Skip to content

Posts from the ‘Tolerance’ Category

May 30

14 Comments

My Neighbour’s Shoes

You shouldn’t judge someone until you have walked a mile in their shoes.

The phrase is often consigned to the dustbin of well-worn clichés, even if most of us would basically agree to the sentiment it is attempting to express. Behind every destructive or harmful or just plain irritating behaviour or set of behaviours that we seek to “correct” in others is a human being with a story. Rather than resorting to judgment and easy labels (“addict,” “psycho,” “loser,” etc), we ought to take time to get to know the story behind the behaviour—to make some attempt, however minimal, to understand the journey that has led someone to where they are now. Read more

Nov 28

13 Comments

The Challenge of Pluralism (Gil Dueck)

Over the last few months, one of our adult classes at church has been reading through Brian McLaren’s A New Kind of Christianity. We’ve had some very interesting conversations, a few of which have revolved around the issue of what the Christian approach to pluralism ought to be. Is McLaren endorsing universalism? Relativism? Do all paths somehow lead to the same God? Is he advocating the abandoning of religious particularity in favour of a kind of fuzzy quasi-Christian humanism? These questions and others have animated some lively discussions about how we ought to live and think in our pluralistic context. Read more

Nov 22

26 Comments

Misadventures in Bible Land

A number of conversations and experiences over the last few days have me thinking about the Bible and how we use it. Maybe “lamenting” would be a more appropriate word. The Bible is, regrettably, a book that has throughout history proved eminently usable and abusable. Read more

Nov 15

Less Than Perfect

One of the “joys” of driving around town with my kids has been my forced reacquaintance with top-40 radio. For some reason, my children don’t seem to appreciate listening to CBC Radio One, and it usually takes approximately thirty seconds of time in the car before we’re bouncing along down the highway to the latest offering from whatever band or artist is currently enjoying/milking their moment in the sun. It’s been remarkable to hear the many different ways in which the same four chords and the same two or three themes can be employed to produce an astonishing amount of truly abysmal music. Read more

Nov 7

10 Comments

On Evangelism

A few years ago, I remember taking one of those online “spiritual gifts” tests with several co-workers. Needless to say, I am fairly suspicious of these sorts of things in general and particularly when they claim to be discovering something as open to abuse, misunderstanding, and misappropriation as spiritual gifts. I have always been of the opinion that spiritual gifts are the kinds of things that are discovered in community via the wisdom of mature Christians, not as a printout generated by responses to a handful of formulaic online questions. Read more

Nov 2

10 Comments

The Lust for Uncertainty

A very interesting article from Julian Baggini in The Guardian came through the reader this morning (h/t: Jesus Creed). Baggini talks about our tortuous relationship with “certainty” in the postmodern west, and questions the notion (set forth by fellow Guardian columnist Mark Vernon) that uncertainty is a virtue. Baggini’s article is worth quoting at length: Read more

Oct 10

13 Comments

In Defence of the Church

One of the questions I have come to dread over the years is the “so what do you do for a living?” question.  It’s not that I am ashamed to be a pastor, it’s simply that very often the discovery that I am “religious” can be something of a conversation-stopper.  Pastors are strange creatures, to be sure, and many people seem unclear about what to do when encountering one outside of their natural habitats (i.e., a church).  At the very least, disclosing that I am a pastor often makes the conversation instantly stranger, as people either a) hastily and awkwardly change the topic; b) begin to laboriously and not altogether coherently demonstrate how they are religious too; c) explain why they don’t go to church anymore; or d) stop talking altogether. Read more

Sep 29

15 Comments

They Still Haven’t Found What They’re Looking For

It is not at all uncommon to hear some variation of the story that 18-30 year olds are one of the most under-represented groups in the church today.  It seems that young adults are fleeing the church as soon as they leave high school, and only starting to trickle back once they have their own children, if they make their way back at all.  While some of the reasons for this are undoubtedly related to the general transience of this age demographic, it’s a worrying trend that has been and continues to be the subject of exhaustive analysis. Read more

Sep 2

6 Comments

Tolerance vs. The Demands of Love (Gil Dueck)

One of the unfortunate features of the blogging world is that many interesting posts/discussions disappear into cyber-oblivion as soon as new content replaces them on the front page.  To address this lamentable reality, I have thus decided that from time to time I will drag out the odd blog post from the basement (my own, or someone else’s) and give it the opportunity for another look, another round of conversation. Read more

Jul 12

11 Comments

What We Do With Our Unrest

In conversations about religion in Canada these days, one frequently comes across some variation of the phrase, “I’m spiritual, but not religious.” The implication often seems to be that “spirituality” represents openness, inclusivity, tolerance, and a host of other virtues, while “religion” is associated with the nasty dogmatism and rigid moralism of institutional church structures. Spirituality = good; religion = bad.  That seems to about cover it, in many estimations. Read more

Jan 11

13 Comments

The Church, It is a-Changing

At any given time, I have between 25-30 unpublished, half/barely-started posts or links to interesting articles occupying space in my “drafts” folder. Needless to say, things can get buried pretty easily, so I try to periodically root through this folder to see what I once thought was interesting/worth posting on, and to determine what might need to see the light of day (or be consigned to the cyber-scrap heap!). Read more

Dec 20

24 Comments

Indifference in Disguise

An interesting article from last week’s National Post… Apparently, youngsters in Quebec daycare centres will henceforth be allowed to see religious imagery and symbols but not to have them explained: Read more

Jun 8

16 Comments

Apatheism

A friend sent me a link to this article by CBC journalist Neil MacDonald last week.  Apparently, MacDonald locates himself within a growing minority that are increasingly finding the courage to “come out” as non-believers in a cultural milieu that frowns upon lack of professed religious belief (MacDonald is a Canadian living and working in the USA).  Unlike committed atheists like Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, however, MacDonald claims simply not to care about the matter. Read more

Dec 19

5 Comments

Santa is the Man

Well, the city is blanketed in an unusual amount of snow, and Christmas is certainly in the air. This morning I was off to see the always interesting children’s school Christmas concert. I tend to approach these events with a high degree of curiosity—especially in our post-Christian context. What organizational gymnastics, I wonder, will the organizers have to go through to present a non-offensive, politically correct program for the many and varied attendees that will be present yet at the same time say something remotely significant that honours the season? I genuinely feel for those who have to organize these things. It can’t be easy. Read more

May 28

7 Comments

Fear, Zen Neighbours, and the Nature of Faith

I’ve been thinking a lot about fear over the last couple of days. A couple of conversations and an article contribute to what follows. First, I had a discussion last night with someone who is struggling to navigate the tension that is arising in a church which is becoming polarized over the issue of whether or not the “Emergent Church” is a phenomenon that ought to be embraced or rejected. Not surprisingly, there are strong feelings on both sides of this issue, but at least as troubling as the division this is causing is the role that fear is playing in the discussion. I am certainly no cheerleader for the Emergent Church (in fact, I wish whatever it is that this term designates would just emerge already…), but I am troubled by the attempts of some to convince others that the ideas of this movement are “dangerous” and that we have to be “careful” that they don’t lead our children woefully astray. This seems to be nothing more than fear-mongering to me, and it does not portray the beliefs one is attempting to “protect” in a very positive light. Read more

May 14

3 Comments

The School Play

Well, today is a big day for our kids—Nicky in particular. Today, their kindergarten class is putting on two performances of their play entitled “Celebrate You and Me.” Nicky is the emcee for this play, and has been working very hard on his lines for the past couple months. He has something like seven mini-paragraphs that he has to deliver in between each song in the play. Claire also has a speaking part, but it’s “just” the recitation of a tortured excerpt of existential poetry (I’m not kidding!) in the middle of a song about wanting to belong. Read more

Newer Entries »