There is a Thing Called Ladder Theology? Yes, indeed there is a thing called ladder theology. It is a term coined by the late Lutheran theologian Gerhard Forde. He explained it in his seminal 1972 work Where God Meets Man. As you might surmise from the name, ladder theology is …

A String of Unlikely Heroes It is a deep truism that God often, if not always chooses the most unlikely people to serve in great and momentous ways. Scripture is filled with a veritable string of such unlikely characters. From almost the beginning God chose Abraham, a rather nondescript person …

Tradition, Tradition My yearly task during the Great Christmas Decoration Explosion that occurs around Thanksgiving is to mostly bring the boxes up from the basement and return the empty ones from whence they came. It is my wife’s task to place all the decorations just so. It’s not that I …

Annual Thanksgiving message: As we finish up another season of Thanksgiving in America, I cannot help but feel thankful. I sit stuffed to the gills after a series of stunningly bad food choices, having left neither the couch nor my lounge pants since Wednesday evening. In the dictionary under “cosseted …

So Many Prophets The term prophet is often bandied about in society, especially when we discuss current politics and culture. So and so is the prophet of a new era or the next generation. She is the prophet of a new awareness. Most of the time in looking back those …

Fear Baby Fear The entirety of the response to the pandemic has been driven by fear. This was simply an intensification of a preexisting trend in our culture. We can see the phenomenon of “helicopter” parents, the concept of “microaggressions” and “triggering” words. The very notion of words being an …