Peacemakers are honored insofar as they speak about peace as something already victoriously won that we can celebrate as part of our glorious past or as something that will be won in the other world. They continue to be dishonored insofar as they continue to point out injustice, hypocrisy, and suffering. They are noble when their actions bring to light problems far away from us; they are an odious ...

In his book Sermon on the Mount: A Foundation for Understanding, author and professor Robert A. Guelich writes of the role Christ-followers play as peacemakers:

The peace intended is not merely that of political and economic stability, as in the Greco-Roman world, but peace in the Old Testament inclusive sense of wholeness, all that constitutes well-being…

The "peacemakers," therefore, are not ...

My grandparents lived in Salem, Arkansas, which was an all-white community in the Ozark foothills. One day in the early 1960s, Grandpa was strolling across the town square on his lunch break from his job at the post office. As he walked by the bus depot, a friendly voice called out to him. …

Glancing to his left, Grandpa found himself looking into the face of a man he hadn't seen for almost ...

Muckraking is not gospel work. Witch-hunting is not gospel work. Shaming the outcast is not gospel work. Forgiving sin is gospel work.

— U.S. pastor, scholar, author, and poet (1932—)

Fred Winters, the pastor of First Baptist Church in Maryville, Illinois, was shot and killed during a Sunday service on March 8, 2009, by a troubled young man. A week after the tragic event, his wife, Cindy Winters, was interviewed by Julie Chen of CBS's Early Show. When asked about her husband's alleged killer, Terry Sedlacek, Winters spoke only a message of forgiveness—a message quite fitting ...

Ghassan Thomas leads one of the few public churches that emerged [in Baghdad] after Saddam Hussein was toppled. His congregation erected a sign on their building that said "Jesus Is the Light of the World," but the church was raided by bandits who left behind a threat on a piece of cardboard. It read: "Jesus is not the light of the world, Allah is, and you have been warned." The note was signed "The ...

Not long after we moved [into our first house in California], my wife, Janie, and I picked up on the tension between a couple of neighbors. One was a very outspoken churchgoer, while the other was an unbeliever. I knew I was in the hot seat when the unchurched man struck up a conversation with me as we were both working in our yards.

"Say, Steve, aren't you a pastor?" It seems implicit in the public's ...

Psychologists have found an intriguing way to study what it is that we really like and dislike. It's called "affective priming." They print a word over a bouncing dot on a computer screen. If people's response is positive, they push any key with their left hand; if negative—any key with their right.

Too discover our deeper responses, researchers will use subliminal stimulation. They'll print ...

This past summer, a friend of mine named Greg put together a mini high school reunion when he went back to Indiana to visit his parents. He hadn't seen many of his classmates in over 17 years. Needless to say, they had a riot reliving their glory days and finding out what was currently going on in everyone's life.

As the night was winding down, Greg noticed that his friend Debbie was getting teary-eyed, ...

In her book Living Beyond Yourself: Exploring the Fruit of the Spirit, author and speaker Beth Moore recalls a particularly insightful moment in her life:

I will never forget watching an evening talk show featuring the story of the parents and killer of a young college student. The killer was his best friend. The weapon was high alcohol content inside a speeding automobile. …

What made this ...