Skip to content

Posts from the ‘Ethics’ Category

May 30

2 Comments

God and the Devil are at War

“Can I ask a question before we even start today?” It was Monday afternoon and there were around fifteen of us sitting in a circle on plastic chairs in an airless prison chapel with bad lighting. The question came from a young man who I’ve enjoyed getting to know over the last few months. He’s thoughtful, deliberate in his speech, deeply serious (alarmingly so, at times). When he speaks, people listen. “Yeah, of course,” I replied. “What’s your question?” He furrowed his brow, took a breath, and said, “What’s the point of being good?” Well, that’s the kind of question that can uncork an opinion or two. Read more

Apr 11

8 Comments

The Price of Purity

I’ve expressed admiration for the writing of Nick Cave over the last few months. His book Faith, Hope, and Carnage was among my favourites of 2022. A few people recently asked if I had listened to the interview with him on the UnHerd podcast. I had not. So, on a lovely spring-like Easter Monday morning I threw it on my phone and went for a long walk. 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 22

2 Comments

Jesus, Remember Me

Over a dozen guys showed up for bible study at the jail last week. At least half, I had never seen before. It was an enthusiastic bunch, and the conversation ran off in all kinds of directions. A reading from John 11 about the raising of Lazarus quickly morphed into a discussion of everything from the dead bodies that emerged from the tombs in Matthew’s account of the crucifixion to what happens when you die to the harrowing of hell. We also talked about zombies. So, you know, a fair amount of terrain covered. Read more

Mar 7

5 Comments

The Rubble

Once there was a great building. Mighty with towers, spiky with spires, a-bubble with domes. Inside it opened into gallery after gallery, vault after echoing vault, so high that human beings who set off across its marble pavements sometimes mistook its roof for the sky and the building for the world itself. And though it showed signs of many styles, and had been built by many different architects over many centuries, it had been standing so long than no one could remember when it wasn’t there, or suspected that it could ever fall. But it did…

Some of the rubble was gathered up by those who had particularly loved the building and assembled back into a much smaller structure—somewhere in size, say, between a cottage and a garden shed. The rest, however, lay where it had fallen; and the grass grew over it, and creepers disguised the biggest pieces of the ruin till they looked almost like outcrops of rock; and with a speed just as astonishing as the collapse had been, those who walked there forgot there had ever been a building, and took the bumpy hill beneath them for the plain and natural ground.

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

Feb 14

11 Comments

Deliver Us from Evil

I’ve remarked often that the jail is where certain forms of progressive theology go to die. You don’t hear much about inclusivity or diversity or bespoke spiritualities or wellness and self-care at the jail. What you do hear is an at-times-uncomfortable amount of talk about judgment and salvation and damnation and spiritual warfare and atonement. You hear about heaven and hell and purgatory. You hear about how forgiveness and mercy sound pretty nice and I’ll have some of that thank you very much, but they’re too goddamned hard for Jesus to expect of us. Read more

Jan 31

13 Comments

Back-to-Back

I’ve been reading the Beatitudes for over three decades. They’re kind of like the constitution of Mennonite churches (or at least we’re often pleased to think so). The rest of the bible can be hard and confusing and bewildering and even offensive, so we’ll just double down on what Jesus actually said, thank you very much. And we’ll really zero in on Matthew 5-7, the Sermon on the Mount, the most substantive continuous block of Jesus’ teaching, where he reinterprets and transcends the Law. And we’ll be laser-focused on the first eleven verses where Jesus talks about who is “blessed” in the kingdom of heaven. We’ll leave the theologizing and harmonizing of disparate texts to others. We’re just humble Jesus people. 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 3

3 Comments

God is Love. And We Must Love Each Other

A month or so ago, I became aware (I forget how) of Nick Cave. I had never heard of the Australian singer, songwriter, poet, and author before this, nor had I ever listened to his band (Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds). Actually, scratch that. His song Red Right Hand is the theme song for Peaky Blinders. And apparently a song called O Children made an appearance in a Harry Potter movie. So, I guess I’ve heard him before, but only accidentally. It wasn’t his music that grabbed my attention a month ago, but the title of his new book: Faith, Hope, and Carnage. Quite a title, that one. The kind of title that might incline someone to do a bit of digging around. 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 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

Oct 11

9 Comments

The Only Sermon Left?

The church is full of self-righteous hypocrites, corrupt leaders greedy for power, morally bankrupt abusers of the weak and vulnerable. Its pews are populated by miserable -ists and -obes and transgressors of every other sort. The church should shut its mouth until it can make at least something resembling moral progress. The broader culture isn’t interested in any of its sermonizing words in the absence of meaningful action. Let your actions do the talking for once. We’ve all had more than enough of your endless words. 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

Aug 31

1 Comment

Lean into the Light

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the gospel, what it is, what it isn’t, what people need, what they don’t, where hope comes from, where it doesn’t, etc. It’s probably not surprising to hear a pastor say that they think about the gospel. You might even hope this were so and expect this to be the case. And yet, that word, “gospel,” is a slippery one. It often proves stubbornly malleable and elusive in our time and place. Even those who ought to know better (pastors or bloggers, for example) can and do mishandle it. Read more

Aug 3

Who Are You?

I recently had a conversation with an acquaintance about an experience they had where someone claimed to have a physical disability based on their subjective impression of their “true self.” My acquaintance would, I think, consider themselves to be a fairly progressive politically, and is quite passionately committed to speaking up for the marginalized in our world. And yet they found this experience (and the broader trend it points to; see here, for example) enormously frustrating. Someone dear to them lives with a disability and is well-acquainted with the difficulties of navigating the world that come along with this. The idea that physically healthy person would claim to be disabled as a form of social currency was offensive to them, and I think quite rightly so. Read more

« Older Entries