1. 5 ways the world would be worse without Christianity: Sharon James with an excellent rebuff of this cultural push-back, “Christians are instructed to “check their privilege” and “do the work” to repudiate Christianity’s toxic legacy. But what would the world really be like without Christianity?”

2. How Asian artists picture Jesus’ birth: I just loved these pieces that are so different from Western portrayals.

3. A church is not just a truth-dispensing center: Sam Allberry and Ray Ortlund conclude, “Our love for one another is not only meant to be clearly observable by the watching world. It’s to be so strikingly Godlike that it cannot be explained except by the reality of the gospel. The gospel doctrines of the incarnation (“you sent me”) and of justification (“and loved them”) will become more visible and nonignorable through the love we show one another in Christ.”

4. Gender, sexual orientation, and religion among American college students: Ryan Burge responds to an important new study. Most important, I believe, are his insights about where these three intersect. For instance, “The groups that are the least likely to say that they are straight are atheists at 55% and agnostics at 53%. It’s pretty staggering to consider that nearly half of young atheists/agnostics are not heterosexual.”

5. Living with religious scrupulosity or moral OCD: A helpful post from Alan Noble. I’ve walked with a number of people who have struggled with this. He shares, “Nobody told me how your mind can be your own worst enemy. How it can fixate on imaginary sins. Nobody warned me about moral scrupulosity, the type of obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) I suffer from. Nobody warned me how anxiety and fear can take the thing you care about most – your faith – and turn it against you.”

6. Comedy wildlife photo awards: Sure to make you smile.

Photo by Sneha Chekuri on Unsplash