Skip to content

Posts from the ‘Culture’ Category

Aug 10

7 Comments

God in Motion

I just finished reading Caring for Words in a Culture of Lies, Marilyn Chandler McEntyre’s delightful plea for us to renew our commitment to steward the gift of language as the treasure it is. She is not the first to lament the decline of those who truly understand and appreciate the importance of words (a problem compounded in our text-crazy, Facebooked, Twittered world), but her book communicates these points with the grace and beauty you would expect from someone attempting to lure readers back into the simple truth of how words can move us. Read more

Jul 3

God and the App Wars

On the off-chance that anyone out there is looking for further evidence that our cultural discourse is being seriously degraded and trivialized by the proliferation of technology, an article in yesterday’s New York Times alerted readers to the availability of iPhone apps to help believers and non believers arm themselves for war.  There are anti-Darwin apps for Christians, “Bible Thumper” apps for atheists, and others, no doubt, each doing what all apps are designed to do: provide entertainment, “illumination,” and diversion as quickly, and with as little demand to think for oneself, as possible. Read more

Jul 2

5 Comments

Beautiful… as Long as You Like Soccer

Over the last few weeks, my morning routine has involved waking up, tiptoeing down the hallway to avoid waking everyone else up, putting the coffee on, and catching a World Cup match before work. It has been delightful, and I am already dreading the end of South Africa 2010. This morning’s game (a 2-1 win by the Netherlands over mighty Brazil) had it all—colour, drama, suspense, amazing skill, some great goals, a bit of nastiness, and the right result! I can’t wait for the other three quarterfinal matches today and tomorrow. Read more

Jun 18

11 Comments

Searching for God Knows What

Last night at our young adults group we talked about, among other things, the frequently encountered view that Christianity is a strange relic of the past, that has nothing useful to say to us in the present, no normative force or existential/moral relevance in a world that has “grown up.” It is a well-rehearsed and often repeated story: once upon a time, primitive people thought there was objective meaning in the cosmos, we now know this to be false, and our only course of action is to salvage what personal meaning we can from the scrap heap of a random and chaotic universe. Read more

Jun 8

24 Comments

The Hole in Our Gospel: Review

A few months ago I was snooping around in a bookstore somewhere and I noticed a book called The Hole in Our Gospel. It had an interesting picture on the cover  and a provocative title, so I looked on the back cover. The author was a man named Richard Stearns who, I learned, was the president of World Vision, USA. Read more

Jun 7

18 Comments

Are We Worth the Trouble?

Any piece with a title like “Should This Be the Last Generation?” is bound to provoke a bit of curiosity, especially when the famous misanthrope Peter Singer is discovered to be its author. Today, the issue on Singer’s mind is whether or not human beings should consider ceasing to reproduce as an ethical response to our predicament, whether from the perspective of ecological responsibility (i.e., human beings are bad for the planet, therefore less of us are better than more) or based on more existential concerns (every child born will suffer, and we have a duty to prevent suffering). Read more

Jun 2

28 Comments

Only Two Scenarios?

It seems like every time I walk into a bookstore these days there are a handful of new books on the shelf, confidently explaining how science has shown this or that religious understanding of the world to be unfounded, misguided, false, naive, etc. The obvious response to such claims—and one that is frequently made—is to question just how it is that science could “prove” or disprove anything about an overall worldview within which science is located.   Read more

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 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 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

Feb 15

9 Comments

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 5

40 Comments

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

Feb 3

8 Comments

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

Jan 8

25 Comments

Avahontas? Pocatar?

There has been a lot of analysis and critique of James Cameron’s new blockbuster Avatar over the last few weeks, from withering indictments of its pantheistic proselytizing to paeans to the latent themes of redemption it contains.  I’ve not yet seen the film (although I intend to), but from what I’ve read and heard, while it is a stunning visual spectacle, the story is fairly predictable and unoriginal. Read more

Dec 15

12 Comments

On Empathy and Exclusivity

I couldn’t help but be curious when I saw the title of Vancouver Sun spirituality and ethics columnist Douglas Todd’s latest article come through my reader this afternoon: “Embattled Clergy Could Use Christmas Empathy.” Not being one to look a gift horse in the mouth, I read on to discover why I might be the appropriate destination for someone’s Christmas empathy. Read more

Dec 9

64 Comments

Making the Best of It (and a Short Story)

While we’re on the topic of Christianity and culture/how to engage those who think differently than us in a pluralistic postmodern world (and while I remain in shameless self-promotion mode), I noticed yesterday that Direction (an MB publication that describes itself as somewhere between an academic journal and a denominational magazine) has just made their Spring 2009 issue available online—an issue that contains my review of John Stackhouse’s Making the Best of It: Following Christ in the Real World. Read more

Dec 8

19 Comments

Transforming Christian Theology: Conclusion

The fourth and final entry in my discussion of Philip Clayton’s Transforming Christian Theology (parts one, two, and three). Read more

Nov 30

38 Comments

Transforming Christian Theology: Part Three

On to part three of my discussion of Philip Clayton’s Transforming Christian Theology (parts one and two here and here). Read more

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »