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Posts from the ‘Current Events’ Category

Aug 15

6 Comments

We Might Need God to be Less Awful People

I talk to people nearly every day who find our cultural moment simultaneously bewildering and terrifying. The crumbling of institutions and moral norms. The shattering of public trust (accelerated by, but not limited to the pandemic and its discontents). The rising cost of housing and the fear that children and grandchildren will never be able to attain something even approximating their own. The hyper-polarization and politicization of nearly everything. The “slobification” of society. Increasing rates of crime and poverty. And, of course, the endlessly analyzed and oft-discussed skyrocketing rates of addiction, anxiety, depression, self-harm, and suicide. The overall picture is not a pretty one. Read more

Aug 11

2 Comments

Friday Miscellany

A few stray threads to pick at as another week winds down…

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I spent the August long weekend with a few long-time friends in Seattle. Guys always need a reason beyond just getting together to get together, and in this case, it was a concert. Greta Van Fleet was in town and this seemed like a pretty good excuse to make the trek. I’m likely a bigger fan than a few of the other guys, but I think everyone enjoyed the spectacle. Read more

Aug 9

5 Comments

Trigger Warning

The state of the world came up over breakfast this morning. The consensus was that it wasn’t great. There was a general sense of lament over how people seem more prone to spending time alone or in digital spaces, how people seem less able (or willing) to understand or read social cues (I’m thinking of you, Mr. Leave-your-phone-on-speaker-and-loudly-have-a-conversation-in-public), how on demand culture has turned us into docile automatons who expect everything to show up in a brown box on our doorstep, how we don’t get out and move our bodies, how we’ve lost the ability to communicate well. The list went grimly on. Read more

Jun 15

5 Comments

On (Actual) Diversity and the Changing Face of Christianity

To live in the post-Christian, postmodern West is to live amidst a rather bewildering confluence of competing identities and pieties. We hear endless talk of the importance of honouring and respecting diversity in the context of pluralism, but we often seem to have no idea how to actually do this well. We’re pretty cool with diversity when it comes to race and sexuality and gender, but not so much when it comes to diversity of thought. This leads to a great deal of confusion and no small amount of incoherence in our public discourse. Read more

Apr 19

9 Comments

Wednesday Miscellany

A morning tour through the news left a few itches that seemed to need scratching. And it’s been a while since a Miscellany post, so…

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Let’s begin in with the latest instalment of the “We’re losing our religion in the west but we still seem to weirdly miss it” category (surely R.E.M. must be getting tired of their song title being used for articles like this?). The image of a Gothic-style Catholic Church being turned into a skate-park pretty much sums it up. Six thousand to ten thousand churches close and/or are repurposed along these lines every year in America (it would likely be similar story in Canada). Church membership and attendance is falling off a cliff. We still like the idea of God or the divine or some kind of cosmic energy or… something. We can’t really tolerate the idea that there’s nothing beyond. We’re spiritual but not religious. So we like to tell ourselves, at any rate. Read more

Mar 28

37 Comments

On the Banishing of Shadows

I have had a number of conversations recently about the deep sadness that seems to have settled over many in the West, particularly the young. These conversations have been with people who would represent the full breadth of the racial, socioeconomic, political and ideological spectrum. Often, they are parents of teenagers and/or young adults. It’s a familiar litany by now. Anxiety, depression, addiction, mental illness, suicidal ideation and self-harm, deaths of despair. A general rootlessness and purposeless drifting. Listless scrolling and binging on junk entertainment rather than engaging with the world. It’s a well-worn road by now. Read more

Mar 14

9 Comments

Grace, Out of Order

I got an email from U2 this morning. Well, from their marketing department, to be precise. I’m on a mailing list and am a “verified fan.” Which feels terribly special and important. They’re opening a residency in Las Vegas this fall (without Larry, which feels weird). They’re releasing a new album called Songs of Surrender on Friday full of “re-recorded and reimagined tracks from across the band’s catalog” (which I also feel ambivalent about, based on the first few tracks they’ve released). Some of this stuff has the faint whiff of a band that is past their best-before date and is trying a little too hard to hang on. But I could be wrong. It’s probably not wise to bet against a band with the staying power of U2 (or which contains an ego the size of Bono’s). The Vegas thing might be amazing, and Songs of Surrender might be better than I expect. Read more

Feb 23

7 Comments

The Longing

Last year, I wrote a post called “Thick Like Honey, Sweet Like Grace.” The title came from a quote in Matthew Perry’s recent biography. It was Perry’s own description of encountering God in the pit of his despair and addiction. The post was a reflection on the lack of this kind of “existential urgency” in some (not all) “progressive” Christian circles. It was a plea not to swap out a political agenda for an existential one. To not forget, in all our important talk and work for social justice, that there is an irreducibly personal and affective dimension to Christian faith. To speak urgently of both justice and mercy. There is room for both. We need both. Desperately so, it would seem, given the barrage of articles these days outlining how sad and lonely and anxious and hopeless so many people feel, particularly the young. Read more

Feb 16

3 Comments

Selling Vice (and Virtue)

I doubt I’m the only one who finds NHL hockey to be virtually unwatchable these days. It’s not the quality of the on-ice product, although, I’m a Calgary Flames fan, so the product isn’t great. It’s the advertising. The decision to watch a live game these days is to decide in advance that you are willing to endure a steady torrent of gambling ads. Whether it’s regular old commercials or split-screen odds updates or intermission sponsorship of highlight packages or pretty much anything else that some marketing intern could dream up, gambling ads have taken over the game. Read more

Jan 25

Wednesday Miscellany (Nick Cave Edition)

I have a few books on my shelf that I return to often, books that I’ve read and reread and underlined and highlighted and stuck a bunch of colourful sticky notes in to draw my attention easily to memorable passages. I usually quote these people endlessly on my blog because, well, because why not? Good words need to be shared. Christian Wiman’s My Bright Abyss is one of these. Some of Marilynne Robinson’s novels would fall into this category. And now Nick Cave’s Faith, Hope and Carnage has become another. I promise I’ll give it a rest for a while after this, but a few of his quotes anchor today’s miscellany. Read more

Jan 20

14 Comments

Data Doesn’t Suffer

Apparently, ChatGPT is coming for us all.  You’ve heard of ChatGPT, yes? The artificially “intelligent” content creator that can spit out essays and website content and legal briefs and who knows what else based on a simple prompt. It’s changed how universities teach (I have several professorial type friends who say it’s become a massive problem on campus in the few short months it’s been out). And, apparently, it’s also going to do to white collar work what automation did to things like manufacturing. Robots have been able to put cars together for a while. Now, it seems, they can also churn out the content that those of us who sit behind desks buzzing importantly around on our computers produce. Who knows, perhaps, in the end the only jobs left will be to manage the intelligence that is managing us. Read more

Dec 31

6 Comments

2022 in Review

Well, 2022 has nearly expired. It was another year dominated by the pandemic in some form or another. It was a year of trucker’s protests in Canada and counter-protests, a year of fear and anxiety and self-righteousness and judgment and hysterical media and loss of trust. There were probably a few good things, too, but I am well and truly a product of the media waters in which I swim and all I can seem to remember is the stuff that made me anxious and angry. 🙂

You know the December 31 drill by now, I suppose. Here are the top posts from the last 365 days along with a brief summary of each. Four out of the five were connected either to the pandemic or to the protests against restrictions. Which says a lot about what generates clicks. And is mildly depressing. So it goes. Read more

Nov 1

Don’t Just Stand There, Say Nice Things to Me

So, apparently you can go to the World Cup in Qatar next month for free. All you have to do is say nice things about the organizers on social media. This may require no small amount of nose-holding given Qatar’s generally abysmal human rights record and specifically atrocious treatment of foreign workers in building the infrastructure necessary to host the planet’s biggest sporting event. But hey, the World Cup is the World Cup! And this year, after a thirty-six-year barren stretch, Canada’s actually going to be there! I’m starting to regret going off social media. Perhaps even I could justify a bit of hypocritical online flattery for a free trip to the desert! Read more

Oct 27

Thursday Miscellany (On Religious Irreligion, Groupthink and Sectarian Leanings)

Well, it’s that time again. Time to empty out the “scraps and drafts and intriguing tidbits and provocations and half-formed thoughts folder” on my laptop and in my brain. It’s been a while since a “Miscellany” post anyway. I’m sure you’ve been waiting with bated breath. Read more

Oct 15

5 Comments

Did Dahmer Just Need a Friend (Anthropology in the Tattoo Parlour)?

I’ve recently been reading David Zahl’s excellent new book Low Anthropology. Readers of this blog will not be surprised to learn that I am deeply convinced that we are in need of better understandings of human nature than the default ones we tend to operate with these days. As I mentioned in my previous post, I think a realistic and hopeful anthropology is one of Christianity’s great gifts to the world, however ignored or misunderstood it often is. We are all sinners in need of grace. We are all divine image-bearers who are loved and called. Both of these statements are true. And together they can save us from thinking too little or, far more likely in our cultural moment, too much of ourselves. Read more

Sep 30

11 Comments

On Reconciling

Today is the second annual National Day for Truth and Reconciliation in Canada. It’s officially been declared a “federal holiday,” but if/how provinces and private businesses observe it is uneven and inconsistent. Some people get a holiday, some don’t. I’m at work for at least part of today doing the usual things, preparing for Sunday, getting ready for a meeting, taking care of some admin details. Today is also Orange Shirt Day, an informal awareness day that preceded the NDTR (two days for the price of one!). Again, some wear orange, some don’t. Like everything else in our world, if and how we observe these things is relentlessly moralized and politicized and polarized. Read more

Sep 20

9 Comments

When the Queen Dies

It’s been a quiet few weeks here on the blog, I know. There are a number of reasons for this, but chief among them is that it has been a season of dying in our church. Since I’ve returned from holidays in late August, there have been three deaths to mourn, three lives to honour and celebrate, three occasions to proclaim with joy the great Christian hope of a life that swallows up death. I’ve been writing a lot of sermons and planning a lot of services, which doesn’t leave much time for writing here. Read more

Jul 27

3 Comments

On Unearned Grace

So, the pope has been in my home province of Alberta this week. I’m not a Roman Catholic, so this obviously isn’t quite the momentous occasion for me that it might be for some of my Catholic sisters and brothers, but still, it’s a fairly big deal, not least because of one of the main reasons for his visit. He’s here to apologize, on Canadian soil, to indigenous people for the ugly history and legacy of residential schools. It is a “pilgrimage of penance,” in Francis’s own words, a time to unequivocally repent for the sins of the church and for the deep and lasting harm that they have caused. Read more

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