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Commonsense Christianity

I live in a society that is desperately afraid of being alone. So alarmed are we of solitude that we define normalcy by how many groups we belong to: “I go to church, Sunday School, and small groups.” “I volunteer through our Give-Back-to-Others program at work.” “I belong to many civic organizations, and we do good things for the community. I…

Those of you who have lived with, or through, a fifteen-year-old girl know that adolescents of this age generally fight self-esteem issues. Call it hormones, peer pressure, society, or fat days, 15-year-old girls need a lot of love and reassurance that they are beautiful, beloved people. When one of our progeny was 15, in the midst…

Sixteen years ago, my husband the Norwegian Artist and I had an improbable dream: we wanted to find a place in the country and raise our kids there. I say improbable because 1) we had four kids and 2) we lived on one extremely moderate income. Most people we knew had half the amount of progeny and…

When I was growing up, I heard the mantra, “You are what you eat!” all the time. It’s not said so much these days, which is ironic since much of what we eat is grown with pesticides, herbicides, and insecticides; processed with chemical additives and preservatives; and tinkered with genetically and medically. If we are…

Too many of us are acquainted with the word, “backsliding,” which, in its purest form, means to lose one’s resolve to follow a chosen path. A recovering alcoholic who re-enters the bar circuit is an example — surrounding oneself by temptation, and resuming behavior that one is trying to overcome, isn’t a particularly successful business plan. Within Christianity, backsliding applies, theoretically, to…

We live in a time and place of people fascinated by degrees, credentials, and man-made accolades, to the point that, when unimaginative employers look for people to fill the cubicles, they are more concerned with a person’s university background than they are with any ability to actually perform the work required. (As an aside, these same professional job recruiters, who…

When I returned home from work last week, there was a message from the bank on the answering machine: “Please give us a call at your earliest convenience.” That was it, and because of all the myriad of privacy laws protecting me from getting additional information — readily available to every government agency on the planet — about my financial…

Should you question authority? You bet. Generally I avoid words like “should,” “ought,” and “must,” because they are frequently misused to manipulate people into doing things that they don’t want to do, as in, “You should go to Sunday School.” “You ought to tithe regularly to your local church.” “You mustn’t question everything you’re told…

Recently, I spent an hour on the phone with a scam artist who was pushing an extremely expensive, vastly overrated SEO service onto an unsuspecting client of mine. A 30-second Internet search brought up four top stories about the questionable ethics of this organization. Nonetheless, the client wanted me to talk to the representative about the company blog —…

Not everyone’s Monday is actually on Monday. But regardless of what day your week starts, it’s highly likely that it’s not a smooth transition from your day off to your day on. This low point of our week, when we grab the last 45 seconds in bed before we really have to tumble out of it,…
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