Integrity is the quality of holding together under pressure, in all circumstances, as a whole. A building’s integrity lies in its ability to stay upright and undeformed through wind and storm and weight and age. A plan’s integrity lies in its parts all cohering....

In a world so rough and fractured as this we poor sons of Adam create, it is easy to despair of finding true relationship, to despise all search for it, to expect treachery and therefore eschew covenant. I cannot be....

Above all else, men desire to be rulers of themselves. This statement holds for the righteous and the wicked- except that these two understand rulership in very different ways. The righteous man would rule....

He who finds a wife finds a good thing and obtains favor from the Lord. [ Proverbs 18:22 ]   The two great passions of mankind are marriage and death. In ‘marriage’ is gathered not merely itself but family, sex, and all relationship with our fellow man, all authority and cooperation, the smallest thing which society is an outworking of; in ‘death’ is gathered not only itself but sin, violence, and all relationship with God, in relationship to whom all righteousness and unrigh

Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruits. [ Proverbs 18:21 ]   James 2 is the standard passage for pressing home the power and danger of the tongue, but God didn’t wait till the New Testament’s latter half to give us that knowledge. In the Garden, God’s tongue brought life and the potential of death (Gen. 2:17; Rom. 6:23, 7:7-10). In the Garden, Adam ordered the world with his tongue (Gen. 2:19). Then, in the Garden Adam and Eve

Modernity is the domain of the expert. In the eyes of many, white lab coats ought to rule the world, deciding policy in government and running the church....

Strong relationships hold strong, and when they break, they break badly, brutally, and apparently irreparably. So when brothers find themselves in enmity....

People are a study in contradiction. On the one hand, we tend to want control, to decide what happens to us and to everybody else. On the other hand, we hate responsibility, in our fallen state; we strongly dislike....

Getting both sides of the story is an absolutely essential part of argument and judgement; it’s also a choice we don't like to make. We get a first impression, and we stick with it, for pride and other reasons. Particularly if we've....

One principle of reading Proverbs is that recognition is not endorsement. The way things are is often not the way they should be. Proverbs deals with reality; Proverbs teaches us....

Fire does not burn without fuel; smoke does not rise without fire. Every result has a prerequisite and a cause, leading back to Him....

A man's spirit will endure sickness, but a crushed spirit who can bear? [ Proverbs 18:14 ] A heart attack can be triggered by shock, spiritual triggering physical. Anger or despair can be elicited by a long-running injury, physical triggering spiritual. In daily life, a ray of light, impacting the eye, can cause the spirit to perceive beauty- of a flower, a story, another person. Words, heard or written, can bring wise counsel, and wise counsel can become words. We humans liv

If one gives an answer before he hears, it is his folly and shame. [ Proverbs 18:13 ]   The classic error in math, the one that plagues me at least, is swapping one sign for another. Subtraction becomes addition, addition becomes multiplication, a negative number becomes positive. On multiple choice tests, too, my constant bane is missing that one ‘not’ which changes the expected answer 180 degrees. I’m sure that you too can think of times, academic or social, where you’ve an

Who really understands mankind? Our hearts are obscured even to us, and we all know that we haven’t the faintest shot

We’re all sinners. I sin, you sin, your kid sins, your parents sin, and the president of the United States sins (though I don’t know what we expected from that last one). On this earth....

Christianity is antithetical to laziness. For us individuals, though, it’s easy to try and live our lives in moral equilibrium. We go from one day....

If a wise man’s lips spread knowledge, and we desire to be wise, we must choose to follow the course of the wise man and spread knowledge (what type of knowledge?). We must not be like the fool....

The common line of modern church thought is that the promises of the Old Testament in regards to prosperity in this present life were for that time and not this. Or it’s the prosperity gospel, where God dispenses prosperity....

While we as humans are clearly more than the sum of our neurotransmitters, this group of chemicals do play a significant role in our experience of life, running feelings, thoughts, and actions, the stuff make us who we are. Have you ever pondered....

Man does not have the right to ignore true authority. God’s authority over man is without exception and absolute (1 Sam. 2:10). It should be to our joy, then.....