Next month Hanukkah, a minor Jewish holiday, will get major attention because of its proximity to Christmas. On the eight evenings of Hanukkah (Dec. 12-19 this year), some Jewish children can look forward to a slow stream of presents rather than a rushing torrent on Christmas morning: Not a bad deal.

Five hundred years after Martin Luther sparked the Protestant Reformation, the cold creep of atheism has frozen much of Europe—but the continent’s longest-serving and most powerful Western leader still holds a candle of faith. Angela Merkel, Germany’s chancellor for the past 12 years and likely the next four as well, has said, “I believe in God, and religion is also my constant companion, and has been for the whole of my life. We as Christians should above all not be afraid of standing up for our beliefs.” Merkel, now 63, was a preacher’s kid: Her father was a Lutheran pastor.

If your children want to scare someone on Halloween, have them dress up as a giant Google. You don’t know exactly what that costume should look like? Join the crowd: No one else does, really, because Google is not just a giant octopus. It’s the ocean we swim in: Google has an 88 percent share of the search-engine market, and most of the nation’s school kids are coming to rely on Google education apps.

Years ago I was caught in the crosshairs of a church-discipline situation. Two confessing members, and dear friends, wished to marry. The elders had determined they should not. After soul-searching and prayer I declined their wedding invitation out of deference to the elders’ lawful authority. My decision was clearly influenced by Scripture (1 Peter 5:5, for one), but also by this: Of the three realms ordained by God to order human affairs—family, civil government, and church—the church was the only one that survived the grave.

Our Oct. 28 issue will contain a review of 22 books on Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation, which began on Oct. 31, 1517. Many thinkers and writers during the past two centuries have thought Reformationally about cultural problems, so in this column and my next I’d like to introduce or reintroduce WORLD members to two who produced important works accessible to general readers.

Marvin Olasky’s interview with Westminster Theological Seminary professor Carl Trueman, the author of Luther on the Christian Life, appears in the Sept. 30 issue of WORLD. Below are edited excerpts of additional questions and answers we didn’t have room for in print. Enjoy.

You quote Reformer Martin Luther saying, “You cannot be without a wife and remain without sin.” Do you tell seminary students that today?

Ninth in a once-a-quarter series of short short stories. (For story No. 8, please see wng.org/branching_out.)

Mark Kahn and Mike Khan were twins as unlike as could be. Mark Kahn protected his dog Chipper and her two tiny puppies. One day Mike tripped over a bag of dog food and threw the puppies against a wall, bashing out their brains.