Laughing With
Thanks to Mike for highlighting Regina Spektor’s performance of “Laughing With” last Friday on The Late Show. Great song, fascinating lyrics. Amazing, the places where questions of theodicy will make an appearance… Read more
Archive for
Jun 29
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Some Welcome Counsel
My brother just sent me the link to a series of posts by William Willimon where he offers advice for those starting out in pastoral ministry. I’m approaching the end of my first year of pastoral work, and frequently found myself nodding and mm-hmm-ing throughout this very helpful set of posts. They are very balanced and wise reflections from someone who has been down the road and knows what he’s talking about. There is much worth thinking about (and implementing) in this post, but two quotes stood out. Read more
Freedom, Decency, and the MMVA’s
A few weeks ago I discovered that one of the many useless channels that I am now privileged to have access to as a cable television subscriber is a channel called Much Music (I wasn’t aware that my TV went above channel 100… or what combination of buttons on my remote would lead me to this uncharted territory; for most of my life, I’ve made do with five channels or less). I used to sneak a peak at MM whenever I could as a teenager because I rarely got to see music videos and was strangely fascinated by this brave new (at least to me) world of music and entertainment. Read more
How Do We Know God?
A quick look at the calendar shows that we are coming up on the one year anniversary of a very happy day in my life—the completion of my thesis. This is probably one of those anniversaries that will remain significant in my mind only, but I figured it’s as good a time as any to reflect on the subject matter I spent sixteen months of my life reading/writing about. I’ve continued to follow the exploits of folks like Dawkins and Hitchens over the last year as well as those who “defend the faith” against them. Mostly, the tone and the content of the discussions have seemed fairly belligerent, sterile, and unhelpful to me. The same old arguments, the same old defenses. People on both sides simply dig in their heels, talk a little louder (or more condescendingly), and try to prove who’s really the smartest. All in all, it’s not very inspiring stuff. On this level, I do not miss the debate. Read more
Jun 13
Can Love Be Trusted?
Related to the previous post about what makes a life “full” or “good, I came across this fantastic (and sobering—be sure to read the last sentence at least twice!) quote from Dallas Willard’s Knowing Christ Today about love as a way of life: Read more
Life to the Full
Last night I spent some time with a group of young adults discussing John 10:10 and what it means to have “life to the full.” What is Jesus promising in this passage? Is it just a spiritual thing? Is he referring to eternal life? A quality or character of life on this earth? What does it mean to say that Jesus came that we might have “life to the full” in a world where so many (including Jesus’ own followers) suffer tremendously? Is fullness related to our material lot in life? How? And, more personally, how “full” are our lives really? Is there a notable quality to our lives that is absent in those who pay no heed to Christ? It was a very interesting conversation… Read more
Apatheism
A friend sent me a link to this article by CBC journalist Neil MacDonald last week. Apparently, MacDonald locates himself within a growing minority that are increasingly finding the courage to “come out” as non-believers in a cultural milieu that frowns upon lack of professed religious belief (MacDonald is a Canadian living and working in the USA). Unlike committed atheists like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, however, MacDonald claims simply not to care about the matter. Read more
Willard on Faith, Myth Making, and the “Intellectual Slums”
I’ve been looking forward to Dallas Willard’s latest book for a while now, and was happy to see it arrive on my doorstep yesterday afternoon. Willard is tackling the question of whether/how the claims of faith constitute genuine knowledge (as opposed to private beliefs, opinions, emotions, blind commitments, etc). I’ve only had time to read the introduction thus far, but it looks like a very intriguing, not to mention timely, project. Here’s a few quotes from Knowing Christ Today: Read more
Comment Confusion (UPDATED)
Ever since I switched to the WordPress template I am currently using, I have had occasional issues with the order comments appear in. I thought I had solved the problem by allowing “nested” comments. This seemed to make the comments appear in the proper order and allowed for the possibility of keeping responses to this or that particular comment grouped together. I thought this might make it easier to track the flow of conversations—especially on some of the longer comment threads. Read more
Does Atonement Work?
Last week I finished Scot McKnight’s A Community Called Atonement and I’m nearly finished Mark Baker and Joel Green’s Recovering the Scandal of the Cross. Both of these books have been very helpful in articulating a view of the atonement that is broad and deep enough to address the depth of our need as human beings and as a planet. Both deal with the various theories of the atonement, both examine the limitations of human language and the role of metaphors, and both look at the relevant biblical texts. Both offer ways of thinking about and living into the atonement that are profoundly hopeful. Read more
Seven Deadly Sins
These have obviously been around a while, but I came across them for the first time last week tucked away in on one of the back pages in MEDA‘s magazine called The Marketplace. The seven deadly sins, according to Gandhi:
- Wealth without Work
- Pleasure without Conscience
- Science without Humanity
- Knowledge without Character
- Politics without Principle
- Commerce without Morality
- Worship without Sacrifice
Rumblings 