#hobbies

Is There Anything Wrong with Sports and Hobbies?

As a Christian, how should you think well about sports and hobbies? Can Christians watch sports or enjoy hobbies? Should they? Those are the questions behind this brief Q&A. Transcript Do you have any hobbies or sports? I’m not into sports so much. I like watching sports occasionally, but not very often. Baseball’s my sport because I can have it running in the background and don’t really have to pay too much attention to it. Hobbies, a little bit. Not …

On Christian Coloring Books and Meaningful Hobbies

Coloring books are all the rage, even in the Christian market. A roundup of 2016’s Christian top-sellers revealed seven in the top one hundred spots. I have written about this phenomenon once or twice in the past, but am returning to it today in response to a significant development in the market. I recently received the spring catalog from InterVarsity Press. Opening to the first spread, I was greeted with this: The very first items they wish to draw attention …

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Hobbies to the Glory of God

Coloring books for adults are a recent, unexpected phenomenon. This genre came out of nowhere to dominate the bestseller lists so that in March three of the top-ten Christian books were coloring books, closely shadowing their success in the mainstream market. Coloring apps are appearing now as well, offering a digital variant of this paper-based activity. Ever since these books and apps appeared I have observed that women tend to be the ones enjoying them and men tend to be …

An Angry God

What makes you angry? We all have triggers, don’t we? We all have certain contexts and situations, certain affronts to our dignity or pride that stoke the anger within. I know a lot about anger, as Aileen can no doubt attest. When she and I talk about God’s grace in our lives, and evidence of it, she will often point this out–that God has mellowed me, taken away that anger that often bubbled within and occasionally boiled over. When I …

4 Reasons People Backslide

One of the more interesting sections of dialog in John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress has Christian and Hopeful discussing the danger of backsliding, of falling away from what had the appearance of spiritual life and growth. That dialog, drawn from the tenth stage of Christian’s journey, is important and instructive. Bunyan presupposes that such people have been awakened to their need for salvation by some combination of the fear of God and the danger of hell, but eventually fall back or …