Skip to content

Posts from the ‘Ethics’ Category

Jan 4

5 Comments

What’s Going On?

So, the year 2025 has arrived with a bang. Literally. Shocking violence and increasingly confusing mayhem in New Orleans and Las Vegas. Two deeply troubled souls lashing out at the world in one last spasm of rage or sadness or nihilism or self-hatred or righteous religious fury or resignation or… well God only knows. These sorts of stories still hold the capacity to shock us (I hope), but they are also steadily taking their place in a long list of very angry people exiting this world in one last destructive conflagration. Read more

Dec 27

The Hunger for a Single Story

Around fifteen years ago, the Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie delivered her famous TED Talk called “The Danger of a Single Story.” It was hugely popular and influential. It’s among the more popular TED Talks of all time, approaching nearly 40 million views at the time of this writing. In it, she talks about discussed the problem of reducing human beings and cultures to a single narrative. We are all more complicated than the “single story,” whether that story is what it means to be black or African (in her case) or any of the other identities that we associate with or are defined by. Human beings are complex. Human cultures are complex. A single story rarely tells the whole story. Read more

Nov 26

We Should Be Ashamed of Ourselves

“I like it better when your phone is on airplane mode.” The comment came from my dear wife as I was responding to a text while we were walking into a restaurant for lunch. We had just crossed the border back into Canada after spending a weekend in western Montana to celebrate our anniversary. My phone had been on airplane mode while out of the country to avoid data roaming charges. Apparently, I am more attentive, more present, and just generally more enjoyable to be around when my phone isn’t constantly buzzing and when I am not leaping to its every (real or imagined) demand. I mumbled some half-hearted, woefully inadequate excuse before sheepishly shoving my phone back in my pocket. Read more

Nov 6

8 Comments

Wednesday Miscellany: On Freedom and Curiosity

So, another Trump presidency. Today, I have very conservative Christian friends and acquaintances who are exultant and triumphant. I have very progressive Christian friends and acquaintances who are utterly crestfallen and/or enraged. As anyone who has read this blog for more than a minute likely knows, I have a deep and abiding suspicion of politics on both the right and the left, a disdain for the way in which politics has become little more than tawdry entertainment and has hollowed out our social discourse, and a profound concern that for too many Christians, politics has become their religion. But I’ve written about at least some of these matters before, so I won’t go there today. Read more

Oct 17

14 Comments

But Please, Don’t Forget to Find the Human in Your Enemy

I’ve had a few conversations recently about Ta-Nehisi Coates’s new book The Message. Coates is, of course, massively popular due to books like Between the World and Me, among others. He was a correspondent with The Atlantic and has garnered a large audience due to his writings on social and political issues, specifically on matters of racial injustice and white supremacy.
Read more

Oct 2

Be (More Than) Kind

My wife and I were recently out walking and passed by a woman wearing a buoyantly colourful T-shirt full of flowers and virtue that said, “Be kind” on it. I did my best to smile inoffensively at her as she walked by. I probably failed. Once she was out of earshot, I said to my wife, “What do you think shirts with messages like that actually accomplish? “Do you think people look at them and think, ‘Ah, yes, thank you for the reminder. I shall redouble my efforts to be a kinder person today’? Or do you think people resent the mini-moral lecture and mutter derision at them under their breath?” My wife may have rolled her eyes at me. Or muttered derision under her breath. Read more

Sep 12

I’ve Been a Good Boy!

Among the readings I encountered during morning prayer today was Psalm 17:1-7. It is a plea for divine vindication, protection, blessing, and favour from the pen of David. I have long had something of a complicated relationship with the Psalms. I know that the Psalms are the prayer-book of the church, that really smart and spiritual people pray them every day. And they do express the full range of human emotion. And they do contain some of the most beautiful and exalted language in all of Scripture. But sometimes the implicit theology doesn’t land. It strikes me as true-ish, but not true enough. Read more

Aug 22

8 Comments

Rocky Road

I occasionally remark somewhat playfully (but only somewhat) to my congregation that they are saddled with quite possibly the least “Mennonite” pastor in our denomination. They usually laugh politely and hope I’ll move on. Why do I say this, you may be wondering? Well, let me count the ways. Read more

Jul 26

9 Comments

This is Precisely Who We Are

So, there’s this big scandal involving the Canadian women’s soccer team at the Olympics. Apparently, two Canadian staff members were caught attempting to use a drone to spy on the New Zealand team’s practice. This is obviously not a good look for Canada as the Paris Olympics begin. Canada is supposed to be squeaky clean and wholesome and peaceful and tolerant and inclusive and blah, blah, blah, all the other nice, good, neutral things that we have ever laboured to convey to the world around us. “Cheaters” doesn’t really fit the image we wish to project. Read more

Jul 24

The Art of Living

There’s a young man on the train reading a book. The bare fact of this fascinates me. Who reads books anymore? Almost everyone else is either staring at their phones or talking (loudly and obliviously) into phones held face up in front of their mouths on speaker mode as seems to be the new bewildering norm. But there he sits, reading his book, like some kind of peculiar relic from a bygone age. I glance at the cover of the book. The Art of Living by Epictetus. Well. Not just any old book—which would have been remarkable enough—but a book of ancient philosophy and virtue? My mind is well and truly blown. I want to lean over and congratulate him or give him a hug or something. Read more

Jun 25

“What If We Also Crave Commandments?”

I’ve been thinking about moral “progress” a lot lately. The impetus for this has come from several sources. In Nick Cave’s latest edition of the Red Hand Files, he responds to a guy who’s wondering how to “move forward with joy” when one has “outgrown” the moral norms of one’s parents. Then there was a philosophical essay called “Moral Progress is Annoying,” which circled around the unremarkable insight that our “norm psychology” and knee-jerk reactions aren’t always reliable indicators of what is right or wrong. Read more

May 29

4 Comments

Pierced by Light

Is it morally permissible to be happy in our world? This is a question that I encounter in some variation or other with some frequency. Sometimes it is young adults bemoaning the “state of the world” they’re inheriting (climate change, high cost of housing, bleak employment prospects, depressing dating scene, etc.) and vowing never to bring a child into such a terrible world (I often tell these young adults that they might profit from reading a bit more history). Sometimes it’s activists who look around and see only racism or economic inequality or all the structural barriers preventing this or that marginalized group from flourishing. Sometimes it is people faced with a crushing decision or living in the immediate aftermath of terrible loss. Sometimes it’s people who are depressed, addicted, or anxious. Sometimes it’s people who are simply worn out by life. Read more

May 22

31 Comments

Did You Hear the Thing That Guy Said?!

“Did you hear about that speech that the player from some football team gave? I don’t know his name, the quarterback, maybe? The team was called the Chiefs or something.” So began a conversation over dinner with my daughter the other day. She was of course referring to the by now (in)famous commencement address given by Kansas City Chiefs placekicker (not quarterback) Harrison Butker at Benedictine College in Atchison, KS. My daughter has never watched an NFL football game in her life. But she knew about this football player’s speech (and she had a few opinions). Which I found interesting. Read more

Apr 26

3 Comments

Prometheus vs. Adam

I spent yesterday evening with a group of young adults discussing, among other things, what it actually means to love our neighbours. Do any of us go as far as Jesus wants us to? Or even come close? Do we love enough or as well or as consistently as we ought to? Do we serve or give or help or deny ourselves in meaningful ways? Or do we just become increasingly skilled at making excuses for why we don’t do more?  At one point, I think I said something predictably uninspiring, something that seemed to reek of middle-aged resignation and cynicism. Well, give all that a decade. Sounds like a recipe for burnout to me. Read more

Apr 16

3 Comments

Who Else Will Put the Stones Down?

On Sunday morning, a few of us were going through some last-minute details in preparation for the service. Among these, was the addition of a slide to be projected during the sermon. The person who had requested the slide had it ready to go on a USB drive and was going to deliver it to the people responsible for making sure such things happen. I couldn’t help but notice that the USB drive had the logo of a certain political party on it. I made some offhand comment about it. This led to a bit of harmless political banter. “Better not use that drive when so-and-so is running the tech,” one person said with a wink. “Yeah, but other-so-and-so would love it” said someone else.  And so and so forth. It was a light moment of brevity before worship, perhaps even an unwitting acknowledgement that even though we don’t all see things the same way politically, we can still come together in worship. Read more

Apr 10

1 Comment

On Authenticity

I have fairly regular conversations with people who want nothing to do with Jesus or Christianity due to the sins—real or imagined—of the church. Patriarchy, racism, sexism, capitalism, exclusivism, colonialism, sycophantism, homophobia… These and many more are vigorously laid at the doorstep of the church. How could I associate myself with such a religion? And the less obvious but implicit corollary: How can you? Read more

Apr 3

1 Comment

Falling Night: Review

It’s been a while since I did a book review in this space. I’m not sure if I’ve ever reviewed a work of fiction. Well, no time like the present, I suppose. Philip Clarke recently published Falling Night, his first novel. Clarke spent a good chunk of the 1990s in Africa, working as first a humanitarian aid worker and then as a tropical forest researcher. He also spent nine years as executive director of Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders), an organization that I highly respect, and who I encountered through the writing of James Orbinski (An Imperfect Offering). Now, Clarke has moved on to fiction. Read more

Mar 26

6 Comments

Our Selves and Our God

What kind of selves do we need to be to live in harmony with others?

I came across this question in a recent interview with Yale theologian Miroslav Volf. The context for the question was the endlessly discussed and analyzed “polarization” that defines our cultural moment. But the question extends far beyond the culture wars or the toxicity of social media or the relentless politicizing of everyday life. It’s the kind of question we should always be asking, I think. And yet so few of us give even a passing thought to the “kinds of selves” we are becoming through the habits and disciplines (or not) that we are daily cultivating. Read more

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »