Free Republic

Some argue that Jesus' command that we ought to love our neighbors as ourselves presupposes that self-love is ultimate to our purpose as human beings. Just turn on a daytime talk show—any talk show—and you're bound to hear this oft repeated maxim if you listen long enough. But contrary to the popular understanding, I believe Jesus' point is that we already love ourselves. So much so that we are infatuated with self in both narcissistic self-congratulating categories as well as in self-loathing.… Honesty about the human condition is prerequisite for good news. Until we're able to see that there is...

I know how pious this is going to sound and I hate, more than you know, to sound pious, but I’m going to say it because it is true. I’m not good and I struggle with a whole lot of stuff…but I am a man of prayer. I simply could not survive if I couldn’t go before the throne. It’s the reason I get up early in the morning (coffee and Jesus!)... What I’m going to say here isn’t from an expert or a contemplative. I’m just a guy who really loves Jesus and likes hanging out with him. So...

On March 11th 1917, General Maude's British Indian army marched into Baghdad and took as prisoners almost 10,000 Ottoman troops. If you had to locate the birth of the modern, post-caliphate Arab world in a single event, that would be it. Over the next few years, London and Paris drew lines in the sand and invented the western Middle East, and the states we treat with today - Iraq, Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia. The British certainly understand the significance of March 1917: When they returned to Baghdad to topple Saddam a decade ago, they named their new military headquarters in...

The truth that is built into the very nature of the universe is one of sacrifice. You will find it in every culture and in every nation and among every people. The principle is this: Without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sin (Hebrews 9:22). The Bible takes this cultural understanding and applies it to the reality of Christ: “the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29). In other words, for some reason (and nobody knows why), God prepared the entire world for the understanding of the substitutionary atonement of Christ—on...

Radical. Epic. Revolutionary. Transformative. Ultimate. Extreme. Emergent. Alternative. Next. Impactful. On The Edge. Beyond. Awesome. Legendary. Innovative. Breakthrough. Everything has to have an exclamation point to catch our attention these days. For many of us, the worst word in our vocabulary is “ordinary.” Who wants a bumper sticker that announces to the neighborhood, “My child is an ordinary student at Bubbling Brook Elementary”? Who wants to be an ordinary person in an ordinary town, a member of an ordinary church with ordinary friends and callings? Our life has to count. We have to leave our mark, a legacy, make a...

It was a warm day, as it typically is in Florida, and Kelsey McLain, a then 25-year-old in the first trimester of pregnancy, along with her mother, entered the parking lot of the closest abortion clinic near her home. At first, the car couldn't push much further than the driveway, as sign-wielding protestors approached the front of her vehicle. Her mother was behind the wheel, and with her foot on the brake, she gave the road blockers a choice of moving, or getting run over. They conceded, and moved to the side—but McLain's interaction with the protesters didn't end there....

<p>Thomas Eric Duncan has the distinction of being America's Patient Zero - the first but not the last person to develop Ebola symptoms in the United States.</p> <p>Is he a US citizen? No, he's Liberian.</p> <p>Is he a resident of the United States? No, he landed at Washington's Dulles Airport on September 20th, in order to visit his sister and having quit his job in Monrovia a few weeks earlier.</p>

Christian philosophy of boldness should include the believer’s rights. In fact, it would be incomplete without a list of believer’s rights. I used to teach that a believer has no rights…I was wrong. In 1 Corinthians 9:1-6, Paul wrote, “Am I not free? Am I not an apostle? Have I not seen Jesus our Lord? Are not you my workmanship in the Lord? If to others I am not an apostle, at least I am to you, for you are the seal of my apostleship in the Lord. This is my defense to those who would examine me. Do we...

We Christians are a pretty uptight bunch of people. You know it’s true. I’m tired of it and I think God is too. I notice that he is often blushing. The thing is… If we’re going to be like Jesus and follow him, we shouldn’t be weenies about it. If we’re angry, we should burn with it. If we’re going to show compassion, we should have a broken heart. If we’re going to cry, we should sob. If we’re going to laugh, it shouldn’t be a little girl’s giggle, but a big belly laugh. And if we’re going to sin,...

"Why me?" Such is the plaint, often, of people who are suffering. Rabbi Levi Meier offers an approach that is so direct and obvious that it is virtually never thought of. The obvious, often, is missed precisely for staring us in the face. Meier is a clinical psychologist and hospital chaplain in Los Angeles, author of "Ancient Secrets: Using Stories of the Bible To Improve Our Everyday Lives." He writes of a hospital patient who had never prayed. "He had thought of prayer as a recitation of a lot of memorized verses; he had thought praying as a form of...

On a cold Wednesday evening in January 2009, Josh Miller was finishing his 8:00-to-5:00 shift as an automotive detailer at a garage in Johnstown, Pennsylvania. It was just like any other day; he was tired and ready to go home. But that evening, his life would change forever. In just a few hours, Miller would find himself to be one of thousands of people embroiled in an ongoing national medical debate. After work, Miller picked up his two-month-old son, Rhys (pronounced "Reese"), from the restaurant where his fiancée worked, and headed home with the boy. The two ate dinner and...

The standoff between a Nevada rancher and the U.S. government escalated Wednesday when protesters confronted federal agents tasked with the chore of rounding up approximately 900 “trespass cattle.” The confrontation, captured on video, resulted in one protester, the rancher’s son, being hit with a stun gun while another, the rancher’s daughter, was pushed to the ground. One woman said federal officials struck her with their vehicle. “You have no right to be here!” a female protester shouted at agents. One of agents warned the demonstrators to back up or they would get bitten by their K9 unit. “Don’t threaten a...

A controversial document that suggests that Jesus of Nazareth had a wife is most likely ancient and not a modern forgery, according to a paper published today in the Harvard Theological Review. The papyrus fragment, known as the "Gospel of Jesus's Wife," has been the subject of widespread debate since it was discovered in 2012 because it includes the phrase "Jesus said to them, 'My wife...'." It also mentions that "she will be able to be my disciple," which led some to question whether women should be allowed to become Catholic priests. The Vatican has previously said that the document...

I’m a big fan of Mike Rowe, ever since his “Dirty Jobs” days. That was my default TV show, before my present inexplicable fascination with home-remodeling programs began. Every episode you’d see Mike throw himself into some unbelievably nasty line of work, cracking jokes as he was bathed in everything from raw sewage to bird droppings. There will never be a show with more feces per minute of running time. We might say that “Dirty Jobs” was cut from the same cloth as home-remodeling shows, and all the other reality programming that covers blue-collar America. I like to think their...

Chicago's Daley Plaza, long home to privately maintained Christmas and Hanukkah displays, now has a giant letter "A" representing the atheist and agnostic community. Nestled between baby Jesus in his manger and a towering menorah with seven candles illuminated, the 8 1/2-foot-tall letter and accompanying signs erected for the first time last week are meant as a counterweight to the religious displays, according to an official with the Freedom From Religion Foundation, the organization responsible for the exhibit. "The month of December does not just belong to religion or Christianity," said Annie Laurie Gaylor, co-president of the Wisconsin-based foundation. "We're...

If the last two presidential elections tell us anything, it's that Republicans don't succeed with candidates who lack clear vision and conviction consistent with the party's conservative platform. Given this, I understand why Democrats think that New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie should be a leading contender for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination. But why would any Republican see a typical political operative like Christie as presidential material? With the information we have in front of us today, there is every reason to believe that 2016 will be a year of opportunity for Republicans to run a serious and exciting reform-minded...

On Saturday, Nov. 16, the United States marks a milestone: the 80th anniversary of when President Franklin Delano Roosevelt recognized the Soviet Union and "normalized" U.S.-USSR relations. It is a day that should live in infamy. But it's a day that hardly anyone has ever heard of. I certainly hadn't before researching my book, "American Betrayal." As I studied the event, however, it became clear that it was on this day 80 years ago that what I call "American betrayal" began. It is the date on which the U.S. government institutionally learned to lie. After the Bolsheviks seized dictatorial powers...

According to some estimates, there are more than 100 million traffic signals in the U.S., but whatever the number, how many of us would like Washington, in the name of public health and safety, to be in sole charge of their operation? Congress or a committee it authorizes would determine the position of traffic signals at intersections, the length of time the lights stay red, yellow and green, and what hours of the day they can be flashing red. While you ponder that, how many Americans would like Washington to be in charge of managing the delivery of food and...

Sue Hobart, a bridal florist from Massachusetts, couldn't understand why she suddenly developed headaches, ringing in her ears, insomnia and dizziness to the point of falling "flat on my face" in the driveway. "I thought I was just getting older and tired," said the 57-year-old ... Months earlier, in the summer of 2010, three wind turbines had been erected in her town, one of which runs around the clock, 1,600 feet from her home. "I didn't put anything to the turbines -- we heard it and didn't like the thump, thump, thump and didn't like seeing them, but we didn't...

If a government shuts down in the forest, and nobody hears it, that’s the sound of liberty dying. The so-called shutdown, as noted last week, is mostly baloney: 83 percent of the supposedly defunded government is carrying on as usual, impervious to whatever restraints the people’s representatives might wish to impose, and the 800,000 soi-disant “nonessential” workers have been assured that, as soon as the government is once again lawfully funded, they will be paid in full for all the days they’ve had at home. But the one place where a full-scale shutdown is being enforced is in America’s alleged...