Wisdom is to eloquence as Robin is to Batman. By himself Batman was a crusader for justice, but with the boy wonder beside him, together they became the dynamic duo. Cicero was an early Roman orator who believed that eloquence was of great benefit to man but that wisdom must [...]
Name dropping: defined by the American Heritage Dictionary as “To mention casually the names of famous or important people to create the impression that one is familiar with them in an attempt to impress or influence others.” Have you ever noticed how many people try to associate their behavior with [...]
I am all about good communication skills. For my regular posting schedule, I use a 5-week schedule by counting the number of Wednesdays in the month. May had five so this is number five, and I consider different topics for each of the five weeks. Here are my weekly topics. [...]
Chapter fourteen of the Gospel of John begins with a discussion between Jesus and Thomas, the one we know as “doubting Thomas.” Jesus mentioned that he was going away, and he says that the disciples know the way to where he is going. However, Thomas says they don't know Jesus' [...]
Rhetoric is not a word used in everyday speech, and some have suggested that with the advent of ChatGPT, composition and rhetoric may become lost arts. I think otherwise. Because we are created with an innate need to communicate and because, unlike the animal kingdom, we have developed language, rhetoric [...]
Jesus often turned society's way of doing things on its head. A poor woman gives a penny but gives more than the rich who offer bags of money. The poor in spirit enter the kingdom of God but the proud are rejected. Impurity is what comes out of a person's [...]
Facts Are Stubborn Things We live in an age when feelings trump facts. Said in another way: my personal truth trumps reality. John Adams, the second president of the United States, made a bolder claim. Ronald Reagan used to quote him, “Facts are stubborn things.” Adams quote gets more specific, [...]
John chapter twelve illustrates the great divide between those who believed Jesus and those who didn't. This part of John's gospel follows hard on the heels of raising Lazarus to life and culminates in the triumphal entry into Jerusalem. Meanwhile the “chief priests had decided to kill Lazarus also, because [...]
(NOTE: for those first-time readers to my blog, the title of the blog [The Lazarus Chronicles] represents my thoughts on the resurrected life. I use Lazarus as a means of thinking about the issues involved in living a resurrected life, and I use these particular articles called “Coffee with Lazarus,” [...]
If you've ever been in an argument that ended with name-calling or character assassination, then you have experienced the “ad hominem” attack, a particular fallacy used to end and allegedly win an argument. From my childhood, I knew people who, in jest, often finished a argument they couldn't win by [...]
