The rise of the prosperity gospel is one of the great challenges to the true message of Jesus Christ. While not an expressly Western problem, the promises of this false teaching are often deeply rooted in Western materialism and worldly wealth. Teachers focus on a temporal reward as evidence of God's blessing, often ignoring the greater issues of justice, reconciliation, and redemption so needed in the world today.

I would like to win the Pulitzer Prize. I would like to win the Nobel Prize. I would like to win a Tony award for the Broadway musical I'm now working on. Aside from these, my aspirations are modest ones.

I began using pseudonyms early in my career, when I was being paid a quarter a cent a word for my work, and when I had to write a lot to earn a living. Sometimes I had three or four stories in a single magazine without the editor knowing they were all by me.

I never take ideas from the headlines. I feel that if a story is good enough, a real story that is, then it's already been covered by the media, and if it's not good enough, why would I want to bother with it?

I wanted to be an artist. I was studying art. I wanted to be a great painter. When I went into the Navy, there wasn't much to draw at sea. So I began writing, and I began reading a lot.

I enjoy what I do every minute of the day, even when the going gets tough. When I first began writing, I used to work at a desk in the bedroom, of a small development house. My three sons all under the age of 3 would come running in and out of the room every minute.

The rise of the prosperity gospel is one of the great challenges to the true message of Jesus Christ. While not an expressly Western problem, the promises of this false teaching are often deeply rooted in Western materialism and worldly wealth. Teachers focus on a temporal reward as evidence of God's blessing, often ignoring the greater issues of justice, reconciliation, and redemption so needed in the world today.