Resources by Daniel McCoy:
Daniel McCoy
Daniel is happily married to Susanna, and they have 3 daughters and 2 sons. He is the editorial director for Renew.org as well as an online adjunct instructor for Ozark Christian College. He has a bachelor’s in theology (Ozark Christian College), master of arts in apologetics (Veritas International University), and PhD in theology (North-West University, South Africa). He is the general editor of the Popular Handbook of World Religions, author of Mirage: 5 Things People Want From God That Don't Exist, and co-author with Norman Geisler of The Atheist's Fatal Flaw.
It’s Time to Leave the Starship Enterprise for the Blue Origin.
What do you think of blunt Christian billboards? It’s easy to get annoyed at stoplights because they rigidly alternate between only three options (stop, go, and slow). Imagine how most people feel toward the billboards that bring it down to only two options and say curtly, “It’s your choice…heaven or hell.” Spiritually speaking, most people...
Daniel McCoy
If God Is Love, Hell Is Real.
I do not enjoy thinking about hell. Or talking about it. Or writing about it. Or even believing in it. But whether we think or talk or write about it, it is a fact that people will go there. Put more strongly, the less we talk about it, the more likely people will end up...
Daniel McCoy
When a Story Is Cut Tragically Short
Helping my 4-year-old son at bedtime means I’ve had to become a creative story machine. Sometimes the machine is out of order. I’ve found myself coming up with a passable premise for a story, getting halfway through, and then running out. “The end,” I’ll say to buy myself some time. He will then facepalm and...
Daniel McCoy
2 Ways to Be Weird for God’s Glory
Only two? There are hundreds of ways Christians can be weird. Ah, but there’s a qualifier: weird for God’s glory. That means all kinds of pious-feeling postures, from the finger-wagging grump to the wide-eyed, chart-creating conspiracist, don’t make the cut. So, what are a couple ways we Christians can be weird in a way that...
Daniel McCoy
6 Things You Can Do with Truth
Raising toddler boys is a blast—but it’s also given me a front-row seat to the art of creative misuse. Their strong imaginations have taught me that anything can be used as anything other than what it’s supposed to be used for. A plate becomes a frisbee. Permanent markers become crayons for walls. Indoor plants become...
Daniel McCoy
How to Tell the Story of the Bible in 7 Kingdoms
It’s odd that the Bible’s good news is yet another kingdom (Mark 1:14). The track record of kingdoms is awful. Biblical history had told the story of kingdom after kingdom which had turned out to be disasters. A way to outline biblical history is to tell the story of seven kingdoms, and most of the...
Daniel McCoy
5 Bible Verses on My Mind as I Watch Afghanistan Crumble
“The Taliban are now in control.” Those are the words one Afghan Christian whispered to Mark Morris, leader of Refugee Memphis, as they sang worship songs in church last Sunday. They were in the middle of singing “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God” when the news came, yet they finished the song like always with,...
Daniel McCoy
This Person Has Enormous Power Over You
What can a single Bible verse do? Besides being useful for church kids to memorize? Besides wall décor in Christian homes? The truth is, though small, a Bible verse can be the same kind of small as a lit match that sets a forest ablaze. One such Bible verse was Romans 1:17 (“a righteousness that...
Daniel McCoy
A Weird Way We Win
I was mildly frustrated with a friend of mine as we were playing tennis the other day. He would barely bop it over the net, forcing me to sprint with all my might right up to the net in order to hit it back before it bounced twice. He did this again and again. Though...
Daniel McCoy
How to Botch a Baptism
I was baptizing a friend of mine who was literally twice my size. That in itself made me nervous. What made things instantly worse was that the moment I got him under, his feet floated up. So now I had to get one half (the half that needs to breathe) back up to the surface...
Daniel McCoy
Permission to Say No to a Fight
I’ve been a Phoenix Suns fan ever since the early 90s. And, yes, I’ve always been bitter that Michael Jordan’s Chicago Bulls beat them in the ’93 NBA Finals. This year, for the first time since ’93, the Suns returned to the Finals, this time to face the Milwaukee Bucks. In the middle of the...
Daniel McCoy
The Best Thing about Essential Beliefs
Let’s think through a couple phrases: essential oils and essential beliefs. As for essential oils, I bet each one of us has at least one essential oils enthusiast in our lives who has told us, “You have to try them out! They’re amazing!” As for essential beliefs (as in, the essential beliefs of Christianity), the...
Daniel McCoy
A Simple Definition of Grace? Yeah, About That…
We know grace is amazing, but what exactly is it? For starters, the Greek word translated “grace” is charis (it helps that the two words sound alike, doesn’t it?). Before Christians picked up charis and connected it to the gospel, the word was useful for describing the patron-client relationship (we’ll get to that in a...
Daniel McCoy
3 Stages in Our Fight against Sin (and How the Holy Spirit Wins It for Us)
There are three stages in a Christian’s fight against sin. They’ll be easy to remember since they all rhyme: Lust Disgust Trust Let’s go through them so you can ask where you are in your fight. #1 – Lust This first stage in the fight against sin is when you don’t put up any fight...
Daniel McCoy
How Pride Month Taught Me the Power of Spirituality
Since it was Pride Month, I googled the pride flag to explain to my eldest the meaning of the flags around town. I went with the traditional rainbow flag and explained the basics of the acronym LGBT. When the conversation was over, I decided to do some exploring, knowing that there was at least one...
Daniel McCoy