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Feb 26

23 Comments

The Crap Circle

Controversy around the nature of the atonement continues to bubble beneath the surface in some corners of the Canadian MB Conference. Specifically, some have problems with a book by MBBS professor Mark Baker and Joel Green that questions the primacy of penal substitution and seeks to recover other important biblical metaphors that address what the cross accomplishes and why and how. Some think Baker’s understanding of the atonement ignores (or at least minimizes) God’s wrath and denies the fact that Jesus died as a substitute for our sins. There have been charges of heresy, and plenty of misunderstanding and miscommunication throughout the discussion. Read more

Feb 24

16 Comments

OH CANADA!

UTTER. DOMINATION.

I don’t think anyone expected such a blowout for a Canada/Russia game, but the Red Machine is rolling!

What a night!

Feb 23

1 Comment

Exile

I read very few novels during the six years I was in formal studies—there was too much required reading for my courses and, when combined with the ordinary demands of small kids and everyday life, there wasn’t much time (or energy!) left for reading fiction. One of the joys of seeing my university and grad school days receding in the mirror has been the ability to start reading novels again. It’s nice to be able to read a book without the expectation of evaluating it and demonstrating comprehension looming large in the background. Read more

Feb 22

1 Comment

Watchers

The mail today contained a letter informing me that as an alumni of Regent College I am to receive a year’s free subscription to Crux—the quarterly journal of Christian thought and opinion they publish.  Things seem to be running a little behind with this publication (as you will see, if you visit the website), but it was a delightful surprise, nonetheless, to receive a few back issues.  This poem is from the Summer 2009 issue: Read more

Feb 16

3 Comments

Rapt for Lent

The season of Lent begins with Ash Wednesday tomorrow, and over the last week I have been overhearing the customary discussions about who is giving up what for the period of pre-Easter preparation. I have given up things for Lent in the past and have occasionally even found the process to have the effect of sharpening my focus and preparing me for Easter.  But more often than not, it has degenerated into somewhat of a duty that, while undertaken with the best of intentions, fizzled out well before Good Friday arrived. Read more

Feb 15

9 Comments

Swept to Big Purposes

Like many, I have been watching the 2010 Vancouver Olympics off and on for the last several days. Much as I would like to pretend otherwise, I have found myself to be a bit of a sucker for a euphoric flag raising ceremony or a powerful biographical vignette or an emotive speech or any of the other carefully crafted media productions intended to produce some kind of transcendent sense of being Canadian. It’s been unsettling to see how manipulable I am! Medals won by people I do not know in events I have virtually no interest in outside of two weeks every four years suddenly have the capacity to make me feel like an important part of a grand and momentous red and white wave of fulfillment, meaning, and purpose. Read more

Feb 11

9 Comments

In Your Hands

I heard this song on the radio yesterday and I’ve been humming it ever since.  The artist is UK singer/songwriter Charlie Winston and the album is called Hobo (available in North America on March 9).  I’ve got the date marked on my calendar already! Read more

Feb 8

8 Comments

A Ragged Garment

Last night I was talking with a group of young adults about things like doubt and honesty and childlike-ness and the role these things (and others) played in the development and preservation of a mature faith.  Frederick Buechner, in a discussion of one of his former professors, has this to say in Listening to Your Life: Read more

Feb 5

40 Comments

Living With the Bible

I’m always curious to observe how people view the Bible, both inside and outside of the church. There are often very interesting assumptions at work about what it means to “take the Bible seriously” or about how Christians view (or ought to view) the Bible. Everyone thinks they have a good understanding of what it means to “believe in the Bible” (or, more often to disbelieve in the Bible) whether this understanding comes from inside or outside of the Christian fold. Read more

Feb 3

8 Comments

Are 140 Characters Enough?

The disconnection, distractedness, triviality, and loneliness that are increasingly becoming a part of a hyper-technified age has been a source of interest (and concern) for me for a while now.  Increasingly, our lives are lived online. Facebook and Twitter (or the blogosphere!) are substituted for the cafe and the living room.  Status updates and text messages take the place of conversation.  There are certainly many good things about the brave new communication world we have created, but there are costs as well. Read more

Jan 30

7 Comments

Home

I’ve had the opportunity to travel back to my hometown in southern Alberta twice over the last month or so, once for a late Christmas and once for a funeral. A small town on the prairies was home for virtually all of my first thirty years until we left four and a half years ago to begin graduate studies in Vancouver. Going back always feels good and often leads to interesting times of reflection. Read more

Jan 27

21 Comments

A World Suffused with Value

Spending parts of the last few days writing an article about atheism has given me the opportunity to revisit some of the notes and quotes I accumulated during my thesis research a few years ago. Discussions about the relationship between the discoveries of science and the claims of faith seem to occur quite regularly, both on this blog and in my everyday conversations. This quote from John Polkinghorne’s Beyond Science: The Wider Human Context isolates an important dimension of the conversation, in my view: Read more

Jan 25

6 Comments

Oh, Happiness

For at least the last decade or so, I’ve been fairly sour on the contemporary Christian music thing.  The reasons for this are many and varied (and likely very predictable as well), but probably not worth getting into here.  Whether it is merited or not, I tend to view the whole American evangelical empire and all of the products it spawns with suspicion if not outright cynicism. Read more

Jan 22

22 Comments

Prayer: You Place a Reservoir Within My Heart

Perhaps surprisingly, given my occupation and the fact that one of my main (and most rewarding) tasks on any given Sunday is leading our congregation in prayer, I often find prayer difficult. The reasons for this vary. Sometimes I am paralyzed by the relative insignificance of my own needs when compared by the suffering others are facing (this week has been an especially difficult one for prayer, given the situation in Haiti). Sometimes I don’t know what to pray for. Sometimes I don’t know what prayer accomplishes—in my own life and character and for those I pray for. Sometimes I am simply lazy and undisciplined. Sometimes the silence of heaven wearies me. Read more

Jan 20

14 Comments

In Every Arrival, a Leavetaking

I promise to return to less morbid topics shortly, but after returning from my grandfather’s funeral, hearing of the passing of a member of our congregation’s mother, and continuing to watch the ongoing crisis in Haiti unfold, death is on my mind.  I believe it was C.S. Lewis who once said that the ability (and burden) of being aware of and anticipating our own deaths is uniquely human.  Regardless of how we may feel about it, death is something we have to learn to live with. Read more

Jan 15

39 Comments

Our Portion is Charity

Like many, no doubt, my heart has been heavy and my prayers have seemed hollow for the country of Haiti this week.  Words seem so small and insignificant in the face of such devastation and pain, but I was glad to have come across these, written by David Bentley Hart after the 2004 tsunami, this morning: Read more

Jan 13

11 Comments

Sing

My grandfather died this morning. On one level, his death came as a mercy and was not accompanied by the shock and tragedy that so often accompany a loved one’s passing. But on another level, my grandfather’s death—like all deaths—is a shock and it is tragic. We wear death very poorly, as human beings. We try to ignore it, sanitize it, romanticize it, keep it arms length, or any number of other strategies, but we’re never very successful. Read more

Jan 12

1 Comment

To Become a See-er

One of the blogs I have come to deeply appreciate over the last little while is that of Winnipeg singer/songwriter Steve Bell.  Steve is an enormously talented human being whose music I have admired for some time and who I have gone to see in concert whenever and wherever the opportunity presents itself (most recently, I saw him perform at Regent College last September).  I began following Steve’s blog last year and have discovered that his talents are many and diverse!  Not surprisingly—he is, after all, a songwriter—Steve has a way with words and his posts often leave me with much to ponder. Read more

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