By Alan Dowd To get an idea of how sex-soaked our culture is, try to look at life from the perspective of an innocent child of, say, 6 years of age. He is bombarded by suggestive, sexualized images: the magazines at the grocery store checkout, TV shows celebrating the hookup culture, the way women […]
By Alan Dowd The world will know we are Jesus’ followers not by the fish decals on our bumpers, but by the love we show for one another. Trying to be a better reflection of Jesus, I recently turned to one of the Bible’s authoritative passages on love: 1 Corinthians 13. And I found […]
By Alan Dowd If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle. Although these […]
by Alan Dowd It’s odd that the Bible doesn’t tell us much about Joseph, the husband of Mary. After all, Jesus spent many—perhaps most—of his formative years with Joseph. In a patriarchal, male-dominated society like that of first-century Judea, we might expect more detail on this fill-in father figure. But the Joseph of the Gospels […]
by Alan Dowd We hear it all the time in our self-absorbed, apathetic, detached world: “Whatever!” Teenagers say it, with a melodramatic roll of the eyes, to their parents. Parents say it, with a weary wave of the hands, to their kids. At its best, it’s a verbal way of shrugging the shoulders. But at […]
