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Posts from the ‘Faith’ Category

Apr 26

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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 10

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On Authenticity

I have fairly regular conversations with people who want nothing to do with the 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 4

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The Sacred

In a recent conversation, someone remarked that one of the insights they had gained over time, through all the ups and downs and ins and outs and trials and tribulations, was that “everything is sacred” in this life. I nodded appreciatively, even though the irritating critic that lives in my head had already begun accumulating a list of things—war, poverty, gun violence, systemic evil, mosquitoes, TikTok—that I would not want to put in that category. The sentiment that we are trying to express when we say something like “everything is sacred” is surely worthy of affirmation. It is a recognition that there is something special or important or even holy about the world that can be discovered anywhere. Read more

Apr 3

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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 31

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“The Pulse in the Wound”

This is the day that the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it. Alleluia!

A poem by Denise Levertov for Easter Sunday morning. This is called, “On Belief in the Physical Resurrection of Jesus.” Read more

Mar 26

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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

Mar 19

5 Comments

Hungry Hearts

The danger is not lest the soul should doubt whether there is any bread, but lest, by a lie, it should persuade itself that it is not hungry. — Simone Weil

“I wish the church could be more like an AA meeting.” The statement came from a friend and colleague over lunch last week as we were both kind of bracing ourselves for annual meetings in our denomination. It was followed by a sigh.  The sentiment is not exactly a new one, but it’s no less important for its familiarity. It’s an expression of longing for the kind of vulnerability, honesty, community, and deep existential need that one often finds in twelve-step programs. And which is sometimes lacking in more institutional settings. Read more

Mar 8

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The Darkness is Upon Us: On Despair and Duty

We hear a lot about our culture of despair these days. Many people are noticing how pervasive things like depression, anxiety, loneliness, addition, and a general rootless, drifting apathy seem to be in the twenty-first century West. The causes are myriad and there are plenty of excellent diagnoses out there, from the technological to the social to the intellectual to the spiritual. But what is to be done? As is so often the case, the diagnosis is so much easier than the cure. Read more

Mar 5

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The Hatred of God

“My cellmate said a wild thing the other day. He told me that the word ‘hate’ is in the bible, somewhere in the Old Testament. I told him he was full of s***. that God doesn’t hate he only loves.” This was the first comment that emerged around the circle at the jail recently when I opened the space up for anyone to share what was on their mind. Not for the first time, I thought, “Huh, didn’t see that coming.” How to respond? “Well,” I said, “your cellmate is right, the word ‘hate’ is in the bible (around 200 times, depending on the English translation). It’s often even used in connection with God.” He looked at me suspiciously before exhaling through his teeth. “Really? Man, that’s f***ed up!” Read more

Feb 27

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Our Despair Might Say More About Us Than it Does About Reality

As I’ve mentioned before, over the last six years or so, I have devoted my sermons between Epiphany and Lent to questions of faith asked by members of our congregation. These can range from questions about specific biblical texts, to theological issues, to how faith intersects with this or that social issue. Sometimes I get only a few questions, sometimes I get so many that I have to extend the series. It’s a series that I find both enjoyable and challenging. The preacher always tends to approach the task with his or her own questions buzzing in the background. It’s always fascinating to take what’s on other people’s minds as my starting point. Read more

Feb 21

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On the Impossibility of Going Backwards

I remember the first time I saw the image to my left. It was almost exactly eight years ago on my first of two learning tours to the West Bank and Israel. On both tours, we visited the Aida refugee camp in between Bethlehem, Beit Jala, and Jerusalem. On both occasions we paused at the gate and pondered this haunting image of a giant key. The symbolism was explained to us. Many families in this camp still have the keys to the homes from which they fled or were forcibly displaced during one of the wars that attended the founding of the nation of Israel. The key is a symbol of the memory of this trauma and of the hope that they will one day return. Read more

Feb 13

14 Comments

Evil Little Monkeys (And the Things They Can’t Live Without)

A few people in my social orbit have passed along a recent article by Jen Gerson on the demise of the “New Atheism.” I suspect this is because I devoted my master’s thesis to critiquing the movement way back in 2007-08 and people (rightly) assume that I retain something of an interest in the movement. I did not really expect the New Atheism to age well. And it has not. It seems to have, like everything else post-2010, descended into the black hole of identity politics (could a movement whose key voices are older white males really have expected to survive the last decade?!). Additionally, it turns out that people seem to need more to go on existentially than the cold, dreary world of scientific materialism. Again, not exactly a stunner. Read more

Jan 16

3 Comments

On Manifesting

I hope you all enjoyed the holiday season and are manifesting a life giving 2024 for you and your loved ones. 

So began an email that I received this morning. Which, I confess, kind of put me in a bad mood. What kind of an idiotic greeting…?! I spluttered in my brain. Whatever I was “manifesting” at the moment, it would likely not have been very life-giving for myself or for my loved ones. Hopefully nobody was within the blast radius of whatever corner of the universe my thoughts were commandeering at that moment. Read more

Jan 9

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To Bow Down and Scream

I recently sat with someone who was dying. Yes, I know we’re all dying, but in this particular person’s case, death had moved from the category of “abstraction” to “unavoidable reality.” Which is always a difficult movement, and one with no small amount of anguish attached to it. This suffering is not unto death. So said Jesus about Lazarus’s predicament to Mary and Martha, at least in his majesty King James’ version of the gospel of John. But so much suffering is. Unto death, that is. Or, at the very least, a reminder that it’s coming. Read more

Dec 21

4 Comments

God, is that You Calling?

At a Christmas party last week, I became the proud owner of an orange rotary telephone. This artifact came into my possession via a gift exchange where guests were instructed not to buy anything. Typically what happens at these kinds of gift exchanges is that people either set to work doing virtuous things like baking a loaf of banana bread or they rummage around in their house for something that either don’t need, don’t like, or think would make for a hilarious gag. I’m pretty sure some of the gifts at this particular party have been circulating for at least half a decade. It’s all great fun. Read more

Dec 13

11 Comments

The Mysterians

Last night, I spoke with a friend about prayer. A mutual acquaintance had received bad news. What do we pray for? Peace? Healing? Comfort? Strength to endure? “Thy will be done” (those four words we pray when we run out of ideas, the last best expression of hope and resignation whereby we collapse into the words of Christ himself)? What does prayer even do? Are we trying to get God to get busy with what he would otherwise be disinclined to do without our entreaties? Does God require arm-twisting? Is there a critical mass of prayer required to move the divine needle? When it comes to the nature of prayer, it doesn’t take too long before we’re in head-scratching territory. It sort of defies airtight explanation. “I pray because Jesus prayed and because he told his followers to pray” can sound like a cop-out. Or it can sound like the deepest, truest thing one could say. Depending on the day. Read more

Dec 1

7 Comments

A House with Many Entrances

It’s been fascinating to observe the ongoing parsing of Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s conversion to Christianity. I’ve reflected on it briefly (here and here). This conversion been the subject of conversation with friends and acquaintances. It’s led down all kinds of interesting little trails. What counts as a “legitimate” conversion? It is even right or proper to speak of such a thing? Is the language of conversion simply a way to speak about subjective preference? Can we actually make the argument that some belief systems are “better” or “truer” or “more useful” in the context of pluralism in all its forms? Is “conversion” the right word to use for being persuaded by a cultural or civilizational argument? Should there not be some kind of emotional, spiritual, or affective component to things? How does what we’re converting from affect what we end up converting to? So many questions… Read more

Nov 28

2 Comments

Disneyland

I had barely walked through the door of my office at the jail when a guard showed up. “There’s an inmate who’s been trying to get a hold of a chaplain since Saturday. His kid is in on life support at the hospital. He wants to talk to someone. We suggested “Health Care,” but he wasn’t interested, so…” I gulped. Said I would “take care of it,” whatever that could possibly mean. I leafed quickly through some of the requests that had trickled in over the weekend and noticed two from this poor guy. I’ll call him Terry. Could someone please come see me… pray for me… pray for my son? My heart heaved a little. Read more

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