Cities are more than points on a map. They possess personality. They have influence, and great cities are powerful symbols. New York and London are financial centers. Washington, D.C., and Moscow represent power. Paris embodies fashion and cuisine. Las Vegas, Boston, Hong Kong, and Rome each symbolize something greater than their populations. Cities hold powerful leverage in our minds. They become the embodiment of an idea or a set of values—forces that can strongly attract or deeply repel – like Sodom and Gomorrah. The book of Nahum is not merely an attack on a city but on a concentration of a particular kind of evil and degradation that ultimately infects…

Two of the challenges for a new Christian foundation are finding a focus—and then a name. There are dozens of foundations whose names and missions are defined by the verse in Micah: “He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” Families soon discover that loving justice and mercy while practicing humility leads them naturally toward working with and loving the poor. That is far more complicated because, like genuine love of any kind, it is hard work, filled with frustration, failure, miscommunication, and misguided attempts to fix…

“Catch for us the foxes, the little foxes that ruin the vineyards, our vineyards that are in bloom.” — Song of Solomon 2:15 All relationships face threats—small issues that threaten to uproot what has been carefully planted but remains fragile. In the Song of Solomon, the reference is to a marriage, but this truth applies just as easily to friendships, organizations, even nations that become divided and distrustful. There are always little foxes at work on the roots of trust. You and I may not be, like Solomon, in the early stages of romance, but perhaps we should consider the things that chew away at relationships that are mature—strong, yet…

A friend recently mentioned that he is re-reading Graham Greene’s The Power and the Glory. It’s the story of a failed priest on the run from the police. He is friendless, homeless, and searching for some sense of purpose in his life. Hiding from his calling and from decisions he has made in the past, he is, ironically, incapable of not being a priest and ministering to people—even at the risk of his own life. Tormented by guilt, he spends the whole novel both in flight and in pursuit. It is so much like the story of Jonah. I don’t know whether Graham Greene had Jonah in mind when he…

The phone rang this morning and I saw a number I did not recognize. “Fred, it’s Jeff Bezos. Got a minute?”  “Jeff, good to hear from you. I’ve been wondering about what you are thinking in buying the Washington Post. I heard George Will say it was probably an intellectual challenge. Others have said this is what rich people do. Something like your own ‘Jurassic Park’ except you buy dinosaurs instead of creating them. Everyone down here is talking about it.”  “I know, and I’m a little surprised myself. I thought I was just another bidder for buying lunch with Warren Buffett but it went another way. So, I’m on…

There is so much that is complicated and even contradictory about families. The book of Obadiah is about one of those families – Jacob and Esau or as we know them later – Israel and Edom. It begins with Esau mocking his own birthright in exchange for a bowl of soup. Later, he loses the blessing to Jacob who dresses in Esau’s robe to fool their father. Esau is so enraged and vindictive that he not only vows to kill Jacob but in a childish gesture of spite for his parents he goes to Ishmael, the outcast son of Abraham, and marries his daughter. But like many stories in the…

After the catastrophic effects of Hurricane Katrina were first coming to light, one prominent Christian figure pronounced, “This is one wicked city, OK? It’s known for Mardi Gras, for Satan worship. It’s known for sex perversion. It’s known for every type of drugs and alcohol and the orgies and all of these things that go on down there in New Orleans. There’s been a black spiritual cloud over New Orleans for years.” In the midst of COVID-19 one pastor announced that it was a fulfillment of his prediction of God’s day of judgment on the world’s violence against children through pedophilia, human trafficking, school shootings, and abortion. “All idols will…

When the plot of a show needs to fill in the background of the story, the line “years earlier” pops up at the bottom of the screen. That tells us something in the past helps explain the present. Were we to do that here, the line would read “150 years earlier,” because Israel’s present predicament began long ago when the single Kingdom of Israel split into two parts: Israel in the north and Judah in the south. The turning point was what the writers of Scripture call “the sin of the house of Jeroboam,” the first king of the north. Based on his astute reading of human nature, Jeroboam devised…

The story of Belshazzar is like Esther, Samson or David and Goliath where the punishment fits the crime. There is no waiting for justice as they got what was coming to them. We are fable people from childhood. The fox gets the grapes. The tortoise wins the race. It’s all so neat and simple which explains why in uncertain times when surrounded by moral ambiguities and the villains are winning with no hint of judgment in the near term we return to these stories to encourage us that, as Martin Luther King said, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” In the account the…

Growing up Southern Baptist, there was one phrase impressed on me from childhood: the priesthood of all believers. I never knew its source or context, but I understood it to mean no one could tell me what to do. I was free to interpret Scripture as I pleased (as long as it didn’t conflict with the Baptist Faith and Message), and I needed no person to intercede between me and God. I was a free agent. What I didn’t understand, though, was how Scripture actually defined the role of a true priest. All I knew was what my Baptist culture had reacted against. In that telling, the priest was not…