Eric Metaxas's Blog

Where do we start?

Before I get serious, as I must, I should start with the inescapable humor and joking that were at the heart of my friendship with Charlie. We could never stop sarcastically teasing each other, privately and publicly. It really became difficult sometimes to force ourselves to get serious when we were together. Could the ultra-liberal Larry David — with whom I was once friends — imagine that Charlie and I were constantly trading Seinfeld quotes, and that Charlie knew the sh...

This excerpt is taken from Conversations on the Examined Life by Eric Metaxas. Metaxas says, “Anyone who has ever attended a Socrates in the City event over now 25 years, will tell you there is simply nothing like it.” With Conversations on the Examined Life Vol. 1, readers can now experience these enlightening discussions, whether revisiting or discovering them anew.

For more, click here.

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John Lennox: GOD AND SCIENCE – Part One

Eric Metaxas: The issue on the table is this false idea that sc...

Introduction

It is simply impossible to overstate the enthusiasm I have felt in rediscovering the conversations in this volume. Or to overstate my astonishment at how wonderful each one is, and how each is wonderful in a different way. If you don’t see what I mean within ten pages or so, please consult a physician.

I was of course physically present for each of these conversations, but as it happens that proved a handicap in fully appreciating them. There is something about being host and int...

This excerpt is from Chapter Three in the book SEVEN MEN by Eric Metaxas.

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Eric Henry Liddell was born on January 16, 1902, in Tientsin, China, where his parents, James and Mary Liddell, were missionaries. The blond, blue-eyed boy was nearly two years younger than his brother, Robert, born in August 1900 in Shanghai. A sister, Janet (Jenny), joined the family in 1903.

The turn of the twentieth century was a decidedly dangerous time to be a missionary in China. The Boxer Rebellion (1898–1901) ...

These brief excerpts are taken from the chapter titled Loving America in If You Can Keep It: The Forgotten Promise of American Liberty.

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When facing the death of the nation he clearly loved, Abraham Lincoln declared that it was “mystic chords of memory” that would hold us together, beyond the vast battlefields of horrors that lay ahead. The greatest test of our republic would rely not merely on our political institutions and on the great leader who was speaking those words but on something el...

This excerpt is from chapter seven in Fish Out of Water: A Search for the Meaning of Life called My American Idyll.

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On June 14, 1973, Mrs. Saul, my fifth-grade teacher at Beaver Brook School in Danbury, Conn., took the 12 of us in her class outside to the flagpole to celebrate Flag Day. It had been nearly 200 years since the same date in 1777 when the Revolutionary Congress adopted the Stars and Stripes as the new country’s emblem. June 14 has been designated as Flag Day ever since—though i...

Pastor, Rebel, Prophet, Monk

In 1934, an African American pastor from Georgia made the trip of a lifetime, sailing across the Atlantic Ocean, through the gates of Gibraltar, and across the Mediterranean Sea to the Holy Land. After this pilgrimage, he traveled to Berlin, attending an international conference of Baptist pastors. While in Germany, this man—who was named Michael King—became so impressed with what he learned about the reformer Martin Luther that he decided to do something dramatic. H...

 Pastor, Rebel, Prophet, Monk

In 1934, an African American pastor from Georgia made the trip of a lifetime, sailing across the Atlantic Ocean, through the gates of Gibraltar, and across the Mediterranean Sea to the Holy Land. After this pilgrimage, he traveled to Berlin, attending an international conference of Baptist pastors. While in Germany, this man—who was named Michael King—became so impressed with what he learned about the reformer Martin Luther that he decided to do something dramatic. ...

Luther Tries to Earn Heaven, Fails

Luther was obsessive about confession. In fact, it eventually got to the point that his confessor—who ended up being Staupitz—began to get fed up with his maddeningly overscrupulous confessee. Once, Luther actually continued confessing for six consecutive hours, probing every nook and cranny of every conceivable sin and then every nook and cranny within each nook and cranny, until Staupitz must have been cross-eyed and perspiring just listening. When would it ...

This excerpt is from Chapter 18 in my book FISH OUT OF WATER: A Search for the Meaning of Life.

“Celery Green Day” 

Those I hung out with in the Schroeder Lounge at Yale became such good friends that I tended to accept their views, and through them began to see another way of looking at these things. One of them had even brilliantly invented a holiday that summed up their notions. He called it Celery Green Day.

The idea behind this was that every spring as you looked out over the landscape of ...