new reviews for the Missionary Max books on Amazon. Turns out, there was indeed a new one for Missionary Max and the Lost City, and it’s…well…um…take a look: How is this written in this century let alone this…
The year was 1822, and Dom Pedro – the newly-minted emperor of the newly-minted nation of Brazil – had two major problems on his hands. His first headache involved the northern cities of Salvador, Belém, and my own beloved São Luís. While the south of Brazil was firmly in the camp of the Brazilian independence…
One of my favorite missionary stories is from the early Middle Ages. It concerns a monk intent on converting nearby Germanic peoples. He discovered that these people venerated a certain large tree, called “Thor’s Oak”. One fine day our hero walked up to it and, in the sight of the entire village, proceed to chop…
There’s a Saturday Night Live sketch that I saw in 2016 and have never forgotten. I remember commenting at the time to a friend of mine…words to the effect of “if Americans get a hold on what that sketch really means, it will change the political landscape of this country.” I have no idea if…
Today is Brazilian Father’s Day, and so, despite the fact that my father is not Brazilian, it is a sufficiently auspicious occasion, I think, to warrant a rare Sunday post. In the summer between my third and fourth grade, my father accepted the call to a new pastorate, which meant moving to a new town…
If there is one thing that unites our fractured American society today, it is the universal acknowledgement that Jeffrey Epstein was human scum. Upon his arrest, there was great rejoicing across the social and political spectrum, as there was outrage at his “suicide”. And now, with the arrest of his accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell, hope springs…
Several years ago a former student of mine wrote from college to tell me he was reading Romans, and having a hard time following Paul’s sequence of thought. I made an attempt to break it down for him, and this was the result. Introduction There is no better book of the Bible than Romans to…