The Bottom Line

January 2017 God knows that “familiarity,” until we understand what that is, is a very damaging thing to most relationships. Being “familiar” with someone or something, in the negative sense, means to take it for granted. Negative familiarity makes us devalue people and things, wherein we lose what is special about them and then may…

December 2016 Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, this he will also reap. -Galatians 6:7 As 2016 comes to an end, our nation has been traumatized as we went through a debauched public dialogue of personal insults and personal misdeeds. As demoralizing as it was, it gave us…

Election Special Edition “The owner’s servants came to him and said, ‘Sir, didn’t you sow good seed in your field? Where then did the weeds come from?’ “‘An enemy did this,’ he replied. “The servants asked him, ‘Do you want us to go and pull them up?’ “‘No,’ he answered, ‘because while you are pulling…

November 2016 I am writing this article prior to the results of the current US presidential election. As critical as this current election is, as atypical as it has been in multiple ways, it is not the “election of elections.” That election is the next one; the 2020 election will definitively set the direction for…

October 2016 For whom the LORD loves He reproves, Even as a father corrects the son in whom he delights. —Proverbs 3:12 The world system frequently masks itself in the camouflage of looking like justice and righteousness. The most powerful deception is great counterfeiting. Really effective deception is flooding the market with so much counterfeiting…

September 2016 Racism and classism have existed for thousands of years. As manifestations of generic human sin, they are universal and clearly not unique to the United States. As expressions of man’s fallenness, they will likely never be fully expunged from among us. Racism, in particular, has historically been far more grounded in negative ethnic…

August 2016 In many ways, results-based reality is similar to what is commonly called “The Scientific Method” in that ideas are measured for their truth or effectiveness by the consistent results they produce when carefully applied to various situations or applications. The Scriptures, by the way, are the “father” or primary source of this methodology…

July 2016 A good name is more desirable than great riches; to be esteemed is better than silver or gold. —Proverbs 22:1 Today we have a major spiritual lesson about to be engaged right in front of the eyes of the world: Donald Trump and the spiritual law that confronts him. The law is quite…

June 2016 …and He has made us to be a kingdom, priests to His God and Father—to Him be the glory and the dominion forever and ever. Amen. —Revelation 1:6 The Scripture above, and others like it (1 Peter 2:9 among them), remind Believers that our assignment on earth is to “do business until I…

May 2016 The so-called “modern world” was based upon secure faith in the power of reason, scientific method (empiricism), and a common ethic of Judeo-Christian values to secure a constant improvement in the condition of humanity. This belief system gave us the Industrial Revolution, capitalism (a constantly growing middle class), public education for the masses,…

April 2016 …to equip the saints for the work of ministry… —Ephesians 4:12 All of us who have labored in the church on any level for any length of time are familiar with the partial quote here from Ephesians, Chapter Four. Indeed, Ephesians Four has generated enormous discussion amongst church leaders for the last fifty…

March 2016 The very fact that our upcoming presidential election could pit Bernie Sanders against Donald Trump has given us a much-needed measuring stick to attempt to calculate how truly divided this nation really is. My answer is, “beyond imagination.” That such a gap is now beginning to more fully manifest tells us a number…

February 2016 Anyone regularly reading these Bottom Line newsletters of mine probably has two things in common with me: 1) you recognize the deepening instability of our culture, and 2) you too may have trouble staying “balanced.” Sometimes the level of nonsense going on is like a very bad dream, at best, and a hallucination,…

January 2016 As virtually everyone in the public conversation knows, President Obama and others are vociferously maintaining that Islamic Jihadists are not “real Muslims.” I am certainly not an expert on Islam, but like many others, I have been through the Quran and have heard a number of real experts on this subject lecture and…

December 2015 The U.S. Pledge of Allegiance declares us to be as a people, “under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.” Obviously, there is a great deal of contention among us as to exactly what that means and its veracity. Indeed, like any patriotic platform, it is both a statement of intent and…

November 2015 Conventional politics has been currently trumped by Donald-the-Trump’s entry into the Republican Party’s quest for the oval office. Uninvited and carrying with him a dazzling ability to insult his way into the mainstream media’s constant attention, he presents a host of problems to the party who previously set forth Mitt Romney as their…