In an article for the Gospel Coalition, pastor and author Tim Keller offers this potent definition of sin: "Sin isn't only doing bad things, it is more fundamentally making good things into ultimate things. Sin is building your life and meaning on anything, even a very good thing, more than on God. Whatever we build our life on will drive us and enslave us. Sin is primarily idolatry."

In his bestseller ...

The movie Blood Diamond depicts the world of "conflict diamonds" during the political and social turmoil of Sierra Leone's civil war in 1999. A Mende fisherman and a mercenary-turned-smuggler are on a quest to find a rare pink diamond, each hoping it will change his life.

Danny Archer (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Solomon Vandy (Djimon Hounsou) are at the site where the priceless diamond is buried. Solomon's ...

During one memorable at-bat the spring of my son's first baseball season, he repeatedly hit the tee instead of the ball. And it was obvious what the problem was. He wasn't keeping his eye on the ball; he was looking right at me instead. He was unable to get a base hit until finally I stepped out of sight.

We joked about that the rest of the season, but what the incident shows is the power of fatherly ...

In his book Searching for God Knows What, Donald Miller describes the events surrounding his conversion and spiritual formation. The following story occurred after Miller—a recent graduate from high school—decided that God didn't exist:

I've always been the kind of guy who likes to be seen as smart. It's not as bad as it sounds because I don't go around saying all kinds of smart-guy stuff ...

Stuart Briscoe, author and long-time pastor of Elmbrook Church in Brookfield, Wisconsin, tells the following story:

Many years ago, during the Cold War, I traveled to Poland for several weeks of itinerant ministry. One winter day my sponsors drove me in the dead of night to the middle of nowhere. I walked into a dilapidated building crammed with one hundred young people. I realized it was a unique ...

In 1977, fish merchant Lee Lantz traveled to Chile and "discovered" the toothfish, a species the locals deemed too oily to eat. Thirty years and a name change later, Chilean sea bass is so popular with American palates that it's almost on the verge of extinction.

After Canadians developed an oil from the rapeseed plant, they still had to deal with the name. So, in 1988, the FDA approved a name change ...

Being completely conformed to the likeness of God's Son is something that we look forward to in the future, although the transformation is happening now gradually. Being adopted among many brothers is something that we have now. The minute you become a Christian, you have intimacy of relationship. You have an unconditional relationship. You become wealthy, because everything that Jesus Christ has ...

Katie Couric interviewed Jennifer Wilbanks on NBC News. Jennifer became famous in 2005 when she disappeared the week before her wedding. The nation watched and worried as law enforcement officials tried to find her, but the situation turned out to be a hoax. The bride-to-be had hopped on a Greyhound bus and made up a story about being abducted. She was later dubbed the "Runaway Bride."

During the conversation, ...

In suburban America, the powers of consumerism, materialism, and individualism have become so pervasive that we scarcely recognize them anymore. Consumerism is the cultural force that encourages creation of identity based on the consumption of goods and services—a defining characteristic of suburban life.

Consumerism is directly related to materialism: consumerism encourages suburban teenagers ...

In the Bourne Identity, Matt Damon plays Jason Bourne—a CIA agent who has suffered amnesia and is trying to figure out just who exactly he is. The fundamentals of his journey are not too different than our own.

In the mountains of Switzerland, Jason has hitched a ride to Germany with a young woman named Marie. He's running from the police—but he's not even sure why. He tries to keep quiet about his ...