Articles for tag: C.S. Lewis

October 27, 2011

Christian Standard

You Must Read This . . . Timeless Relevance

By Jim Eichenberger Counterfeit Gods: The Empty Promises of Money, Sex, and Power, and the Only Hope that Matters Timothy Keller New York: Dutton, 2009 Timothy Keller is well read without coming across as pompous. He strongly defends a biblical faith without being combative. He appeals to young adults despite being 60-plus and bald! A prolific writer of late, Keller defied the common wisdom by planting a church aimed at preaching “muscular” Christianity to a young urban audience in Manhattan. Founded in 1989, the Redeemer Presbyterian Church has more than 5,000 attendees weekly and is the “mother church” of congregations

May 23, 2011

Christian Standard

How Could a Loving God Send Anyone to Hell?

By Jeff Vines Editor”s note: Five years ago we published a series of articles by Jeff Vines that dealt with three difficult questions that are often stumbling blocks for Christians as well as nonbelievers. The articles described a long conversation Jeff had with a circle of skeptics he met in an Australian restaurant. With the current discussion about the reality of Hell, we felt it helpful to reprint the third article in this series. To get all three articles (the first are “How Can We Believe in God with So Much Evil in the World?” and “How Can You Say

October 27, 2010

Christian Standard

Read a Book!

By Matt Proctor I love books. As a kid, I read everything””westerns, science fiction, Laura Ingalls Wilder, and J.R.R. Tolkien. Most kids think Disneyland is “the happiest place on earth,” but for me it was the public library. I was such a bookworm that, when I got in trouble at home, my parents would ground me . . . from reading! It wasn”t until I enrolled at Ozark Christian College that I discovered reading books could actually be a spiritual discipline. Growing up, books were entertainment””a way to feed my imagination, but I had never considered that the right books

April 25, 2010

Christian Standard

Literature as a Tool for Spiritual Growth

By Marvin D. Hinten I was led to Christ by Ralph Waldo Emerson. Most people are led to Christ by someone they know””a friend or relative””not an individual who”s been dead for a hundred years. And, for obvious reasons, most people are led to Christ by a Christian. But I became a Christian through reading a poem by Emerson in a high school English class. So I have experienced firsthand the power of literature to connect readers with God. Most Christian leaders, when thinking of books they “ought to read,” think of nonfiction. One should read theology and church management

September 6, 2009

Christian Standard

FROM MY BOOKSHELF: Seeing Ourselves as Others See Us

By LeRoy Lawson Barry Hankins, Francis Schaeffer and the Shaping of Evangelical America (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008). Frank Schaeffer, Crazy for God: How I Grew Up as One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right, and Lived to Take All (or Almost All) of It Back (Cambridge: Da Capo Press, 2007). If it hadn”t been for Francis and Frank Schaeffer, the car wouldn”t have hit me and I wouldn”t have gone to the hospital. If the elder Schaeffer hadn”t been such a prominent Christian leader in the 1970s, I wouldn”t have been crossing the street in front of the Indianapolis

August 30, 2009

Christian Standard

The Celebration of Congregationalism

by C. Robert Wetzel As a young man I spent too much time thinking about what was wrong with the church without reflecting enough on how much I was blessed in being a part of it. And when I thought of church, it was both the local congregation and broader expressions of church. There was, of course, an idealized version of what the pure, New Testament church was supposed to be, but if the ideal existed, it must be in another town, another state, or another country. Thankfully, the older I grew the more I began to see what is

July 12, 2009

Christian Standard

FROM MY BOOKSHELF: Seeing Ourselves as Others See Us

By LeRoy Lawson A. J. Jacobs, The Year of Living Biblically: One Man”s Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2007). Robert Jewett, in collaboration with Ole Wangerin, Mission and Menace: Four Centuries of American Religious Zeal (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2008). “O wad some Power the giftie gie us To see oursels as ithers see us!” So wrote the Scottish poet Robert Burns in his little poem, “To a Louse.” Who hasn”t at one time or another wished the same””for other pesky people in our lives whose reformation we most dearly desire?

April 5, 2009

Christian Standard

Keep Reading!

  By Derek Duncan I have a theory. If you stop reading, you die. Maybe I should expand on that just a little. If you stop reading, you stop growing, you stop learning, and then you die. Our advanced and technologically driven culture is causing people to read less and less. Sometimes I wonder if the innovative media we have created (radio, television, movies, Internet, cell phones) actually are contributing to illiteracy. We are satisfied with looking at things passively instead of poring over a written text that forces us to think. Mortimer Adler, in his classic How to Read

December 23, 2007

Christian Standard

“˜Carols” for any Season of Suffering

By Matt Proctor Max Lucado tells of Mrs. Smith, an elderly widow who loved her parakeet Chippy. His songs brightened her lonely days. One day while vacuuming, Mrs. Smith noticed Chippy”s cage was dirty. Opening the little door, she inserted her vacuum hose . . . when the phone rang. As she turned to pick up the phone, the hose shifted slightly and””slurp!””sucked poor Chippy down into the sweeper”s bowels. Horrified, Mrs. Smith dropped the phone, tore open the sweeper bag, and dug through the dirt until she found the now-brown little feathered lump. Chippy wasn”t breathing, so she did

December 18, 2005

Christian Standard

A Labyrinth Leading to God

By Naomi Kouns On the last leg of a flight from Ethiopia to the United States last year, the airline confused a seat assignment and 7-year-old Addison Fehl was seated not with his parents, but next to a stranger. During the boarding activities Addison read aloud from his book, while the man sitting next to him looked on, smiling. You can imagine the man”s surprise when the plane began to taxi and Addison closed his book, clasped the man”s hand and said, “It”s time to pray.” Addison is right, it is time to pray. Not corporately or as a church,

December 4, 2005

Christian Standard

Listen to the Flip Side

By Cora Alley When I was a “groovy” teen in the 1960s, I used to save up every cent I could beg, borrow, or earn to buy the latest singles that came out on those saucer-sized 45 rpm records. I would gingerly lift the ebony disc out of its protective paper sleeve and place it on the turntable on my record player that looked like a square hatbox with a handle. After listening to my treasured song over and over until cries of protest came from every corner of the house, I would pick the record up and carefully reinsert

September 4, 2005

Lee Snyder

postmodern world

Ambushed by an Open Door

A professor’s classroom story becomes a warning and a guide: cultural change has made communication harder, and church technique shifts can carry hidden trade-offs. Hold tight to what endures while evaluating change with wisdom.

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