Affliction is both a medicine if we sin, and a preservative that we sin not.

—Richard Hooker, Anglican priest and theologian (1554-1600)

I recently read an article about 2009's Tyson, a documentary about the life of former heavyweight champion Mike Tyson. Tyson is remembered for being one of the most feared boxers of all time, not just for his knockout punch—he knocked out 44 of his 50 losing opponents—but also for his anger, his unpredictability, and the impression that he was a powerful man wildly out of control. In 1992, ...

The word judgment carries negative overtones for a good many people in our liberal and postliberal world. We need to remind ourselves that throughout the Bible God's coming judgment is a good thing, something to be celebrated, longed for, yearned over. It causes people to shout for joy and the trees of the field to clap their hands. In a world of systematic injustice, bullying, violence, arrogance, ...

Across northern England and Scotland, a do-or-die battle is being waged against an aggressive invader: the American gray squirrel.

Researchers have discovered that the gray squirrel is threatening Britain's red squirrel by destroying its habitat and spreading disease. Miles Barne, chairman of the London-based European Squirrel Initiative—yes, there is such a thing—says Victorians first ...

Several years after inventing radar, Sir Robert Watson-Watt was arrested in Canada for speeding. He'd been caught in a radar trap. He wrote this poem:

Pity Sir Robert Watson-Watt,
strange target of his radar plot,
and this, with others I could mention,
a victim of his own invention.

FTT—my wife first introduced me to those initials. Nancy was a nurse when I first met her. There were many parts of nursing for which she did not care. But she loved diagnosis. To this day there cannot be too many episodes of Grey's Anatomy or ER for her. (Oprah either, but that's another story.) She is constantly telling me her private diagnoses of people—even total strangers—based ...

In 2008, New York Magazine ran a comprehensive article about research concerning kids and lying. In one study researchers gathered a group of children together and read them a version of The Boy Who Cried Wolf where the little boy is eaten by the wolf because he lies. In a survey of adults taken before the study, most thought the negative consequences in The Boy Who Cried Wolf would lead the children ...

We could not bear to live in a world where wrong is taken lightly and where right and wrong finally make no difference. Spare me a gospel of easy love that makes of my life a thing without consequence. Atonement is not an accountant's trick. It is not a kindly overlooking; it is not a "not counting" of what must count if anything in heaven or on earth is to matter. God could not simply decide not ...

On the first day teaching his class of 250 college freshmen, R. C. Sproul carefully explained the assignment of three term papers. Each paper was due on the last day of September, October, and November. Sproul clearly stated there would be no extensions (except for medical reasons). At the end of September, some 225 students dutifully turned in their papers, while 25 remorseful students quaked in ...

From 1991 to 2007, Fuller Theological Seminary's School of Intercultural Studies conducted a survey among 750 Muslims who had converted to Christianity. Those surveyed represented 50 ethnic groups from 30 different countries. Here were the nine most-cited reasons for conversion to the Christian faith:

1. Christians practiced what they preached.

2. Christians appeared to have loving marriages in which ...