Years ago I taught Crime and Punishment to high school seniors and the main character Raskolnikov describes the moment before he murdered the pawnbroker: “I saw clear as daylight how strange it is that not a single person living in this mad world has had the daring to go straight for it all and send it flying to the devil! I…I wanted to have the daring…and I killed her.” Scholars who study fundamentalism describe the process that moves a person wrestling with internal conflict to a sense of clarity that can sometimes be lethal. When everything that was confusing – even contradictory – is suddenly clear, there is a rush of…

Brennan Manning the author of “The Ragamuffin Gospel ” died this week after many years of declining health. We never met and unlike thousands of others, I’ve not read the book. But in the last several months a number of his quotes have been sent to me by friends. He wrote a good deal about the dangers of thinking less of yourself than God does. But he also wrote about “thinking more highly of yourself than you ought” as Paul said in Romans. Because I have been watching the effects of younger ministry leaders being constantly pressured to build larger and larger “platforms” for their brand and message,” I remembered…

Normally we think about an epiphany being a sudden rush of insight. Of course sometimes they are. But others are more the result of a long and silent process that has been working away internally. It’s not an eruption or a blinding flash but pieces of a puzzle coming together. I was in a dark theater watching a performance of “Over the River and Through the Woods.” It is a play by Joe De Pietro, and a friend John Kelly played the lead character. De Pietro scripts the poignant story of an immigrant Italian family in New York whose grandson Nick has made a decision to move away – far away…