Many of us act as if repentance is a matter of the will. [But] we can't "will" ourselves into change. We can't "will" ourselves into feeling contrition or remorse. Repentance isn't doing something about our sin; rather it means admitting that we can't do anything about our sin. We cannot woo ourselves into anything but the most external form of repentance.

All our effort, striving, and willpower have ...

The first time I visited Rwanda, I went looking for monsters, albeit a different category of monster—the kind that isn't relegated to B movies. I had heard about the 1994 genocide that had left one million people dead—tortured, raped, viciously murdered—and somehow I thought it would be easy to spot the perpetrators. I naïvely assumed I would be able to look men and women in the ...

We serve a God who created our humanity, weeps at the fall of our humanity, became our humanity, and is redeeming our humanity.

—Author Glenn Stanton

Most of us spend the first six days of each week sowing wild oats, then we go to church on Sunday and pray for a crop failure.

—Fred Allen, U.S. comedian (1894–1956)

The doctor said, "If you are a believer in miracles, this would be one."

The doctor was talking about Alcides Moreno. By every law of physics and medicine, Moreno should have died. Moreno was a window washer in Manhattan. He rode platforms with his brother Edgar high into the sky to wash skyscrapers. From there he could look down to see the pavement far below where the people looked like ants. On ...

Michael Shermer, publisher of Skeptic magazine and author of The Science of Good and Evil, writes:

I once had the opportunity to ask Thomas Keneally, author of Schindler's List, what he thought was the difference between Oskar Schindler, rescuer of Jews and hero of his story, and Amon Goeth, the Nazi commandant of the Plaszow concentration camp. His answer was revealing. Not much, he said. Had there ...

In 2006, Yoko Ono placed a full-page ad in the New York Times calling for December 8—the anniversary of John Lennon's death—to be made a global day of healing.

"One day we will be able to say that we healed ourselves," Ono promised, "and by healing ourselves, we healed the world."

Have you ever gotten yourself in big trouble—really, really big trouble? So big you can't even conceive of how much trouble you're in? That's what 31-year-old Jerome Kerviel is accused of. Jerome worked for a prestigious bank in France. He had worked his way up from the back room to being one of the men who did the bank's investing. In January 2008 he was caught allegedly committing investment ...

The travel, the connections, the interviews, the applause of the congregation, the organizational power, the perks and privileges, the honor: gone! The introit to people of position and power: gone! The opportunity to say an influential word each day into the lives of teachable younger people: gone! The certainty that God has anointed one for such a time as this: gone? And what will grow each day ...

The real problem is in the hearts and minds of men. It is not a problem of physics but of ethics. It is easier to denature plutonium than to denounce the evil spirit of man.

—Albert Einstein, German-born theoretical physicist (1879–1955)