Brian Ketchem

Introduction In his books Anxious Generation and The Coddling of the American Mind, Jonathan Haidt and his coauthors propose an interesting theory. The idea goes something like this: the reason American teens, college students, and adults are fighting many mental battles is because they have not been allowed to or exposed to enough struggle in their lives. Jonathan and his peers qualify this theory in two ways. First, they don’t deny that people are still struggling in certain ways. Our...

Would it surprise you to know there are actually three wildernesses in the proper boundary of Israel (not to mention the ones that are mentioned outside of the traditional boundary of Canaan)? In this article, we will examine three of the main wildernesses in the Bible. What happened in each? What can each teach us about God and how he wants us to live?

“Has anything like this ever happened?” This is a paraphrase of the question that God asked the people of Israel through his prophet Joel. The question is in response to a locust plague that had affected the people of Israel. The answer to the question is a rhetorical “no”; nothing like this had ever happened. Joel is trying to get the people of Israel to wake up, consider the plague that was sent from God, and see it as a sign of the coming Day of the Lord. Nothing like this had ever...