In a recent blog post, I reflected on an effort by an official in New York to make it illegal for companies to require that employees check emails after hours. Though an individual employee might still choose to check his or her email inbox, and though workers in a company might choose to send email in the evening, a company could not require someone to check or respond to email or to any other kind of electronic communication, including texting... Read more
I expect you have felt the curse of after-hours email. You’re getting ready to sit down for a family dinner or for a quiet evening at home when you think, “Oh, I’ll check my email one last time.” You check it and there, crouching at the digital door, is an email from work that demands your immediate attention. As you begin to respond, you realize that your plans for your evening have been scuttled. Not only are you dealing with... Read more
In my last post, I considered one implication of the prominence of women in the narratives of Jesus’s resurrection. Given the extent to which the testimony of women was devalued in the Greco-Roman-Jewish world of the first century A.D., the fact that the stories of Jesus’s resurrection feature women affirms the historical reliability of the accounts. It would have made no sense for the earliest Christians to have invented stories in which women played such a primary role as witnesses... Read more
Yesterday was Easter Sunday. As I sat with my family in our church’s worship service, we heard the familiar story of the Jesus’s empty tomb on the first Easter morning. I was struck once again by something that is so familiar it is easy for me to overlook. I’m talking about the fact that women were the first to discover the fact that Jesus had been raised from the dead. The priority of women as witnesses to the resurrection is... Read more
I believe serving people well is the right thing to do. As a follower of Jesus, I’m committed to serving people in imitation of my Lord, who both modeled and taught servant leadership (for example, Mark 10:35-45). I’m guided by the teaching of the Apostle Paul, who urged us to care first for “the interests of others” because Christ humbled himself in becoming human and dying on the cross (Phil 2:1-8). So, I believe we should serve others because it’s... Read more
Do you know your true business? Here is some wisdom from Charles Dickens, by way of his classic tale, "A Christmas Carol." Read more
The Christmas miracle continues . . . . Read more
Here's another Christmas miracle story. I'll bet you haven't heard this one before! Read more
Given what's happened with the word "Evangelical" in our culture, what should Christians who once identified as evangelicals do? Read more
I believe that if we foster communities in which all people are accorded true dignity, then sexual harassment will be extremely rare if it happens at all. And if it does happen, communities of respect will quickly and rightly support victims and hold perpetrators accountable. Read more
Mark D. Roberts
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In