Why You Need Church

A 2023 report by Pew Research Center reported that 13 percent of Americans reported attending in-person worship services in the summer of 2020. I was not one of them. Until we had a vaccine, I did not want people gathering in groups.

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Gracefully Broken

“The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise” (Psalm 51:17, ESV).

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LGBTQIA+ and the Political Divide

To many, the Sexual Revolution evokes nothing more than memories of the summer of love, the emergence of contraception and the “freedom” for sexual expression. However, after years of warnings by Christian cultural commentators, the Sexual Revolution has overtaken the mainstream.

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The Nudge

“But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8, NIV).

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Bulvarism and Bias: Responding to Flawed Scholarship

In early 2023, I read the article “Gender bias in postgraduate year one pharmacy letters of recommendation” published by in the Journal of the American College of Clinical Pharmacy. The analysis contained methodological flaws, and it presented conclusions that were not derived from the evidence presented.

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Fickle Faith

He is one of our few remaining World War II heroes at 97—a retired pastor, still alert, able to walk with a cane, writing great stories about his life and sharing wisdom that only comes with experience.

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The Status of Frozen Children

Anyone paying close attention to current events has likely heard about the Alabama Supreme Court decision declaring that frozen embryos created through IVF are legally children under the state’s constitution. The legal case arose when a person unauthorized by an IVF clinic destroyed frozen embryos from three Alabama couples who later filed a lawsuit against the clinic.

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ACOG Doesn’t Speak on My Behalf

In this statement, ACOG is calling for “the ability of every patient to access abortion when they need it…,” while further claiming that “abortion is an essential part of comprehensive healthcare.” As a practicing OB/Gyn, I again cannot stand by and let this organization speak on my behalf.

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I Need to Do Better

He is one of our few remaining World War II heroes at 97—a retired pastor, still alert, able to walk with a cane, writing great stories about his life and sharing wisdom that only comes with experience.

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On the Side: March 2024

I hear Wade talk about his interviews for residency sometimes. I hear him describe flying to a centralized location in the Southeast and renting a car. I hear him describe traveling from program to program to hit as many schools with one flight as possible.

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Sophisticated Lies Endanger Everyone—Black, Brown, White and Other

Language can be cloak and dagger—particularly when that “old serpent” is speaking who is none other than Satan. He is the father of lies, as noted in John 8:44. He is the original liar. Adam and Eve experienced Satan’s craftiness firsthand when he asked Eve in Genesis 3:1, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?” and then went on to lie and say to her in Genesis 3:4, “You will not certainly die” (NIV).

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The Squeeze

Is the juice worth the squeeze? This is a reasonable question to ask about following Christ, and Jesus encouraged His followers to do so.

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Eutychus

The battle between faith and science is a battle in people’s minds, not between two great opposing forces. In my discussion with her, she shared her faith in God and the spiritual. “I’ve seen spiritual healing,” she said. I then tried my best to lay out for her my understanding of the integration of faith and science in healing.

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Multiplication

I received this message from a young Albanian physician I had not seen for many years: “Hello, brother. As I am reading your book (which I borrowed from my brother’s wife). I cannot help but thank you for your mission in Albania. In March 2016, I came to the Lord in one of the conferences in Durres. That led to my mom, her mom, my brother, my cousin, my father, my other cousin coming to Christ!” As I learned more, it became clear I had not been the one who led her to Christ, but I had been present as part of the team. What amazes me about her story is the beautiful way God works if we just show up.

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Painful Redirections

There are times we want things badly: good things, even Godly things, that God has not chosen for us. The tearing away of those dreams is painful but not evil if we leave God in charge.

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The Case for Conscience

The United States has long been a beacon of freedom in the world, and it has held the hope of a better life even before it was an independent nation. We see this exhibited in history when the Pilgrims left Europe in 1620 to come to the New World.

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How Then Should We Live?

What does the Bible say about the body in light of today’s gender confusion? How then do you think we should live? While not new, a form of a gnostic dualism is ascendent in our world today. Our postmodern culture has rallied behind a two-tiered view of the human being, promoting the mind or consciousness at the expense of the body.

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The Ethical Healthcare Professional

No one would choose to be treated by an unethical healthcare professional. So, how do we as established healthcare professionals go about teaching the next generation of caregivers how to behave ethically, and what are some of the most important areas we should focus on in education?

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Broken Legs and Grenades

We can’t always hide from the huge cruelty of life. It’s always there, mixed in with the great wonder and joy of life—a brokenness seeping up up from the soil of our fallen world.

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On the Side: February 2024

We all need advice, and from time to time we may even look for it. The question is, where should we seek it? The Internet? The Bible? Our pastor? A friend? A family member? Where can a Christian find godly advice?

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An Invitation to Sign the IFTCC International Declaration on Therapeutic and Pastoral Choice

The International Foundation for Therapeutic and Counselling Choice (IFTCC) and their global community of member mental health and medical professionals have authored “An International Declaration on ‘Conversion Therapy’ and Therapeutic Choice,” proposing that “Signatories of this International Declaration call upon our governments, local authorities, human rights, media and religious organisations, to recognise that the right to self-determination is an established principle of international law, and therefore must include the right to shape and develop one’s own sexual identity, feelings and associated behaviours, and to receive support to do so.”

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Beautiful Mornings

We can’t always hide from the huge cruelty of life. It’s always there, mixed in with the great wonder and joy of life—a brokenness seeping up up from the soil of our fallen world.

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900 Professors?

I am responding to the January 2024 article in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology entitled, “A statement on abortion by 900 professors of obstetrics and gynecology after the reversal of Roe v. Wade.”

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Enlightening the View

Since the overturn of Roe v. Wade by the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization in June 2022, the acrimony within the abortion debate has increased exponentially, accompanied by a marked increase in the amount of misinformation contained in the debate.

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The Core of Things

The Core of Things | Weekly Devotions by Al Weir, MD | “She was a medical student and a new Christian. She came with a small group of Christian students from Macedonia to our Albanian student evangelism conference. Small in stature, smart and soft-spoken, she rarely spoke up in our small discussion group of mixed Muslim, orthodox, atheist and agnostic students.”

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Texting Prayers

I caught myself misusing my prayer life today. A friend whose mother is very ill sent a text and asked for prayers. I immediately replied by text, “Praying for you now,” and I lifted up a quick one.

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Discussing Difficult Cases

As Christians in healthcare, we must hold fast to the belief that all life holds value, and all human beings are made in the Imago Dei. To veer from that belief is to allow room for the lie that some lives are not worth living.

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What Good Has Christianity Ever Done for the World?

This Advent season and new year, it’s fitting to reflect on what came of Christ’s coming. How did it change the world for the good? Foundational tenants—fundamentals, if you will—are key, and those of Christian biblical faith ignited a cultural revolution that continues to this day.

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Eternity in Our Hearts

Our Christmas schedule was different this year. Helped by a day off for bronchitis, I had more time to reflect; and I did so, remembering many healthcare professionals, and others, who have impacted my life for Christ through the moments I have spent with them.

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On the Side: January 2024

I finished school many years ago. My children are almost grown. My youngest is a senior in high school. There are no grandchildren on my horizon to date. Yet, I still put the new crayons in my shopping buggy at least once a year. There is just something wondrous about a brand-new box.

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First Things First

The family structure, grounded in a foundation of parental respect, is at the center of God’s plan for humanity. The more we mess with it, the more our culture will crumble. The more we honor it, the more we will be individually blessed. It comes with a promise.

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Goldilocks Faith

Blaise Pascal said, “I do not ask for health or sickness or life or death: I ask that you dispose of my health, sickness, my life, and death—for your glory, for my salvation, for the use of the church and the saints of which I am a part…Give to me, take away from me, but make my will conform to yours.”

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3 Big Questions to Ask About Your Will

A completed will or trust provides a wonderful opportunity to honor God and provide for your family. Through it, you can also give in a meaningful way to CMDA and the other causes close to your heart.

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Intentionality

Yesterday morning was Saturday. I was on call for morning rounds. On my drive in, I asked the Lord to let me speak the name of Jesus to at least one person that day. After rounds, I made it to the second half of my granddaughter’s basketball game, and then a friend called.

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Stirring Up Fear Unnecessarily

This article questions the ethics and the challenges to female physicians’ well-being of hosting professional meetings in states where abortion is restricted. 

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Why God Invented Swimming Pools

A Christian physician, whom I should not name for safety reasons, told me of God’s faithfulness to complete that which He had started. He and his wife have led a ministry to Afghanistan for many years that included medical care, personal evangelism and hospice development. When the U.S. pulled out of Afghanistan, their ability to continue ministry in person was torn from them.

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On the Side: December 2023

We drove to Mississippi from Chicago while in medical school. We had three under two and knew we probably wouldn’t make it the entire way in one day but weren’t exactly sure how far we would make it. And so, we decided to drive until we had to stop. It was a great decision right up until the triplets were past exhausted and there was not one hotel room to be found. Not one.

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Pitching Our Tents in This Present Darkness

This clashing of worldviews calls me and other believers to confront darkness more often than we would prefer as we demonstrate and promote God’s truth and love in a world that pursues destructive answers for healing in the brokenness of our fallen humanity. Such healing only comes through a spiritual transformation, such that we are conformed to the mind of Christ (Romans 12:2).

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MRI

“He put a new song in my mouth, a hymn of praise to our God. Many will see and fear the Lord and put their trust in him” (Psalm 40:3, NIV).

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The 100th Birthday Party

Permit me to humbly suggest the following: If you are ever invited to a 100th birthday party, consider attending. And if the centenarian is one of your dearly departed mother’s most treasured friends, do whatever you can to attend.

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A Song from the Heart

“He put a new song in my mouth, a hymn of praise to our God. Many will see and fear the Lord and put their trust in him” (Psalm 40:3, NIV).

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A Reflection on Friends, Mortality and Eternity

I was surprised that the death of a celebrity, whom I did not know and was not likely to ever meet, caused such deep reflection. And yet, these kinds of moments in life always seem to do that. It’s as if we forget from day to day that our human bodies are, in fact, mortal and our days here are truly numbered.

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Four New Books Dealing with Transgenderism

Publications exposing transgender ideology and its capture of academics, medicine, the entertainment industry, government and the business sector are picking up steam. What we might term the breakout books, those that caught traction and burst onto the public square addressing and countering the whirlwind of transgenderism.

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A Brilliant Machinist

Somehow in our fall from grace, we were distorted to become creatures to suck life in, like this vacuum cleaner. Our natural, fallen selves are wired to take from the world, to seek good things for ourselves and possess them, to suck in all that our hearts long for.

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Who’s Calling Who a Blob?

Well, there they go again: science reporters are calling human beings “blobs.” Not blobs as in the classic science fiction movie that wreaked havoc and death on unwitting victims. No, they are back to labeling innocent embryo-age human beings as mere “blobs of cells.”

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My Way, Not Yours

I’ve been discouraged over my “effectiveness” for Christ recently. It seems that, though I love Him, I am not accomplishing the work for Him that I imagine. At 10 a.m. this morning I took a 15-minute break and kneeled in the hospital chapel, just asking for Him to do what He wanted with me for His service.

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Tucker Gets It—Abortion is Child-Sacrifice

In case you missed it, political commentator Tucker Carlson was speaking at an event hosted by The Center for Christian Virtue back in September in Cleveland, Ohio, where he brought up two key ballot initiatives Ohioans will be voting on in early November.

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On the Side: November 2023

As I am writing this article, it has been just a few days since hostilities erupted in the Middle East. Every morning I have to get up and see what they are doing over there. It is unquestionable that any information I have today will be obsolete by the time you read this. I don’t know what else to say except, “Pray for the peace of Jerusalem: ‘May they prosper who love you’” (Psalm 122:6, NASB).

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Taking It with You

She’s had two cancers and is free from both now. She moved to be near her daughter, but her daughter has rejected her. “I have to love her from a distance. She got a new job and bought a Range Rover. Now she acts like I never loved her. She don’t know that you can’t take nuthin’ but your good works with you when you die.”

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Making God Smile

It was a number I didn’t recognize and answered too late. When I called back, no one picked up. Later the same number called me and said, “Dr. ___?” I recognized her voice from the past immediately. I called her name and said, “You must have butt dialed me.”

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Pride Kills

Pride deceives us in many ways. One of the more dangerous expressions is to overestimate our competence and skill. In high-risk situations, the consequences can be disastrous. Too often, greed is offered as a simplistic explanation. The truth runs much deeper.

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Almost Eaten

Last week I felt inspired. I delivered the first half of a Christian-life lecture to local healthcare students, and it was smooth.

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On the Side: October 2023

God knows everything He is planning to bring about in our future. He is the One who makes a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland. We may look around us and see nothing of that promise, but He encourages us to look anyway and to see with the eyes of faith.

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Birthday Trip

The hospital notified me today that one of the residents I supervise had more than 600 “view alerts” on her computer that had not been addressed. Alerts contain critical labs, radiology results or notes from other physicians who need a response.

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The Hat Trick of Giving Stock

What a wonderful miracle marriage is! God brings two different people – with unique personalities, experiences and opinions – and binds them together in a beautiful, holy union. 

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Childhood Bereavement—Our Response

It’s been reported that a total of 8 percent of all children in the United States will experience death of a parent by the time they reach the age of 18 years. If the endpoint of this analysis is 25 years, a total of 14.7 million will experience this tragedy in their lives.

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Forbearance

The hospital notified me today that one of the residents I supervise had more than 600 “view alerts” on her computer that had not been addressed. Alerts contain critical labs, radiology results or notes from other physicians who need a response.

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Not Progressive, Not Conservative, But Christian

Whenever I hear the word “polarization,” I can’t help but think of cell division. Specifically? Anaphase, which perhaps you remember from high school biology. All the organelles have been doubled and are bunched at the edges—in moments it will split down the middle and become two cells.

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Contending as One

We were sitting at a small table in the cheap furniture section of the hospital employee dining room, my first chance to get to know her: a young, chief of in-patient psychiatry, mother of three small children, follower of Christ—me: an old guy, chief of oncology, 50 years married, grandfather of six, follower of Christ.

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No Man is an Island

Have you ever felt like an island? Do you have days when you talk to people all day but, when the day ends, no one knows anything more significant about you than they did when it began?

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Oxymoronic

He spoke of the Lord often as we addressed his malignancy, acknowledging Jesus as the one he trusted with his health. But somehow, he sidetracked us into a conversation about his sexual exploits in ways that were natural to him but too graphic for me. I was somewhat perplexed by these two lines of conversation that seemed a bit oxymoronic.

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What’s in an Age?

I was visiting a patient in the rehab center who had undergone a knee replacement. He was fine except for the slow pace of rehab. His wife was there, vivacious, energetic, appearing far younger than her stated age, which I will not share. I asked her how they had met.

 

“We actually met in church,” she shared. “You know, I am older than he. When we started dating, he wouldn’t tell me how old he was. I called the church office to find out, but they wouldn’t tell me either. By the time I found out he was five years younger, I was already in love, and the rest is history.”

What difference does age make anyway?

Quite a bit, actually…

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On the Side: September 2023

I met my best friends from high school this summer in North Carolina. It was our third annual trip together—we have been to a couple of beaches, but this year we chose the mountains.

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Turn Around

“And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and with all your mind and with all your strength” (Mark 12:30, ESV).

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Zoom Encounter

“But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well” (Matthew 6:33, NIV).

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The Conductor

He spent a month with me as a fourth-year medical student, an Alaskan who loved the Lord.

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Of Course I Cared

Before we could even get to his chronic leukemia, he opened the conversation, “My father passed.”

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Who Do You Believe, and Why?

When we are attempting to think rationally in appropriate syllogistic lines, for us to draw accurate conclusions from news items we see on television, in the news and on social media, the information we receive as the input to our process must be accurate, and to a great extent must be complete.

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The Unexpected

As a physician, I was not shocked at my dear friend’s death, but I was surprised by the way I discovered it. It was clearly unexpected when I walked into his room.

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On the Side: August 2023

God knows everything He is planning to bring about in our future. He is the One who makes a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland. We may look around us and see nothing of that promise, but He encourages us to look anyway and to see with the eyes of faith.

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The Way Back

Whatever the cause of the separation, God wants us back. He stands with open arms, running toward us, like the father of the prodigal. All it takes from us is surrender.

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On the Side: July 2023

Several years ago, there was a house down the street from us that had the most amazing landscaping! Ok, I’ll admit it, I experienced a little “flower envy” every time I walked by with the dogs. I may have even sneaked a pic or two to save for when spring came around again so I could plant similar flowers. 

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Belonging

“People without our Lord believe the world belongs to them or to some unnamed, unapproachable power out there. They live reactive lives, responding to the actions of fickle circumstance—making plans, and changing them as the world changes around them, hoping to steal something good and meaningful from an Olympian-like god of Fate who has never existed and never cared.””

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He is or He Ain’t

“I greeted him in church, a father who had lost his daughter abruptly to cancer. I could not help but put my arms around him and tell him how sorry I was. Six pews down, I was surprised to see a friend who had missed church for months due to a prolonged illness that had stumped the specialists. She shared, “Two weeks ago, five of our Bible Study class came over, laid hands on me and prayed for me. I have been improving ever since.””

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Face-planting

I wish his statement was more true of me. One of our gospel’s major principles is that followers of Christ are called to give. It’s clear in the teachings of Jesus, “Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you” (Matthew 5:42, NIV).

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Giving

I wish his statement was more true of me. One of our gospel’s major principles is that followers of Christ are called to give. It’s clear in the teachings of Jesus, “Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you” (Matthew 5:42, NIV).

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Branded

I could tell he was more uncomfortable than usual by the way he was seated, leaning forward, head down. His malignant disorder was doing fine, but his body was racked with arthritis. The orthopedic specialist had given up on improving his chronic pain. 

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Teaching Points from the Educator Award

At the 2023 CMDA National Convention my wife Evelyn and I were honored, blessed and quite humbled to receive the 2023 Educator of the Year Award. This all happened under the watchful eye of Princeton’s Professor Robert George, whom I have admired for years (and no, I did not go full fan boy and embarrass CMDA, but we did talk privately a while). I was given a few minutes to share some thoughts which I am now offering you, my colleagues.

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The Psychology of Wokeness

Courtesy: Quillette, 2018

The cultural phenomenon known as “wokeness” is grounded in human pride, and it is expressed through moral absolutism, moral grandstanding and the will to control.

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The Best Life

My wife had put up with me for many years before I took her to Spain recently on our 50th wedding anniversary. Seville is an amazing town founded by the Phoenicians, developed by the Carthaginians and conquered by the Romans as a sea port in southern Spain before the river connecting it to the ocean silted out.

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