For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away.
On one of my business trips, some colleagues and I lay outside on the lawn at the bed and breakfast we were staying at, looking up at the stars. Somebody remarked that a heaven where there was no pain or hardship would not be a heaven at all. She pointed out that all of her... Continue Reading →
The problem with believing that God was punishing Jesus on the cross for our sins, as Michael Hardin points out, is that it doesn’t take sin nearly seriously enough. It limits the power of sin to the personal. In other words, it implies that the primary problem with sin is that I will be harshly... Continue Reading →
We did not arrive here by accident. Make no mistake about it, the mess that is the world was created by our own actions, rooted in our beliefs and values, shaped by the way we think about who we are and how we ought to relate to others. If our misogyny allows us to perpetuate... Continue Reading →
The Bible is not the word of God. Let’s get that out of the way right up front. I think that if we are to make genuine advances in our understanding of who God is, and why He would choose to become human in the person of Jesus, we need to relinquish our grip on... Continue Reading →
My recent move towards a nonviolent understanding of atonement has heightened my awareness of Christianese: the meta-language of evangelical Christianity of which I am becoming increasingly critical. The problem with this kind of meta-language is that there are doctrines and ideologies deeply embedded in the words and phrases that are never questioned because the language has... Continue Reading →
In recent weeks, I have explained why I feel compelled to reject the Penal Substitution Atonement philosophies that underpin many of the theologies and practices in the Western church. But if PSA is no longer adequate for explaining atonement for me, then I need to re-evaluate some of the key questions (Why did God choose... Continue Reading →
I am a bit of a Thomas. When Thomas was told that Jesus had risen, he refused to believe it unless he could see Jesus with his own eyes, and touch the terrible scars (John 20:24-29). I, too, refuse to accept the Jesus presented to me by the Western church, until I can be certain,... Continue Reading →
I am immensely fortunate to have the colleagues that I do. They are more than colleagues – they are friends. It is why, even though it is difficult to be away from home as much as my job sometimes demands, I enjoy my work-related travels. This week we were in the Cape, the first stop... Continue Reading →
As long as I can remember, I have loved the bushveld. It is one of the few places where I feel completely alive and free. There is an immediacy about life in the African bush that I find wholly alluring. When you are walking in the territory of lions and elephants, for example, your regrets... Continue Reading →
Interacting with a god is a tricky thing. Not least of all because by definition a being outside of our dimensional constraints would be incomprehensible to us. Our minds simply cannot conceive of a god. Imagine that a drawing was truly two dimensional (it is not, really, because the thin layer of ink constitutes height,... Continue Reading →
Vapors In The Wind 