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Emptiness can alternatively mean too little or too much. It is sometimes unclear where emptiness is distinct from excess.

After the anointing at Bethany, Judas asks why the fragrance wasn't sold and the money given to charity. A more apt question might be why Mary didn't use it on her brother Lazarus, dead just a few days before.

Efforts to dismantle the U.S. welfare state rely on the myth of the redemptive Depression. It's an erasure and repackaging of a great crisis.

The day after Valentine’s Day, the BBC offered the world an unexpected and unusual love story. Nearly 40 years ago, two Polish-born philosophers began a correspondence, one that continued for more than 30 years and ended with a visit the day before one of them died. 

To err is human, Alexander Pope famously said in his Essay on Criticism. Yes, it certainly is. And the more experience I have with this being human business, the more evidence I am afforded of this unpleasant truth. The season of Lent is about self-examination and repentance, so I decided to grit my teeth and take a bit of an erring inventory.

Like Adam, we may end up treating God as if God were at the periphery. But where there is no center—or where we become the center—the circumference of life disappears.

Matt talks to the pastor of Riverside Church in Webster Groves, Missouri, about liberal-conservative distinctions, using failure well, and growing slower.

For the last six weeks I wore an orthotic boot on my left foot. I fractured a small bone in my ankle while walking my dog one sunny morning in January. I wasn't doing anything exciting or high-risk. I just stumbled and rolled the foot enough to get a fracture instead of a sprain. I have never broken a foot, ankle, or leg before, so I was unaccustomed to the extra weight of the boot.

The history and struggles of the Nigerian movement known as Boko Haram are more complicated than they first appear.

Do women plant churches differently than men? Do they use different methods or a different style?

I'm a bit of a congregational song nerd, and the church music folks I know talk about things like "sound pools" and "heart songs." Sound pools are what Mennonite musician, teacher, and hymnologist Mary Oyer and her students (who became my teachers) describe as the body of music that a culture or community shares.

Didn't know him. Not at all. Never met him probably, although he might have been in a classroom sometime long ago when I visited his high school. I didn't know his wife or his family either, nor had I ever met them that I know of. But he was just a kid, too young to die. His obit is so lovingly written that I could only hope to do it that well myself.

Forty percent of the food produced in the U.S. ends up in landfills. Meanwhile, people are hungry. Daily Table tries to address both problems.

Many years ago I became an advanced open water diver. If you’ve never been scuba diving, it is the most peaceful, beautiful experience. It’s just you, the sound of your breathing, and all the wonders the ocean has to offer. Two of the reasons I chose to learn to dive are that I am claustrophobic and I am afraid of sharks. You’d think that a person with both these things would avoid diving, right? Yes, except that I cannot tolerate my choices being ruled by fear.

Theological schools occupy a unique place within higher education. With relatively small enrollments and modest endowments, seminaries feel the cutting edge of change. Online learning, new degree programs, and nontraditional scheduling proliferate. And rumors abound that one school or another might shut down.