Beginning a new study, focusing on the Patriarchs in the book of Genesis: God makes a threefold promise to Abram, to which Abram responds with incredible faith and worship.

The Bible affirms the value and worth of human life in all of its diversity. The Bible provides no basis for favoring or discriminating against any group of people on the basis of their backgrounds; rather, the Bible views all human beings as worthy of honor and respect, because all are created in the image of God. In God’s eyes, there is an essential unity of all human beings. Ephesians 3:1-10 makes clear that God’s purpose is for His church to become living examples of racial unity and harmony, welcoming and including people from all racial and ethnic backgrounds in full and equal fellowship in the body of Christ.

Jesus’ burial, His resurrection and the consequences of His ascension end this marvelous Gospel account of Jesus.

The Economist, a conservative British publication (in the historic British “liberal” tradition of Edmund Burke and Walter Bagehot), first made the case for assisted dying in 2015. It argued that freedom should include the right to choose the manner and timing of one’s own death, while also cautioning that the practice should be carefully monitored and regulated to avoid abuses.

Jesus’ “trials” are followed by Him being mocked, scourged and crucified.

The Northwest Ordinance of 1785 and the subsequent Land Ordinance organized the territory the United States gained by the 1783 Treaty of Paris, which ended the Revolutionary War. Among other things, these acts organized the territories into townships and set aside one section in each township for a public school. In the early decades of the new republic called the United States, it was understood that public schools would be a cooperative effort between the parents, the church and the school itself. Indeed, in these early decades well into the 19th century, schools were often held in the churches.

As Jesus eats the Passover meal, He institutes the Lord’s Supper, foretells Peter’s denial and then goes to Gethsemane to pray to His Father, preparing for His arrest.

In 2017, Yair Rosenberg, an American journalist and an authority on anti-Semitism, cogently summarized five myths about anti-Semitism. Anti-Jewish bigotry is alive and well in 2021—and it must be dealt with frankly and conclusively.

As the Jewish leadership plots Jesus’ death when Judas offers to betray Him, Jesus completes His discourse on end times by challenging us to be ready, to be faithful and to not try to figure out when all this will occur.

In the 1992 Supreme Court case of Planned Parenthood v. Casey, Justice Anthony Kennedy penned his famous “mystery passage”: “At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.” Robert Bork called the phrase indicative of “New Age jurisprudence”; William Bennett derided it as an “open-ended validation of subjectivism” that paves the way for drug abuse, assisted suicide, prostitution, and “virtually anything else”; George Will said it was “gaseously” written; Michael Uhlman labeled it a “thing of almost infinite plasticity”; the editors of First Things called it the “notorious mystery passage.” What seems clear is Kennedy’s underlying conception of human beings as autonomous individuals, choosing their own values and mapping out their own life courses.