Jul 8
What if we just made God up?
The question came not from a despairing parishioner or a reader of my blog or an inquisitive university student at a trendy coffee shop. No, the question came from my twelve-year-old son at a sushi joint last weekend while drumming on the table with his chopsticks in between green tea and California rolls. Read more
I have always been a lousy sleeper and I lay awake at night a lot. This proves to be fertile space for all manner of thoughts to flit in and out of my brain, some good and useful, many not so much. I think about my kids and their future. I think about philosophy. I think about soccer. I think about people who are suffering. I think about the meaning of life. I think about the many people who I have been blessed to know and who are a part of my life. I think how we end up in the places we do, doing the things we do and about what the point of it all is. Read more
I’ve been spending some time in the first two chapters of Genesis over the last few weeks as we make our way into a summer worship series on creation. And one cannot read very far in the literature about the first two chapters of the bible without at some point encountering the predictable, tendentious battles between evolutionary naturalism and creation, science and religion, etc. It seems to me that those who get the most excited about these issues often quite badly misunderstand either the nature of science or the nature of religion. Or both. And this tends to lead to a considerable amount of heat and not a great deal of light being generated in public discourse on this issue. Read more
Along with a dozen or so other books, Jamie Smith’s Desiring the Kingdom has been languishing unopened on a dusty, lonely corner of my desk for the past few months. I decided to finally carve out a bit of time for reading this morning and was very glad that I did. Based on the first fifty or so odd pages of this first volume in Smith’s “Cultural Liturgies” project, I would say that this is a book that every Christian educator and pastor ought to read. The fundamental question that Smith places before us is this: Are human beings defined by what we think and believe or by what we love and desire? And, perhaps even more importantly, how ought our answer to this question inform our practices of worship and education? Read more
This has been a week of some pretty spectacular spring weather in our neck of the woods. Violent thunderstorms, torrential rains, hail, wind… virtually every night has witnessed the pyrotechnics of heaven. Today there are declarations of states of emergency, flood warnings, and evacuations across southern AB. It’s been a pretty incredible few days.
After last night’s storm—which was the most violent one of the week, by far—I heard someone remark about how this kind of weather is evidence of the power and glory of God. I somewhat sullenly bit my tongue. Perhaps it was because I spent part of last night trying to stem the tide of water that was flowing into my basement bedroom and scrambling to rearrange furniture. Perhaps it was because I spent another, much later part of last night teetering on a rickety ladder, trying to unclog my eaves troughs with frozen fingers in the blinding rain and darkness split open by periodic flashes of lightning. Perhaps it was because all this rain is wreaking havoc with my soccer season! Whatever the reasons, there were many things going through my mind during the storm last night, but mouthing paeans to the God of creation for his wondrous displays of power and glory was not among them. I was mostly just wishing someone would turn off the tap. Read more
Based on my own entirely unscientific observations, it seems that there is a burgeoning market for “recovering pastor who saw the godless light” stories these days. The genre is familiar enough by now, right? Fundamentalist pastor grows up in the church, uncritically swallows the whole religious package, devotes x number of years to serving as pastor in [insert small Bible belt American town here], gradually begins to have doubts, finally has the courage to leave his (it’s almost always a “he” so far) faith behind, is persecuted, scorned and rejected by his townsfolk and former parishioners still imprisoned by the shackles of fantasy and indoctrination he has so recently (and heroically) shed, and eventually staggers into the warm and compassionate embrace of this or that atheist group devoted to helping recovering clergy. And then, for the triumphant finale, our hero embarks on a life of spreading the good news of atheist liberation on [insert motivational speaking tour here] amassing inspiring (de)conversion narratives of other clergy that he has “helped” along the way. It’s not a bad gig if you can get it. Read more
This morning I am grimly staring in the mirror at a large red scab that is rapidly moving toward full bloom almost directly in the middle of my forehead. An uncomfortable reminder, this, of the previous evening’s activities when, instead of making contact with the soccer ball as I had intended, I rather abruptly introduced my forehead to an opponent’s skull. This ugly scab seems somehow uglier as I reflect upon the game itself. Up 2-1 in the second half, then conceding three goals in about 10 minutes to lose 4-2—two of said goals almost entirely due to giveaways by the guy with the blotchy red forehead.
Sigh. Read more
This one comes from the “if you can’t say anything nice—or at least morally/theologically coherent—then don’t say anything at all” file. It seems John Piper has expanded his repertoire from terrifying adults about God to terrifying children about God. I’ve come across a number of references this morning to a recent children’s story that Piper told. Here it is (h/t: Internet Monk).
Brace yourself. Read more
I went for a walk at lunch today. A frustrating morning… needed to clear my head, to think, to pray.
I often walk on a weedy red shale path alongside an irrigation canal that snakes behind our church on the outskirts of town. There’s not much of a view to speak of. Some farmland, an agricultural research facility, a big motor sports dealership, a meat processing plant off in the distance. Off in the other direction I can hear the hum of machinery and industry where a new hotel going up across the highway.
But in the spring and the summer, there is water in the canal. And I like to walk by water. Read more
Back in my university days I took an undergraduate philosophy course on the problem of evil. We had been through most of the well-rehearsed responses to the question of how evil can co-exist with an all-powerful, all-good, and all-knowing God. Each had their problems, of course. “But what happens if we just say that God is limited?” our professor asked, with evident glee. What if God’s kinda just making it up as he goes along? What if God’s a bit of a selfish jerk who isn’t nearly as concerned with human misery as we are? Or, what if he’s a nice enough guy, but he just can’t do much about evil? What if he’s doing the best he can with what he has to work with? What if he’s learning as he goes, just like the rest of us? Read more
I spent part of this week reading a book about preaching. It had an impressive sounding title that included the words “the glory of preaching.” I bought it on the recommendation of someone from my grad school days who had spent ten minutes or so listening to me going on and on about my what an unobvious choice I was for the vocation of “pastor.” Zero homiletics courses, zero counseling courses, a whole string of academic classes on systematic theology, philosophy, postmodern theory, etc., an almost pathological fear of public speaking, a history of fast-talking, stuttering, introversion, etc. “All in all, not the most obvious candidate to be behind a pulpit on Sunday morning,” I nervously half-joked. “You should buy this book,” she said. “It will be a great help to you.” Read more
I listened to the story of a gay man yesterday. It was a story both tragic and tragically typical. It was a story of knowing he was “different” from his very earliest memories, of being mocked and ridiculed throughout his school years, a story of confusion, anger, and pain, a story of desperately trying to come to terms with an identity that just didn’t fit, a story of a string of unsatisfying relationships, a story of isolation and deep loneliness that persists to the present day.
It was also, of course, a story in which the church played a role. I wish I could say that it was a positive role—that the community that bears the name of the Friend of Sinners had provided a place of refuge and peace for this person… I wish I could say that. But I can’t. We all know that this isn’t how the story usually goes. We know that “rejection” and “guilt” and “judgment” and “fear” and “misunderstanding” are among the words that appear at this point in the story. Read more
When I was in my twenties, I swore I would never drive a van. Vans were spectacularly uncool, boring, gasoline-sucking behemoths that middle-aged people who had given up on life and ideals drove. Vans were for tourists. Or people who went to Disneyland with whiny kids who were never satisfied. Never! Not for me. I would drive a trendy Euro-wagon or something. I would get a roof rack for extra storage. I would drive just about anything but a van!
I am now in my thirties. I drive a van.
[Sigh] Read more
As far as I can recall, the last few weeks have contained my first ever interviews. This sounds quite a bit more impressive than it is or was. One was forty-five minutes in a Tim Hortons coffee shop discussing my time in Colombia last year with a local reporter who is preparing a small booklet as part of an upcoming relief sale put on by Mennonite Central Committee. The other was ten minutes or so in front of a camera in Montreal as part of a feature about the Truth and Reconciliation Commission being put together by Mennonite Church Canada. We’re not really talking a big stage here. But still, kind of interesting experiences. Read more
That may be true for you, but how can you say that it is true for everyone else when there are so many different understandings of truth out there
This is, of course, among the most common questions out there in postmodern-dom and, more specifically, in the context of the religious/ethnic/cultural diversity that is becoming the new normal in Canada and the West in general. Christians are becoming increasingly aware that there is much that is good and true and beautiful in a wide variety of worldviews and practices. We are also alert to the painful reality that the Christian worldview has all too frequently been aligned with the interests of colonialism and other less overt modes of cultural imperialism. It can be a tricky thing, this business of expressing one’s convictions about the particularity of truth amidst all of diversity and historical error and the baggage that comes along with it. Read more
I continue to consider it a shame that I have only begun to get acquainted with Brennan Manning now that he has passed away. I am finding him to be a remarkable writer and thinker. Even though at times Manning’s spirituality seems quite different from my own and, on occasion, I even find myself disagreeing with how he puts this or that, he quite stubbornly holds the reality of grace before the reader in an extraordinary and compelling way. Here are a few memorable quotes containing plenty to ponder from my reading of The Ragamuffin Gospel this evening. Read more
The following comes out of an experience I had yesterday. I try to be very careful in deciding if/how to share about stuff that I encounter in my daily work. There are issues of privacy, of course, in addition to the simple fact that not every experience I find meaningful necessarily needs to be shared—especially in an online/cultural context where over-sharing is reaching almost epidemic proportions.
Having said that, I think it is important to hear the stories of our world and our communities—perhaps especially the unsettling ones. Stories move and change us. At the very least, it’s important for me to hear/tell them. There are so many things that I cannot do in light of the many problems in our world, but one thing I can do is simply to write, to tell stories like this one. It is especially relevant, I think, in light of my recent posts on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (here, here, and here) and yesterday’s post on “Normal Unhappiness.” All the names below have, of course, been changed. Read more
It’s intriguing to me how frequently our morning worship services will contain a pleasant surprise of some kind, whether an unplanned correlation between a song and a prayer or a testimony that just fits with this or that aspect of the sermon or some other thing. It’s remarkable how frequently the Spirit of God seems to be working in similar ways and prompting similar ideas in the hearts and minds of people in our community. Read more
 | Bart Velthuizen on The Helpers of Rahab |
| Bart Velthuizen on The Helpers of Rahab |
| The Helpers of Rahab… on Ellipsis | |
 | paulhikes on Castles of Regret |
 | Sharon on Give Praise |
