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Posts from the ‘Doubt’ Category

Dec 6

13 Comments

Rejoice Always

Last night, I was sitting on the sofa after dinner looking over the lectionary texts for the coming Sunday, trying to decide which passage or combination of passages I could preach on. When my wife wandered over and inquired as to what I was doing, I immediately solicited her advice in choice of texts. She read them over, hummed and hawed noncommittally, then took a deep, trepidation-filled breath, and said, “Can I make a suggestion? Do you think this week’s sermon could, you know, maybe focus a bit less on the negative?” Read more

Dec 5

Welcomed From a Distance

One of my morning Scripture readings today was the famous “by faith” passage in Hebrews 11 that talks about how the heroes of faith did not receive “the things promised” and lived as “foreigners and strangers” on earth.  It’s a beautiful text, a powerful portrayal of longing, faith, and hope. Read more

Nov 17

16 Comments

“I Just Feel Like a Loser Sometimes”

Part of this morning was spent listening to an interview with Chris Martin and Jonny Buckland from Coldplay on CBC’s Q with Jian Ghomeshi. I am one of those people who has always unapologetically loved Coldplay. I realize that they have grown too popular to be respectably cool anymore—that they are too mainstream, too commercial, too pop, too successful, too rich, too catchy, too whatever. I don’t really care. I have loved every album they have put out so far, and their newest offering, Mylo Xyloto, is no exception, whatever pronouncements might come down from on high via the musical intelligentsia. Read more

Nov 2

10 Comments

The Lust for Uncertainty

A very interesting article from Julian Baggini in The Guardian came through the reader this morning (h/t: Jesus Creed). Baggini talks about our tortuous relationship with “certainty” in the postmodern west, and questions the notion (set forth by fellow Guardian columnist Mark Vernon) that uncertainty is a virtue. Baggini’s article is worth quoting at length: Read more

Oct 22

1 Comment

Martyn Joseph: Chapters From Zion

Last night was a gift. Amidst the usual busyness of life and work and kids’ activities and meetings and appointments, a few friends and I stole away to see Welsh folk singer Martyn Joseph at a tiny house concert in a hamlet outside Medicine Hat, AB. I’d never heard of Martyn Joseph until my friend asked me if I wanted to go a few weeks ago, but since then he’s been getting pretty regular play through the headphones. He did not disappoint. Read more

Oct 10

13 Comments

In Defence of the Church

One of the questions I have come to dread over the years is the “so what do you do for a living?” question.  It’s not that I am ashamed to be a pastor, it’s simply that very often the discovery that I am “religious” can be something of a conversation-stopper.  Pastors are strange creatures, to be sure, and many people seem unclear about what to do when encountering one outside of their natural habitats (i.e., a church).  At the very least, disclosing that I am a pastor often makes the conversation instantly stranger, as people either a) hastily and awkwardly change the topic; b) begin to laboriously and not altogether coherently demonstrate how they are religious too; c) explain why they don’t go to church anymore; or d) stop talking altogether. Read more

Sep 29

15 Comments

They Still Haven’t Found What They’re Looking For

It is not at all uncommon to hear some variation of the story that 18-30 year olds are one of the most under-represented groups in the church today.  It seems that young adults are fleeing the church as soon as they leave high school, and only starting to trickle back once they have their own children, if they make their way back at all.  While some of the reasons for this are undoubtedly related to the general transience of this age demographic, it’s a worrying trend that has been and continues to be the subject of exhaustive analysis. Read more

Sep 26

4 Comments

Life and Death

This past weekend was one of almost unbearably stark contrasts.

Friday and Saturday were spent with a few of our church’s young people at a high-octane youth conference put on by one of the larger churches in our area. Climbing walls, go-kart tracks, paintball, ear splitting rock concerts, dodge-ball, team games, sleepovers on a church floor, etc, all in the company of hundreds of screaming teenagers—this is how I spent a good deal of Friday and Saturday. Not the most natural of contexts for me, I suppose, but it was great to have some fun with the kids and get to know them better.

And then, as we were finishing up our breakfast on Saturday morning and getting ready to head back to the conference for round two, a phone call came. Read more

Sep 16

22 Comments

This is Baptism?

There is much about how religion and Christianity are understood and publicly discussed in our post-Christian Canadian context that produces a mixture of bemusement and genuine puzzlement for me.  This week’s entry in the “head scratcher” category comes via an article from Wednesday’s Globe and Mail by Kate Soles that tells the story of her process of decision-making on the issue of whether or not to get her baby baptized. Read more

Aug 31

5 Comments

We are Always Talking About Jesus

A fairly healthy number of my academic pursuits over the years have been devoted to some form or another of apologetics—a rational “defense” of the faith, whatever that might mean. Indeed, a quick glance at my blog archives yields a similar conclusion. So many words spent clarifying, unpacking, rephrasing, rehabilitating, or somehow defending God or belief in God or Christian practice in a post-Christian context. So many hours devoted to abstract ideas, theological constructs, “metanarratives,” worldviews, and “plausibility structures” within which to locate or give expression to Christian belief. So many pages about what I see to be the inadequacies of modern atheism. My attitude toward the general project of apologetics has undoubtedly changed and (hopefully) deepened over time, but I have always been inclined toward logic and reason and arguments and making some kind of rational sense of faith. Read more

Aug 29

3 Comments

Wondering at the Fair

I’ve been tracking the evolution of the blog Wondering Fair over the past year with great interest, not least because of the excellent writing and theological engagement with culture that it contains. I have appreciated the diversity of voices, the spectrums of issues raised, and the overall vision of a safe and interesting place to talk about the things that matter most to us.  René has really done a great job in articulating and implementing a vision for constructive and stimulating conversation about faith, God, and truth in a post-Christian world that is often suspicious about these very  things.

Not surprisingly, when I was asked to be a regular contributor to WF, I leaped at the opportunity. Read more

Aug 23

7 Comments

A God Who Plays Dead

Now that I have started to jog periodically, I have done what all good joggers do: I have created a playlist on my iPod full of  bone-rattling, heart-pounding, anthemic rock songs to provide the requisite boost of adrenaline and inspiration once the legs start to feel like jelly, the breathing gets laboured, and the going starts to get pretty rough. For me, this takes place after about half a kilometre or so.

One of the tracks on my  playlist is a song called “Nietzsche” by The Dandy Warhols, which contains the following lyric:

I want a god who stays dead
not plays dead.

It’s a fascinating line—one that could allude to any number of points and experiences on the psychological/spiritual/philosophical landscape in postmodernity. God is dead, but God won’t away. We want nothing to do with God, but we can’t live without meaning and the hope of redemption. We cannot escape the shadow God casts. Read more

Aug 8

4 Comments

Why God Won’t Go Away: Book Review

In the summer of 2006, I had just completed my first year at Regent College, and was looking for a few interesting summer courses to accelerate my degree. When I sat down to my first class with Prof. Alister McGrath on Christian Apologetics—a course that spent a lot of time on the ideas of Richard Dawkins—I had no idea that a few months later The God Delusion would hit the shelves, kick starting a half decade or so of fairly lively debate in the Western world on questions about the existence of God, the role of religion in public life, and the nature of belief.

I also had no idea that a year later I would be getting very well-acquainted with Messrs. Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris, and Dennett, during my Masters thesis attempting to locate the phenomenon of the new atheism as a response to the problem of evil. Read more

Aug 2

2 Comments

Good News… Please

The church of Christ is in the business of proclaiming good news, in word and deed. This is our reason for being. Somehow, we believe that the good news concerning Jesus of Nazareth has changed, continues to change, and will one day finally change things in our lives and in our world. Good news changes things.

This is what we say.

And yet there are moments when it all seems so unbelievable. Read more

Jul 28

28 Comments

Smarten Up?

“The more scientifically literate, intellectually honest, and objectively sceptical a person is, the more likely they are to disbelieve in anything supernatural, including god.”

So begins a video compilation sent by a friend yesterday, assembled by British medical doctor Jonathan Pararajasingham, and consisting of clips of 50 academics talking about their views on God, religion, and the afterlife.  One suspects, from the quote at the outset, that there will be little diversity of opinion forthcoming and—34 minutes or so later—this suspicion is certainly validated.  The smart people have unanimously spoken: Religion is for the weak and the uninformed.  God is a myth.  This world is all there is.  Get used to it. Read more

May 11

33 Comments

Everything Seems to Be Broken

It is an odd thing, I have discovered during my nearly three years as a pastor, to be entrusted with people’s pain. 

It’s not an everyday occurrence, but today pain came calling.  Two conversations with two people, both carrying crippling burdens of hurt and despair, sorrow and longing, both dealing with the complex cocktails of physical, spiritual, mental, and relational pain that characterize so many lives, both searching desperately for a word of hope, comfort, or encouragement. Read more

Apr 27

34 Comments

God, Risk, and Evil

Last night, we had a drama group performing at our church (unenviably, on the same night as game seven of the Canucks/Blackhawks series!). Through a series of sketches, the group skillfully and humorously walked us through the basic contours of the biblical narrative—creation, fall, redemption—climaxing, of course, with the resurrection and the hope of new creation. One of the ideas that stood out to me during the dialogue in an early scene which depicted God deliberating with one of his angels about what and how to create, was that in creating human beings, God took a risk. Read more

Apr 19

39 Comments

Right and Wrong

This morning I came across an interesting lecture over at TED Talks by journalist, author, and “wrongologist” (apparently there is such a thing!) Kathryn Schulz called “On Being Wrong.” If you’ve got 18 minutes to spare, it’s well worth checking out. Read more

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