Practicing Godless Faith
I once met an elder who was in deep distress because of his faith. Six years ago, his small but growing church received tithes that exceeded two …
Beliefs of the Heart
Walking A Tightrope
Charles Blondin was a famous pioneer of tightrope walking (which, if you care, is properly called “funambulism,” and which I take to mean the …
The Stench of Human Sweat
A couple years ago, the subscription sign-up for www.BeliefsoftheHeart.com stopped working. Apparently, it had died without telling me. It accepted …
My Sister Is a Liar
The house I grew up in belonged to a church. My father was a pastor with a relatively small salary, so every home we lived in was provided rent-free …
Pretty Ugly Moralism
I went to school with a young woman who scratched little marks inside her Bible to keep score of how many people she had converted. She showed me her …
The First Time I Heard God Speak
I was ten years old the first time I heard God speak. It was autumn, a new school year had just begun, and a new fad was spreading among my adolescent …
Information or Intimacy?
Over thirty years ago, I stumbled upon a 60 Minutes episode in which Mike Wallace interviewed an MIT computer science nerd. He had a tiny …
When Obedience Doesn’t Make Sense
My family moved to Detroit the summer between my first and second grade. Tommy was the first friend I met. Like me, his dad was a pastor; but unlike …
Striving for Spiritual Impact
A few months ago, I mentioned that I had been diagnosed with kidney cancer. The treatment involved five uncomfortable procedures, but the recovery was …
Desires of The Heart
I’ve used my Scripture Meditation Plan for decades. It begins with a psalm of the day, and last Thursday’s was Psalm 37. It is best known for this one …
Don’t Believe Your Own Headlines
In ninth grade, my brother Andy’s locker partner (the school drug supplier) had a bad trip on LSD. The bad trip continued in a small series of scary …
What About That GTO?
When I grew up in Detroit, the population was over 1,200,000 people. I spent the next forty years living in Ann Arbor, population of about 120,000. …