On those few occasions when a sound bite is also an aphorism, it deserves a little good press. I can’t think of a current example, so here is a sound bite that is exactly 1600 years old:
For the good make use of this world in order to enjoy God, whereas the evil want to make [...]

In this article I will head straight for the tough stuff and tackle Chapter 3, The Age of Our Universe: Six Days and Fifteen Billion Years. This is mostly a summary of today’s scientific conclusions, and after we get a good layman’s grasp of this, we may be able better to judge whether it can [...]

In Bang! (I), I suggested that it might be intellectually and spiritually very satisfying to be able to show that the scientific and biblical views of our time about creation are converging. This is what author Gerald Schroeder set out to show in The Science of God, the convergence of scientific and biblical wisdom [...]

Big, that is. My logical mind is convinced that there was a Big Bang that marked the origin of life and the origin of man. My logical mind is also convinced of an eternal realm beyond time and space and matter. God exists. I read how some religious writers interpret the first chapter of Genesis, [...]

In this insane world, one yearns for sane words. Many years ago I found these helpful words of wisdom, and I made a now-fading copy (typed on a real typewriter) and stuck it in my Bible. They are words from a little devotional book that I first discovered in 1984, according to the date inside [...]

I’ve had a used paperback of The Confessions of St. Augustine around since 1957. I don’t know how many times I have dipped into it, and it never “clicked” with me. Grandson Kyle Schmidt took time off from his seminary grind in mid-August to spend a day fishing with me at the Lake of the [...]

I ran across these words attributed to C.S. Lewis, from his essay, “Learning in War-Time.” It makes me think of the stuff spewed out by our media every day. The anti-pollutant, according to friend Lewis, is simply to read old books.
We need intimate knowledge of the past. Not that the past has any magic about [...]

Forgive the irreverent title (if it is in fact irreverent) and bear with me for a moment. It’s just another book that has got me under its spell. It will pass.
Talk about an off-beat book! It was recommended to me almost a year ago, and it sounded perfectly horrible. It still may be a horrible [...]

So said British historian Robert Payne of the United States of America in 1949. Now, over 60 years later, I wonder if this was written at the peak of our national power and that we’ve been declining ever since. What do you amateur historians think? What other societies or nations might be in competition for [...]

That’s what we were singing and dancing to in 1948, you will be amazed to know. It occurs to me that that year may have represented the apogee of American ascendancy on the world scene, which also may mean that we have generally been going downhill for the last 61 years. Anyone want to argue [...]