Megachurch pastor Andy Stanley wants to declare the Old Testament “obsolete”—see my column in this issue—but Kevin DeYoung’s The Ten Commandments: What They Mean, Why They Matter, and Why We Should Obey Them (Crossway, 2018) succinctly summarizes their importance. Sometimes we don’t obey them because we think we’ll be happier going our own way, but we find out differently.

On Oct. 7, as the official death toll from Indonesia’s earthquake and tsunami rose toward 2,000, Christians in the devastated city of Palu flocked to Sunday sermons. Many of the 5,000 still missing may never be found because the quake caused loose soil in several villages to liquefy, sucking houses into deep mud and burying occupants.

Fifth and final in a series on the legalization of marijuana

In Greek mythology, Antaeus is the son of Gaea (Mother Earth) and Poseidon, the sea god. People thought he was invincible, but that’s because he kept his feet on the ground: Hercules discerned that secret and beat him by lifting him up so his feet never touched earth.

Barbara Duguid was an MK, a missionary kid born in Nigeria who grew up partly in South America. She earned a degree in medical technology that equipped her to head a mission hospital in Liberia. She’s the author of Extravagant Grace: God’s Glory Displayed in Our Weakness and Streams of Mercy: Prayers of Confession and Celebration. She’s also married to a fine theologian, Iain Duguid. Here are edited excerpts of our interview in front of Patrick Henry College students.

Sojourners and other Christian left groups like to think of themselves as cutting edge, but “Christian socialism” in America goes back the late 19th century. Professor Richard Ely, who founded the American Economic Association in 1885, strove to apply principles enunciated by Horace Greeley to all of American society and tried to meld the Bible and forced redistribution. He demanded that all unite behind the “coercive philanthropy … of governments, either local, state, or national.”

Saturday, Oct. 13, is the 30th anniversary of the most controversial questions ever asked at a presidential debate. CNN’s Bernard Shaw asked Massachusetts governor and Democratic presidential candidate Michael Dukakis, “Governor, if Kitty Dukakis were raped and murdered, would you favor an irrevocable death penalty for the killer?”

This year, while editing many stories about sexual abuse accusations (see “Crouching at every door,” Sept. 15), I’ve gained a lot more sympathy for the women bringing charges. Before running an investigative story, I put reporters through an excruciating process of line-by-line questioning: How do we know this? Are you sure? Do we have the testimony of two or more witnesses regarding who, what, when, where, and—sometimes—why?