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Posts from the ‘Faith’ Category

Nov 13

Fridays

For many people, Fridays are the days when their spirits begin to lift. The drudgery of the workweek is almost done and a weekend full of freedom and promise beckons. TGIF and all that.  For me, Fridays often feel, well, exactly the opposite of that. I have noticed that on many Fridays a heaviness of sorts will just descend upon me. The reasons for this are myriad, but, having performed a cursory inventory on this Friday, the following seem consistently to rise to the top of the list. Read more

Nov 5

7 Comments

Fight Song

I got into the car this morning in a bit of a surly mood. A few things hadn’t gone as I had anticipated the previous day, I had received an unwelcome email that morning, and I was behind on sermon prep. Again. I stabbed the key into the ignition only to be greeted by the ear-splitting strains of the local top 40 station that my wife and daughter were, evidently, listening to on the way home from their evening activities last night. The part of the song that I was forcibly subjected to heard before frantically locating the combination of knobs that could lower the volume and/or change the station went something like, This is my fight song, take back my life song…  Read more

Nov 2

4 Comments

All the Goodness in the World

We are bargain hunters, all of us. We make bargains with God, with reality or the cosmos or karma or whatever. We are convinced someone or something out there is keeping score, that our lives are like a bet we are daily making that the things we do are somehow a reliable indicator of the things we will get. Read more

Oct 30

4 Comments

The Task of Love

I’ve been thinking about doubt over the past few days. It started when I read a recent piece over at Pete Enns’ blog about a pastor who confessed his doubts about the existence of God in front of his congregation. It continued when a friend pointed me in the direction of The Liturgists podcast, and particularly the episodes where the host (Michael Gungor) and co-host (Mike McHargue, or “Science Mike”) discussed their de-conversion and reconversion narratives. Especially interesting was the shape of the faith that was eventually returned to. Gone was the black and white faith of their evangelical upbringings. In its place was a postmodern faith more comfortable with grey, increasingly open to mystery, and less certain about the doctrinal content of orthodox Christianity.

Even more interesting were the “axioms about faith” that Science Mike had come up with as the “scaffolding” for this new approach to faith. Read more

Oct 16

2 Comments

Be Happy

It usually takes about five or six days. When one of my wife or I am traveling, this tends to be the threshold beyond which I start to feel strangely disoriented or unsettled or somehow, I don’t know, adrift. When I am the one at home—as is the case now, while my wife visits friends in Germany—this tends to be around the time when the kids have begun to peer dejectedly into the refrigerator, sadly pondering the prospects of another evening of dad’s “cooking.” The pets have started to wander around the house full of confused longing, being generally accustomed to warmer treatment than they tend to receive from me. It’s as if the entire house senses that things are not as they should be. Read more

Oct 14

5 Comments

Paperwork

I hate paperwork at the best of times. I hate filling out forms, grinding through the interminable bureaucratic labyrinths that seem to be part and parcel of modern life. Sign this waiver. Check that box. File this form. Send that release. Print it for your records. On and on it goes. Paperwork is slow death.

I hate paperwork even more today. Read more

Oct 13

12 Comments

“Something is Now Supposed to Grow Together”

I’ve been paying attention to Germany lately. And not just because my wife happens to be there visiting dear friends of ours who live in Bavaria (my daily act of spiritual discipline this week has been to attempt to suppress the feelings of jealousy that regularly flare up as I think about her wandering the streets of Munich while I clean the cat’s litter box and make dinner…). I’m also paying attention to Germany because this is the nation that was and remains a focal point of the refugee crisis that took a dramatic turn in early September with the discovery of Alan Kurdi’s body on a Turkish beach. Read more

Sep 30

5 Comments

The World is Mess

Hassan is short, slight, quiet. He says little as he approaches the counter at the soup kitchen. He’s wearing black pants, black hoodie, and a black hat pulled down over his ears. He smiles, almost shyly, as I give him his plate, but does not hold eye contact for long. He takes his food to a table where he sits, alone, and eats his lunch. Read more

Sep 26

6 Comments

The Heart of a Stranger

I spent part of today listening to good stories. Our church hosted the AGM of MCC Alberta and, not surprisingly, much of the conversation throughout the day centered around the work that MCC is presently doing with the Syrian refugee crisis.

But we also heard stories of what MCC has done for other groups of people in other parts of the world. Saulo Padilla, an immigration educator with MCC USA shared of his own refugee journey from Guatemala to Canada, and the many twists and turns that his story has taken along the way. And he made one comment that has stuck with me throughout the day. Read more

Sep 21

141 Comments

Five Words That Make All the Difference in the World

In light of the (barely believable) response to my previous post, I thought I would throw up one more feeble attempt to clarify a few things. I continue to be astonished at both the volume and the content of responses this post has generated. It seems to me that many people have simply misunderstood what the post was trying to do. Perhaps the title was too inflammatory and put people instantly on the defensive. Perhaps I just found the “angry” corner of the Internet. I don’t know.

But, in an attempt to be as clear as I possibly can, here’s the “move” that the title—“I’m sorry, Christian, but you don’t get to make that move”—is referring to.

In sum, if you have no interest in Jesus or his teachings, then you can splash around the hysteria, the fear, and, all the anti-[insert threatening people group/category here] rhetoric you want.

Read more

Sep 16

695 Comments

I’m Sorry, Christian, But You Don’t Get to Make That Move

I have a bone to pick with Christians this morning. Not all Christians. Not even the majority of Christians in my (limited) circles. Not by a long shot. No, my concern is with a smaller subset of Christians that tend to make a disproportionate amount of noise. Over the past few weeks, I’ve had a lot of conversations with Christian people about the Syrian refugee crisis. I’ve observed a lot of reaction and response from Christian people online. And I’ve noticed some of these Christian brothers and sisters buying into the fear and the hysteria that attempts to convince us that we need to keep our nation’s doors resolutely closed to refugees from this part of the world. Read more

Sep 9

3 Comments

The Interests of Jesus

The news continues to be dominated by the Syrian refugee crisis. And, given our little church’s efforts (along with other churches and groups in our community) toward bringing a few families to Lethbridge, my time is increasingly being dominated by the same. I have found myself doing very odd things this week—things like speaking about our project on radio programs and being interviewed by television and newspaper reporters. Yesterday’s foray into the media world reminded me that there’s a reason why I prefer writing to speaking. You get a bit more time to think and measure your responses when you can hide behind a screen!   Read more

Sep 2

9 Comments

Unnatural Order

Every day, it seems, the refugee crisis in Europe worsens. Every day, the headlines that jump out at me when I open my computer in the morning are grim and foreboding. Last week it was capsized boats and trucks on the side of the road. This morning, it’s a train station in Budapest where police are preventing thousands of migrants from boarding trains bound for Germany. And tomorrow?  Next week, month, year? Who knows? Read more

Aug 12

11 Comments

How Not to Cross a Boundary

Gretta Vosper has been making headlines for a while now. She’s the pastor of West Hill United Church in Toronto. She also claims to be an atheist. According to a recent article at Vice News, Vosper realized back in 2001 that the idea of a supernatural being who intervened in the affairs of the world was a very silly thing to believe. She has, nevertheless, been soldiering on in her church for the last decade and a half in the service of the more worthy and “progressive” concerns that she feels the church ought to be about. Read more

Aug 5

Daughters

I ran into two friends this morning for whom the month of August is an excruciating one. Two fathers for whom August is the anniversary of the unimaginably painful loss of a young daughter. For both, August brings an acute reminder of the ever-present reality of the gaping wound at the heart of their lives. For both, August means the rehearsal of a crippling loss that no parent should have to endure.

It is impossible to think of these two friends and their losses without thinking more generally about fathers and daughters. Read more

Aug 2

11 Comments

“All Will Finally Become Beauty”

I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead.

— Philippians 3:10-11

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what faith in Christ is good for. If someone were to ask, “why ought I to sign up for this whole Jesus business?” what ought we to say? Read more

Aug 1

11 Comments

The City

A few long and rambling reflections on my first experience of the Big Apple this past week… I’ve included a few pictures, too, for those who will undoubtedly tire of my wordiness. 🙂

New York City is one of those places that looms large in our collective imagination as Westerners and, more particularly, as consumers of media produced in the USA. Its streets and buildings and cityscapes and rivers and landmarks provide the backdrop for so many of our films and television programs and advertising. New York is where famous people live and work and play and produce moments for the rest of us to observe. And, of course, since September 11, 2001 many people feel an even deeper connection, however conflicted, with the city. We watched as its towers came down, as the already intense media glare was sharpened still further, as its citizens were lionized and held up as emblematic of all that was good and true and virtuous about America. New York is where the action is, where it all happens. New York is where people want to be. Read more

Jul 17

6 Comments

Caught in the Act

Faith can be a hard road, sometimes. Earlier today, Richard Beck published a short piece on his blog in response to the question, “What keeps me holding on to faith?” His answer reflects the response that many of us would give, I suspect. We are drawn to Jesus. Not necessarily to theological doctrines about Jesus or official explanations about what he did and what it accomplished or will accomplish or whatever, but to the person of Jesus, to stories about how he lived and loved in and for the world. However we might have come to faith, and whatever the reason(s) we cling to it in the teeth of so many doubts, behind all of it on some level is the simple truth that the person of Jesus is enormously attractive for many, many people. Read more

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