Kick the Bucket
Charlie Winston’s Hobo was released in Canada on Tuesday and has been getting regular (i.e., constant) play around the house ever since. “Kick the Bucket” is among the more memorable songs on a terrific album. Read more
Posts by Ryan
Mar 10
6 Comments
Varieties of Unbelief
I’m a little all over the map this morning, but here’s a few loosely connected thoughts/reflections about unbelief on a Monday morning…
This month’s issue of our denominational magazine, the MB Herald, is about atheism/unbelief and contains an article by yours truly. It is a bit of a hybrid piece—a discussion of the new atheists (Hitchens, Dennett, Dawkins, Harris), a reflection upon conversations with a friend (no stranger to regular readers of this blog), among other things. Based on what I’ve read of the issue thus far, there are a number of articles and features definitely worth checking out. Read more
The Naked Anabaptist 1: Jesus People
On to the first of Stuart Murray’s seven core convictions of Anabaptists: Read more
The Naked Anabaptist
Perhaps surprisingly, despite the fact that I earn my living at a Mennonite church, very little of my formal education was devoted to learning about Anabaptist history and theology. I took one year of Bible College at a Mennonite school when I was 19, but that was about it. I studied philosophy at university and deliberately chose to pursue graduate studies at an inter/trans-denominational institution. I received bits and pieces of the Anabaptist story along the way in my studies, I read the occasional book by a Mennonite author, and I almost always worshiped in Anabaptist churches so it wasn’t like I was clueless. But I’ve never exactly swam in the deep end of the Anabaptist pool. Read more
Feb 28
The Crap Circle
Controversy around the nature of the atonement continues to bubble beneath the surface in some corners of the Canadian MB Conference. Specifically, some have problems with a book by MBBS professor Mark Baker and Joel Green that questions the primacy of penal substitution and seeks to recover other important biblical metaphors that address what the cross accomplishes and why and how. Some think Baker’s understanding of the atonement ignores (or at least minimizes) God’s wrath and denies the fact that Jesus died as a substitute for our sins. There have been charges of heresy, and plenty of misunderstanding and miscommunication throughout the discussion. Read more
Feb 24
OH CANADA!
UTTER. DOMINATION.
I don’t think anyone expected such a blowout for a Canada/Russia game, but the Red Machine is rolling!
What a night!
Exile
I read very few novels during the six years I was in formal studies—there was too much required reading for my courses and, when combined with the ordinary demands of small kids and everyday life, there wasn’t much time (or energy!) left for reading fiction. One of the joys of seeing my university and grad school days receding in the mirror has been the ability to start reading novels again. It’s nice to be able to read a book without the expectation of evaluating it and demonstrating comprehension looming large in the background. Read more
Watchers
The mail today contained a letter informing me that as an alumni of Regent College I am to receive a year’s free subscription to Crux—the quarterly journal of Christian thought and opinion they publish. Things seem to be running a little behind with this publication (as you will see, if you visit the website), but it was a delightful surprise, nonetheless, to receive a few back issues. This poem is from the Summer 2009 issue: Read more
Rapt for Lent
The season of Lent begins with Ash Wednesday tomorrow, and over the last week I have been overhearing the customary discussions about who is giving up what for the period of pre-Easter preparation. I have given up things for Lent in the past and have occasionally even found the process to have the effect of sharpening my focus and preparing me for Easter. But more often than not, it has degenerated into somewhat of a duty that, while undertaken with the best of intentions, fizzled out well before Good Friday arrived. Read more
Swept to Big Purposes
Like many, I have been watching the 2010 Vancouver Olympics off and on for the last several days. Much as I would like to pretend otherwise, I have found myself to be a bit of a sucker for a euphoric flag raising ceremony or a powerful biographical vignette or an emotive speech or any of the other carefully crafted media productions intended to produce some kind of transcendent sense of being Canadian. It’s been unsettling to see how manipulable I am! Medals won by people I do not know in events I have virtually no interest in outside of two weeks every four years suddenly have the capacity to make me feel like an important part of a grand and momentous red and white wave of fulfillment, meaning, and purpose. Read more
Feb 11
In Your Hands
I heard this song on the radio yesterday and I’ve been humming it ever since. The artist is UK singer/songwriter Charlie Winston and the album is called Hobo (available in North America on March 9). I’ve got the date marked on my calendar already! Read more
Feb 8
A Ragged Garment
Last night I was talking with a group of young adults about things like doubt and honesty and childlike-ness and the role these things (and others) played in the development and preservation of a mature faith. Frederick Buechner, in a discussion of one of his former professors, has this to say in Listening to Your Life: Read more
Living With the Bible
I’m always curious to observe how people view the Bible, both inside and outside of the church. There are often very interesting assumptions at work about what it means to “take the Bible seriously” or about how Christians view (or ought to view) the Bible. Everyone thinks they have a good understanding of what it means to “believe in the Bible” (or, more often to disbelieve in the Bible) whether this understanding comes from inside or outside of the Christian fold. Read more
Are 140 Characters Enough?
The disconnection, distractedness, triviality, and loneliness that are increasingly becoming a part of a hyper-technified age has been a source of interest (and concern) for me for a while now. Increasingly, our lives are lived online. Facebook and Twitter (or the blogosphere!) are substituted for the cafe and the living room. Status updates and text messages take the place of conversation. There are certainly many good things about the brave new communication world we have created, but there are costs as well. Read more
Home
I’ve had the opportunity to travel back to my hometown in southern Alberta twice over the last month or so, once for a late Christmas and once for a funeral. A small town on the prairies was home for virtually all of my first thirty years until we left four and a half years ago to begin graduate studies in Vancouver. Going back always feels good and often leads to interesting times of reflection. Read more
Jan 27
A World Suffused with Value
Spending parts of the last few days writing an article about atheism has given me the opportunity to revisit some of the notes and quotes I accumulated during my thesis research a few years ago. Discussions about the relationship between the discoveries of science and the claims of faith seem to occur quite regularly, both on this blog and in my everyday conversations. This quote from John Polkinghorne’s Beyond Science: The Wider Human Context isolates an important dimension of the conversation, in my view: Read more
Oh, Happiness
For at least the last decade or so, I’ve been fairly sour on the contemporary Christian music thing. The reasons for this are many and varied (and likely very predictable as well), but probably not worth getting into here. Whether it is merited or not, I tend to view the whole American evangelical empire and all of the products it spawns with suspicion if not outright cynicism. Read more
Rumblings 