For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away.
Hope is difficult to speak about with integrity. Too often, it is made to sound like denial—like a way to silence grief, soften injustice, or sidestep the complexity of human pain: “Everything happens for a reason”, or “She’s in a better place now”. I am frankly sickened by how Evangelical Christians celebrate God’s leading them... Continue Reading →
I want to share a thought with you – a sort of hypothesis I am exploring. It is the kind of thought that in certain churches will guarantee excommunication – or at the very least ensure that your name is only ever mentioned in hushed tones – but it is too important not to share.... Continue Reading →
Easter unsettles people. Being at the heart of the Christian story, it tends to polarise us: you either roll your eyes at its claims or feel deeply moved by them. There’s not much in between. Unless you count the chocolate, in which case there’s a whole aisle of middle ground in your local supermarket. But... Continue Reading →
Here’s the thing: no matter how appealing or fascinating we might find other cultures, no matter how alluringly they might present themselves to us, the fact is that people do not – by and large – change cultures. Our understanding of what culture is does not allow it. We do not possess a conception of... Continue Reading →
In a very real sense, I think, we become what we worship. Whatever higher power we regard as giving meaning to our lives – whether that is a deity, or an ideology (like democracy, or humanism, or Darwinism for that matter) – shapes our values, which in turn shape our actions, which inform the kinds... Continue Reading →
In our discussion group a couple of weeks ago, somebody expressed a genuine curiosity as to why so many intelligent and learned people cling so vehemently to certain Christian doctrines in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. What makes otherwise perfectly rational human beings defend indefensible doctrinal positions? Why, for example, do so... Continue Reading →
Here’s the thing about history: History is not about events that happened; it is people’s stories about events that happened. The only way we know anything is through narrative; we make sense of our world through metaphors. All of our observations of the world around us first pass through the filters of our narratives before... Continue Reading →
I need to offer a revision of something I wrote a few weeks back. In discussing the Fall, I argued that we have set ourselves up in mimetic rivalry with God. I should, more accurately, have stated that we have set our God concepts up as mimetic rivals. The idea that any actual God would... Continue Reading →
It is not the Bible that I reject; it is certain ways of reading it. Protestant Christianity today, in essence, has placed its faith in the Bible (as opposed to Jesus) as the revelation of God, and as a result has had to spend much of its intellectual effort defending this claim. In a very... Continue Reading →
Contrary to what many modern Christians would like to believe, Christian theology has never stood still. And that is because faith is not an answer we arrive at. From a Christian perspective, we already have the answer: Jesus. What Christian theology is trying to do is understand what the question is. And as any delving... Continue Reading →
Vapors In The Wind 