We want a kind of knowledge that eliminates mystery and puts us in charge of [the] world. Above all, we want to avoid a knowledge that calls for our own conversion. …

The sin, the error, is not our hunger for knowledge—and the way back to Paradise is not via intentional ignorance (despite some latter-day Christian claims). Adam and Eve were driven from the Garden because of the kind of ...

Before Shane Hipps became a Mennonite pastor, he was a former strategic planner in advertising. In both vocations, he has learned a great deal about how technology quietly shapes people. His latest book, Flickering Pixels, helps Christians understand some of the spiritual dimensions of that shaping. In an interview with Christianity Today magazine, Hipps discussed the damage being done by the internet. ...

Jesus warned against piling up money on earth, because money comes and goes. A sad reminder of the vulnerability of money came with the June 2009 news story of an elderly woman in Israel who had hidden her life savings of one million dollars in her bed mattress. Every night she slept on one million in American dollars and Israeli shekels. She must have felt very secure with her fortune literally inches ...

Early in his career, many had hoped A. N. Wilson, a brilliant philosopher, would become the next C. S. Lewis. But as a young man, he began to wonder how much of the Easter story he accepted. By his thirties, he had lost all religious belief and publicly repudiated his Christian faith, becoming an atheist. He soon embraced the role of a harsh, cynical critic of Christianity and any faith in God at ...

Education is not the filling of a pail but the lighting of a fire.

—William Butler Yeats, poet and dramatist, 1865–1939

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 ...

If you have any knowledge at all of human nature, you know that those who only admire the truth will, when danger appears, become traitors. The admirer is infatuated with the false security of greatness; but if there is any inconvenience or trouble, he pulls back. Admiring the truth, instead of following it, is just as dubious a fire as the fire of erotic love, which at the turn of the hand can be ...

More people remember the ingredients on America's favorite burger than remember the ingredients in America's favorite book, according to the latest study.

In anticipation of the new animated movie release of The Ten Commandments, Kelton Research conducted a poll of 1,000 people to determine basic knowledge of the Ten Commandments. Eighty percent of those polled knew that a Big Mac had two all-beef ...

Most people are afraid of the unknown. Those things we have never seen or experienced can seem overwhelming.

On the old maps, back before the world was understood in modern terms, cartographers, map makers, would put down what they knew, but at the edges of the map, beyond which they had no knowledge or understanding, they would often write, "Beyond here, there be dragons."

Woody Allen's September is about an emotionally fragile woman, Lane (Mia Farrow), who returns to her country home in Vermont to recuperate from a nervous breakdown. An ill-fated summer romance with a man named Peter—and a visit from her over-bearing mother, Diane—throws her into further emotional turmoil. In this scene Peter (Sam Waterston) and a friend of Diane's, Lloyd (Jack Warden), ...