“When a man is revengeful, it is amazing how cunning he is to find opportunities to strike out.  When enmity thoroughly possesses his soul and pours its venom into his very blood, he will become exceedingly crafty in the means he uses to provoke and injure his adversary” [Charles Spurgeon (19th century British preacher), Spiritual Warfare in a Believer’s Life].

Ahhh, vengeance.  How true are Spurgeon’s words, that we are never more cunning and crafty as when we wish to inflict pain on someone.  We can come up with the most biting lines and the sneakiest ways to damage someone’s reputation.  We can damage them with ice-cold snubs and stares or red-hot words of anger and violence. 

Is it any wonder, in light of this, that Satan is first introduced in the Bible in this way:  Read more »

If you get The Hartford Courant at home, you probably saw the grim-faced couple on the front page, with the headline underneath that read “What Was He Thinking?”  Above the picture, it read “Experts Struggle to Understand Spitzer’s Alleged Romp with Call Girl.”

My initial reaction, to be honest, was to laugh.

Now, don’t get me wrong – I certainly wasn’t laughing at the fact that Eliot Spitzer, Governor of New York, got caught soliciting a prostitute, Read more »

I was reading through an e-newsletter from the Christian organization Sojourners last Thursday when a headline caught my eye:  “The fallout from Ted Haggard.”  Oh no, I said – what happened now?  As I read the article, I heard about the breaking story that was only in its infancy but was clearly going to get uglier over the next few days – Pastor Ted Haggard, pastor of the megachurch New Life Church of Colorado Springs and President of the National Association of Evangelicals, had been accused of participating in drug-fueled trysts over the past three years with a gay male escort.  What made the story even more shocking, of course, is that Pastor Haggard has been crusading against gay marriage across the country, getting amendments prohibiting gay marriage on the ballots of many states for today’s election.  And all the while, he had apparently been struggling with the very thing against which he had been crusading.

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