Mike Wittmer

Category: Ethics

  • rebuke thy brother, in 140 characters or less

    Right now I’m surfing the Internet while my students are taking their exam, because turnabout is fair play. I see that Christianity Today has a story about Andy Stanley’s disturbingly ambiguous sermon illustration on homosexuality, which ends with a link to Rick Warren tweeting at Al Mohler to apologize for the over-generalizing title of his…

  • dangerous concessions

    I read this story in Todd Billings’ award winning book, Union with Christ, and thought there might be a devotional in it. I know I should post more than my latest drafts for Our Daily Journey, but it’s either this or give all my students incompletes for the semester.        In 1857 a few white members of…

  • the gospel according to Disney

    Reading Hauerwas inspired me to tackle an American idol. If you have any suggestions for improvement, I have time to make them before submitting to Our Daily Journey. read > Philippians 3:1-11 We rely on what Christ Jesus has done for us. We put no confidence in human effort, though I could have confidence in my…

  • no app for that

    I’m aware that I risk sounding like a ranting curmudgeon, but I think this entry for Our Daily Journey says something that I need to hear. I’d be interested if anyone thinks it’s too harsh. The target audience for ODJ is a 30 year old who might live anywhere in the world.          When I was a…

  • let my people go (to Florida)

    I spent my last two spring breaks enjoying my Mennonite relatives in Sarasota. I knew there was a story in this “Amish Las Vegas,” and apparently the New York Times agrees.

  • grand traverse

    My family returned from another fun weekend in Traverse City, probably the most beautiful place on earth you’ve never heard of. The area has vineyards, cherry and peach orchards, islands, peninsulas, sand dunes, Petoskey stones, and a vast, unsalted ocean. It’s Tuscany with water. We were saddened to see so many dead buds on the…

  • seller beware

    Here is a draft for an Our Daily Journey devotional which I worked up over the weekend. I’m not real happy with the application (last paragraph). I’d like to also mention the positive aspects of buying (sometimes what we buy and sell is good), but ran out of room (the limit for the piece is…

  • the evolution of death

    When I was writing my dissertation on H. Richard Niebuhr, I was confused by his use of the terms “creation” and “fall.” At times he seemed to distinguish them as separate events, while elsewhere he seemed to run them together. My confusion was clarified when Langdon Gilkey published a book on Richard’s brother, Reinhold Niebuhr.…

  • mainstreaming homosexuality

    Last night I witnessed another significant step in our culture’s embrace of homosexual practice. You can tell a minority group has achieved cultural power when it unapologetically ridicules another minority group. And last night the homosexuals of Modern Family took aim at Appalachians, apparently the one remaining group that even enlightened liberals enjoy mocking. In…

  • Elijah’s doolittle

    Continuing the theme of Elijah, I am intrigued by Barth’s comment that Ahab’s great sin was passivity (CD IV/1, 456), and I wrote up an Our Daily Journey post about it. I wonder about lumping heretics with Nazis under the broad heading of evil, but 1 Kings 21:25 does say that of all the evil…