I was watching a movie last night, and a character explained something bad that happened by saying, "It was God's will." Christians sometimes say this. But, while God allows evil, he does not cause evil, and evil is never his will.  We need to be more precise in our language and ask the right questions.

Les Misérables director John Caird says, "As a bunch of liberal humanists, we had tried to avoid every mention of religion, [but] sewing God into the show was what animated the characters." We have the same opportunity: to let God sew himself into the fabric of our lives so that he animates our character and gives life to everything we do.

Evangelical and Catholic Christians all over the world, except for some in the United States, know that climate change is real and are working to reverse the damage to our planet and address the ways it disrupts and devastates so many lives. At a conference, Pope Leo said: God will ask us if we cultivated and cared for the world and took care of our brothers and sisters. In the Bible, God commands us to do both. Do we?

People who oppose immigration accuse Christians of being “political.”  Their argument is with God, not with us.  Jesus told us to “welcome the stranger.”  We are just following his teachings. National Migration Week is a good time to recall that Catholics have celebrated World Day for Migrants and Refugees for 111 years and Christians have supported migrants from the earliest days of the faith. It's not new, and it's not political.

My family spent a day in Muir Woods National Monument, the home of giant redwood trees that are spectacular not just because they are tall, but also because of their variety and character, which tell us something about God and ourselves. The bark of each tree is unique, as is each tree's roots. Each human is also different on the surface and below. Every tree and human is designed to honor the glory of God. Can we delight in the bark of every tree, and the skin of every perso

Everyone faces temptations. We want something, or something makes us angry. Desire and anger are not necessarily evil. The issue is what we do with them. When Jesus was tempted, he showed us how to deal with temptation. The first step is to decide who we are living for. The second step is to know the Word of God.

In the Scriptures, the apostle Paul uses the terms "faith, hope, and love" as action words, not as abstract concepts. He talks about the “work of faith,” the “labor of love,” and our “endurance in hope.” How do we put these virtues into action?

The demand for strict work requirements to avoid being kicked off of Medicaid and food assistance programs is immoral and unChristian.  It is built on the false philosophy, recently articulated by Dr. Mehmet Oz, that you need to “prove that you matter” by working.  To God, every person matters.

The Bible uses images of God as a mother, in addition to images of God as a father, to help us understand how great God’s love is for us. Many people have anxiety-producing images of God as a stern disciplinarian. In the Bible, God uses images of being like a mother to express God’s intimate love and tenderness toward us.

This is the hardest article I have ever had to write. The second conclusion from my Civil Rights trip is that the treatment of Black people in American history was much uglier than most people know. From slavery to Jim Crow and beyond, the textbooks mostly downplay our ugly truths with language that misses the suffering behind the words.  We cannot hide from the past any more than Adam and Eve could hide from God in the Garden. What was done must be acknowledged.

Take this 5-question quiz to see if you know what the Bible says about Jesus’s resurrection. Image by Pisit Hing, provided by Unsplash...

The Bible includes evidence for the resurrection of Jesus that was obtained from eyewitnesses, and today’s Christians experience his living presence now. Writing around 25 years after Jesus died and rose, Paul identifies a large number of people who saw the resurrected Jesus, some of whom he had talked with. It’s roughly the same as believing a book published today about events in the year 2000 (25 years ago) that includes eyewitness reports from people the author interviewed

Our society sees through the eyes of billionaires and influencers. God sees from the perspective of the people at the bottom. A comparison.

Actually, the first Christian documents – Paul’s letters to the Thessalonians – used language indicating that Jesus is God 275 years before the Council of Nicaea.