For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away.
When we talk about God we reach instinctively for royal imagery because it feels weighty and majestic. Kingship promises order in a world fraying at the edges. And goodness knows we need that hope. Yet the startling claim at the heart of Christmas is not that God arrives as a king, but that God arrives... Continue Reading →
I do not believe AI is a saviour, nor do I believe it threatens our existence. Even when its intelligence inevitably dwarfs our own to the point that we can offer no unique insight, I do not believe it will become a kind of machine-god. I hold out no hope for a deus ex machina, descending... Continue Reading →
The world feels as if it is holding its breath. The headlines sound like history clearing its throat: invasions, posturing, populist righteousness, tribal resentment, and the slow encroachment of another global bloodletting. You can feel it in the fear people carry, simmering just beneath casual conversation, in the desperate attempts to find who is to... Continue Reading →
There’s a kind of spiritual theatre that I grew up around—a world where the Holy Spirit arrived with fireworks: tongues and trembling, declarations and deliverance, prophecy and power. You were supposed to feel it. To be moved. To be filled with something electric, uncontainable, divine. And sometimes, people were. I never was. And there were... Continue Reading →
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 →
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 →
Writing is an act of hope. There is a presumption that what you have to say not only matters, but can shift things, make things better. To write is to believe that things can be other than what they are. Maybe that is why I have battled to write these last few months. I am... Continue Reading →
Today I want to respond to a comment on my last post. I had been talking about the Eucharist as a central symbol of the new way in which Christianity wanted to frame culture. I bemoaned the fact that in the way we practice it today we more or less completely miss the power of... Continue Reading →
I would have preferred a zombie apocalypse. The world is on the edge of monumental change. You can feel it – war and famine and disease are becoming impossible to ignore; economies are collapsing, climate is shifting, scapegoating violence is on the rise in all its various forms as societies attempt to mitigate against imminent... 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 →
Vapors In The Wind 