The movie Jesus Revolution opened in theaters in February and took the #3 spot nationally, earning over $15 million the first weekend. By mid-March, it had surpassed $40 million in gross revenue, an eye-catching sum for Hollywood productions. And after eight weeks in theaters, the film continues to thrive as it shifts to DVD and streaming platforms. That’s good news, not only for Christians, but for our country as well. What’s it about? Jesus…
Trends in academia tend to trickle down into the public square as students graduate, take jobs, and bring these ideologies into the marketplace. That’s how we got Critical Race Theory in the public schools. That’s why revisionist history is reshaping the American narrative. And it’s why we are suddenly so confused about what we are allowed to say. You can’t say that! Colleges and universities are spearheading a ban on words and phrases that they…
Even a web site like “Mercury: Your Daily Emerald Blog,” which is a hodgepodge of New Age, self-centered tripe, can get it right now and then. Or, at least, come close. A 2016 blog on the site offered “7 Lessons from Famous People About Forgiving Others.” The “famous people” ranged from Jennifer Aniston to Joel Osteen to Oprah Winfree to Nelson Mandela. And the reasons the celebrities talked about forgiveness varied as much as the…
At the turn of the twentieth century, historians unearthed a trove of letters by Abraham Lincoln that certified one of the best-known character traits of the sixteenth President—his remarkable ability to contain his anger, his refusal to permit bitterness to take a foothold, and his ability to practice forgiveness for the greater good. Lincoln lived his adult life as simultaneously one of America’s most famous and most ridiculed public figures. He had plenty of enemies…
Who would think that a hug would go viral? This one did. And for good reason. On October 1 Amber Guyger was convicted of killing Botham Jean as he sat in his apartment watching a football game. At the time of the shooting, Guyger was an off-duty Dallas police office, and she claimed that she did not know she was in the wrong apartment when she walked into Botham’s home and shot him. Convicted of…
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter in February, Kelsey Grammer, the actor best known for the TV sitcom “Frasier,” was asked about the swift departure of Rosanne Barr from the reboot of her show last year. Considering a restart of his own popular show, Grammer was encouraged by the initial success of Barr’s reboot. But in May of 2018 Barr insulted Valerie Jarrett, the former Obama administration official, with a comment on Twitter that…
What does it take to understand grace? Nancy Seaman is a small lady, friendly and good-natured, known by her neighbors in their placid Detroit neighborhood as a dedicated stay-at-home mom. And she’s a murderer. In 2004 Nancy Seaman killed her husband, Bob. And the murder was assertive. Brutal. Seaman hit her husband with a hatchet and stabbed him with a knife more than twenty times in their suburban garage. Seaman readily admits to the grisly…
Last week Facebook revealed that Cambridge Analytica had mined the data of around 50 million users’ profiles due to Facebook’s lack of security, and its own complicity with Cambridge. But for five days Mark Zuckerberg and other Facebook officials were strangely absent from the media. No word on their thoughts, no declaration of alarm, no acceptance of responsibility. And no apology. Quickly the clamor for an apology grew deafening, and angry subscribers starting exiting Facebook.…
Nick Lutz has a unique approach to rejecting an apology. And I’m glad I am not on the receiving end of it. Lutz is a student at the University of Central Florida. After an eight-month relationship, he broke up with a girl who, apparently, felt that she had slighted him and wanted to make things right. So she wrote him a four-page letter to apologize. Hand-written and heart-felt. Lutz’s response? He pulled out a red…