You can attempt to “manifest” your desires for your purposes, or you can ask Jesus to manifest himself and his perfect will in your life and influence (Romans 12:1-2). But you cannot do both.

Few Americans blame God when bad things happen in their lives, according to a new Pew Research Center survey that looks at how people respond to suffering in the wake of a pandemic that has killed more than 750,000 Americans.

Even as it has become more and more obvious that sexual orientation is not fixed, the idea that it is is an innate, unchangeable component of identity has already served its purpose, shifting the moral norms of society and establishing this new way of thinking about sexuality. So, today, most Americans either believe that sexual orientation is something not chosen or that it is something that should never be questioned.

This week, Washington, D.C., hit its 200th homicide for the year. This is the first time since 2003 that the city has reached that many homicides.

What makes Thanksgiving difficult for you this year? Are you dealing with grief over the loss of a loved one? Challenges in your health, family, or finances? Guilt over the past or fear of the future? In collating gratitude with suffering, we have four logical options we can view as a Thanksgiving spectrum.

What would happen if we thought about every dollar we spend this season as an expression of our faith? We would spend differently. Would we spend our money in ways that help create a more just local economy, in ways that begin to address the racial wealth disparity and the needs of our neighbors? From what I understand of Scripture, that seems like a more fitting way to celebrate the birth of Christ.

On Tuesday, a jury in the U.S. District Court ordered 17 white nationalist leaders and organizations to pay over $26 million in damages for the violence that occurred at the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville in 2017.

On Tuesday, Darrel Brooks Jr. was charged with five counts of first-degree intentional homicide after he drove his red Ford Escape into a crowd of marchers during an annual Christmas parade in Waukesha, Wisconsin.

As our society continues its post-Christian slide into secularism, holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas have become secularized as well. One can go the entire Christmas season without seeing a mention of Christ’s birth in secular culture; Thanksgiving has become far less about gratitude to God and far more about football and feasting. Thus we should not be surprised when even gratitude becomes generically secularized. But we should not overlook the illogic of this trajectory nor the power of thanksgiving when it is properly directed.

A former employee of a Texas church was sentenced this month to five and a half years in prison and ordered to repay her employer after she was convicted of embezzling $450,000 to pay for personal expenses.