The Bible Story Family

The birth of our first grandchild prompted the generation of Nana’s Guide to Child Raising .   The fail-safe advice it contained enabled my wife to provide helpful answers to all five of our children and their spouses as they dealt with the complexities of child training for our thirteen grands. “I set him down for fifteen seconds and he started eating dirt,” one of our daughters would explain. Nana’s Guide provided the perfect answer—“He won’t do that when he is sixteen.” “She won’t sleep through the night and refuses to nap,” another would complain. “She won’t do that when she is sixteen,” came the reply from the Guide . “Potty training is impossible.   What are we going to do?”   “They won’t have that problem when they are sixteen.” Nana’s Guide may be the shortest parenting guide ever produced.   But it agrees with that biblical phrase often taken out of context, “this too shall pass.”   The trials and tribulations of raising ...

Seven Questions for Easter If you deserved the highest praise, would you allow yourself to be mocked? If you were stronger than any enemy, would you permit someone to beat you? If you were wealthy beyond measure, would live life from hand to mouth? If you had the ability to create food, would you choose to suffer hunger? If you were ruler of all, would you choose to be a servant? If you had a spotless reputation, would you allow criticism to go unchallenged? If you were the Giver of life, would you allow yourself to be killed? “Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus.” (Phil. 2:5)

Truth died—not in a shootout at the OK Corral with its archenemy the Lie!   Truth died—not in a major battle with Hitler’s propaganda machine or the Communist Manifesto.   Truth died from the wounds of a friend.   Not by opposition, but by redefinition. Post-modern communication theorists, friendly with the concept of truth, posited that the meaning of a message did not depend on the intention of the source.   Rather, they said, meaning depended on the interpretation of the receiver.   Not what a person said, but what people thought they heard, was the real truth. The theory seemed sound.   After all, we communicate not just with words, but with gestures, facial expression, and tone of voice.   Messages could be, and often were, misunderstood. However, once the misunderstanding became the message—truth died. Where literary interpretation had once been the desire to identify the intended message in the mind of an author, it now became a search...