Podcast: Gospel in Life

What can the music of John Coltrane tell us about the relationship of  art to God, and of our own work in general to God? We can all learn quite a lot from Coltrane, actually. And what we can see in his approach to his music applies not just to musicians and artists, but to…

In Ecclesiastes, the author takes the position of a practical secularist. And he asks, “If this life is all there is, then is life meaningless?” The writer says if this life is all there is, if there’s no God and no meaning that you have to submit to, then you’re free to construct your own…

Consider how much of your time, how much of your life, is built around your work. Yet, so many of the books and materials that look at what it means to live as Christians only focus on our evenings and our weekends. How are we to be a Christian on the job? We’re going to…

Some of you may know I was actually a teacher at graduate school seminary for five years. Then I said, “Get me back in the ministry,” where there is no grading papers and no one knows whether people are learning or not. But the gospel changes everything . . . even education. We’re looking now…

If you’re Christian, what is the rationale for being an actor? Why should Christians be actors? How should Christians who are actors or writers or choreographers or directors think about their faith and their work? To answer that, we need to look at the power of stories, at why we connect with and are overwhelmed…

When we talk about creativity, we mean artists of course. But we also actually mean entrepreneurs—whose creativity is as important to what they do as anything else. So thinking about creativity, what does Christianity have to say to it? The answer is a lot.  Your deeper beliefs about the meaning of life and the world…

How can practicing the law be shaped by the Christian faith? And how can we reimagine lawyering? If you’re reimagining the legal profession, you don’t want to just be a Christian who happens to also be a lawyer. You want the way you practice the law to be shaped by your faith.  For this reimagining,…

A lot of people have an incredibly negative view of marketing and advertising. Not too long ago, I heard somebody say that advertising is the first profession: in the Garden of Eden, the serpent said, “you need that apple.” They were saying that marketing is creating need in somebody else for your profit, whether they…

The Bible says probably 20 times more things about money than it does about sex, maybe more than that. So if you’re trying to know the Bible, you’re gonna know a little bit of something about money. We all have our own filters. We all have mental maps, assumptions about God and the universe and…

Living the Christian life is not a matter of willpower and self-effort. Because of the Holy Spirit in our lives, we have the potential for radical and organic growth and change.  2 Peter talks about moving from selfishness to unselfishness, from enslavement to freedom, from foolishness to wisdom. It’s talking about inward character change, about…