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Posts by Ryan

Apr 27

11 Comments

A New Network and a New(ish) Look

Sometimes I (somewhat hypocritically) lament the limitations of the blogging world, the kind of discourse it does/does not promote, the nastiness and/or triviality that can creep in, etc, but there are many good things about blogging as well!  And one of these good things is discovering thoughtful and intelligent writers and thinkers out there whose reflections are all brought together into blog networks (I have thoroughly enjoyed being a part of the CC Blog Network, for example). Read more

Apr 25

3 Comments

He Rises Above Us

One of the things I liked to do when we lived in Vancouver was snoop around in used bookstores.  The options aren’t as plentiful over here on the island, but there are always treasures to find if I’m willing to put in a little effort.  I like used books.  I like their well-worn appearance, I like seeing others’ notes and underlinings.  I like old editions of books that have strange covers and use weird fonts and smell funny.  And I like it that they’re cheap!  It’s pretty easy to take a chance on a book when you’re only paying a couple of dollars. Read more

Apr 22

9 Comments

The Benefits of Extremism

A friend sent this to me earlier in the week, and I thought it was simply too good not to share.  It’s been making the rounds in the blogosphere, but on the off-chance you haven’t seen it, here is John Cleese with the benefits of extremism. Read more

Apr 20

8 Comments

The Naked Anabaptist 4: Good News to the Poor

After another (unintentionally long) hiatus, on to the fourth of Stuart Murray’s seven core convictions of Anabaptists (from The Naked Anabaptist): Read more

Apr 18

2 Comments

You, Beyond Our Weary Selves

You God, Lord and Sovereign,
you God, lover and partner.
You are God of all our possibilities.
You preside over all our comings and goings,
all our wealth and all our poverty,
all our sickness and all our health,
all our despair and all our hope,
all our living and all our dying.
And we are grateful.

You are God of all our impossibilities.
You have presided over the emancipations
and healings of our mothers and fathers;
you have presided over the wondrous transformations in our own lives.
You have and will preside over those parts of our lives that
we imagine to be closed.
And we are grateful.

So be your true self, enacting the things impossible for us,
that we might yet be the whole among the blind who see and
the dead who are raised;
that we may yet witness your will for peace,
your vision for justice,
your vetoing all our killing fields.

At the outset of this day,
we place our lives in your strong hands.
Before the end of this day,
do newness among us in the very places where
we are tired in fear,
we are exhausted in guilt,
we are spent in anxiety.

Make all things new, we pray in the new-making name of Jesus.

Walter Brueggemann, Prayers for a Privileged People

Apr 16

6 Comments

Friday Chuckles

Because it’s Friday, and because we’re all weary of the grinding rationalism that comes along with the science/faith debates, and because, well, just because this so darn silly (and, unfortunately, true), here’s a link that catalogues and offers sometimes hilarious commentary about the bizarre world of church names these days. Read more

Apr 13

20 Comments

A “Thick Enough” Worldview

The controversy around the Bruce Walke story has led to some interesting conversations (on this blog, and elsewhere) about the relationship between science and faith, questions about how we read Scripture, and others. One of these conversations took place this morning. Read more

Apr 12

14 Comments

More on Waltke

For those still following the story of Bruce Waltke, I thought I would pass along a few interesting and helpful links I came across today. It seems the story of Walke’s resignation from the Reformed Theological Seminary in Orlando, FL due to comments he made about the compatibility of evolution and Christian faith touched off a bit of a storm in the blogging world. As is so often the case in the wild and woolly world of blogging, there can be a lot more heat generated than light. Many portrayed the Waltke/RTS situation as something approaching a modern-day Galileo case, with RTS being cast in the role of inquisitors. Not surprisingly, the truth turns out to be not quite as sensational. Read more

Apr 9

37 Comments

A Culture of Fear

I’ve been subscribing to BioLogos website basically since its inception a year or so ago. It has always been an interesting, provocative, and thoughtful forum for learning about and discussing matters related to science and faith. It is a refreshing voice in that, rather than positing science and faith as mortal enemies it seeks to embrace the contributions both make to the quest for truth. Read more

Apr 6

11 Comments

Garbage and Flowers: A Post-Easter Reflection

So another Easter has come and gone and I’ve been reflecting on themes of “new life” and “resurrection.” Every Easter we hear words like these proclaimed in churches and we do our best to embrace the hope of the risen Christ. This past Sunday, I was the one proclaiming these words. But do they mean anything? Do they point to anything substantive about what actually has happened, what can happen now, and what will happen in the future? Are words like “resurrection” and “new life” just Christian catch-phrases that are in practice little more than a thinly religious veneer over ordinary concepts like self-help, fresh starts, and second chances? Read more

Apr 4

Hope in Person

“Thy kingdom come, on earth as in heaven.” That remains one of the most powerful and revolutionary sentences we can ever say…. [T]he prayer was powerfully answered at the first Easter and will finally be answered fully when heaven and earth are joined in the new Jerusalem. Easter was when Hope in person surprised the whole world by coming forward from the future into the present.

The ultimate future hope remains a surprise, partly because we don’t know when it will arrive and partly because at present we only have images and metaphors for it, leaving us to guess that the reality will be far greater, and more surprising still. And the intermediate hope—the things that happen in the present time to implement Easter and anticipate the final day—are always surprising because, left to ourselves, we lapse into a kind of collusion with entropy, acquiescing in the general belief that things may be getting worse but that there’s nothing much we can do about them. And we are wrong.

Our task… is to live as resurrection people in between Easter and the final day, with our Christian life, corporate and individual, in both worship and mission, as a sign of the first and a foretaste of the second.

N.T. Wright, Surprised by Hope

Mar 31

A World Addressed

From Walter Brueggemann’s Prayers for a Privileged People, in the midst of a week where dreams, possibilities, and disequilibrium are on our minds—in the midst of a week where we are reminded of God’s strange and beautiful address: Read more

Mar 29

16 Comments

The Naked Anabaptist 3: After Christendom

After a not so brief hiatus, on to the third of Stuart Murray’s seven core convictions of Anabaptism: Read more

Mar 25

11 Comments

Wright on Authenticity and Virtue

I haven’t forgotten about my series on The Naked Anabaptist and plan on returning to it shortly, but in the meantime here’s a few quotes that struck me this week from N.T. Wright’s new book on Christian virtue called After You Believe: Read more

Mar 21

13 Comments

On Prayer

A couple of memorable quotes on prayer I came across today, from two very different sources: Read more

Mar 17

34 Comments

Doubt

A feature ran by The Washington Post yesterday has generated a bit of discussion around a study called Preachers Who Are Not Believers by prominent atheist Daniel Dennett and Linda LaScola from the Center for Cognitive Studies at Tufts University (those familiar with “The Four Horsemen” of the new atheism will know Dennett well). The study outlines interviews with six “courageous” clergy who maintain their jobs in the pulpit while privately nursing unbelief. It is a classic modern tale of the triumph of reason and the inconsistencies and dissonances that come with the slow, inevitable drift away from faith in the modern world. Read more

Mar 14

64 Comments

The Rise of Atheism

Over the past three days, atheists from around the world have been meeting in Melbourne, Australia for the 2010 Global Atheist Convention. Richard Dawkins, Peter Singer, and PZ Myers were just a few of the atheist luminaries on hand to bolster the atheist community and inspire them to increasing confidence and boldness in a world (supposedly) dominated by religion. Read more

Mar 12

22 Comments

The Naked Anabaptist 2: The Bible

On to the second of  Stuart Murray’s seven core convictions of Anabaptists (from The Naked Anabaptist): Read more

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