Creative Destruction

The Real Deal From a distance, the curved glass china cabinet in our dining room looks like the Real Deal. Friends admire it, so it surprises them to learn it’s a reproduction. It might surprise you to learn that much of modern Christian faith – our message, method, and mindset – is a reproduction. Yet…

Esperanto and E*TRADE

by Mike Metzger & John Seel A difference with a distinction What’s the difference between Esperanto and E*TRADE? Other than the fact that you’ve probably never heard of Esperanto, there is a deeper difference between the two. It’s a difference with a distinction. Esperanto helps only a handful of people, while E*TRADE is part of…

Tough Love

Leveraging love The financial crisis gripping the country leaves some people desiring to decapitate a few capitalists. But the fact is, many who follow Christ are also culpable. For years we have wagged our finger at capitalism and consumerism, all the while ignoring “our most urgent missionary task,” according to one wise missionary. The task…

The Other 83%

The rest of us When you think of Britain, you think tea drinkers, right? When you imagine China, you imagine communists, right? In both cases, you’d be partly right but mostly wrong. So when you hear that 94% of Americans believe in God, what do you imagine – an enthusiastically religious country? In this case,…

Bookends

Cascading books Two bookends that bind American culture are the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Without them, our freedoms collapse like cascading books. Two bookends that bind American capitalism are Adam Smith’s 1776 classic An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations and… what else? Smith also wrote the…