In The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien writes about a kingdom called Gondor which for many years has had no king. While waiting for the rightful heir to come and claim his throne, a series of stewards has been placed in charge of the land. The steward in charge at the time of the events described in the book is named Denethor. He has two sons, Boromir and Faramir, both of whom figure prominently in the ...

Each year, video game developer Eric Zimmerman hosts a contest in which designers must come up with a plausible video game concept based on an unusual theme. According to Zimmerman, the purpose of the challenge is to push for video games that set themselves apart from the usual offerings based on monsters, street fighting, or sports. Well, it's safe to say that if any of the concepts presented in ...

Remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would strongly be tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, ...

Years ago I traveled to Ecuador and spent a couple of weeks traveling in the mountains. The Quechua Indian people I met there lived amidst the most mind-numbing squalor. The disease and disfigured bodies were heartbreaking. The bugs and stench were everywhere. People were living in a hole in the ground and calling it a house. They were feeding on rotten food and prizing garbage as possessions. But ...

Natalie, a 22-year-old woman from San Diego, California, has decided to pay for her Masters Degree by selling something that is precious and belongs only to her: her virginity. She got the idea from her sister, who was able to save up enough money for her own degree by working as a prostitute for three weeks.

Natalie realizes that the idea may seem appalling to some, but she is unconcerned: "I know ...

The Waltons was a popular television series in the 1970s that told the story of a large family living in Virginia during the Depression era. In this particular episode, one of the Walton children, John-Boy, aspires to publish his own county newspaper—The Blue Ridge Chronicle. He enlists the help of his younger brother, Ben, and they soon stumble upon their first headline story. The county judge, ...

Life involves making lots of decisions about right and wrong, and God has given us a conscience to help us make those decisions. Unfortunately the human conscience doesn't always give accurate readings. It's like a thermometer in an urban area. If you put an outdoor thermometer on the back of your house, and your house sits beside an expressway or a blacktop parking lot or another building, your thermometer ...

Pachomius was an Egyptian soldier won to Christ by the kindness of Christians in Thebes. After his release from the military around A.D. 315, he was baptized. Serious about his new faith and determined to grow, Pachomius became a disciple of Palamon, an ascetic who taught him the self-denial and solitary life of a religious hermit.

In early Christianity, the model of devotion was the recluse dedicated ...

Eight Men Out is the historical drama about the infamous Chicago White Sox scandal of 1919. When many of the players felt cheated and demoralized by owner Charles Comiskey's penny-pinching and tough-handed ways, gamblers influenced several of them to lose the World Series in exchange for a large amount of money. A newspaper reporter eventually exposed the scandal. A sympathetic jury later found them ...

Eighteen hundred years or so of Hebrew history, capped by a full exposition in Jesus Christ, tell us that God's revelation of himself is rejected far more often than it is accepted, is dismissed by far more people than embrace it, and has been either attacked or ignored by every major culture or civilization in which it has given its witness: magnificent Egypt, fierce Assyria, beautiful Babylon, artistic ...