For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away.
If you are an avid reader, you will know that every now and again you come across a writer who profoundly shapes the way that you think. I could name dozens of writers who would make it onto my list. I am sure many of you could too. What is comparatively more rare, however, is... Continue Reading →
I can sympathise with Peter. In so many ways he is just like us. If you have grown up in the church, as I have, you will know what I mean when I say that “being on fire for God” is regarded as the optimal state of being for any believer. In other words, the... Continue Reading →
All of us will have stories of teachers who have – for better or for worse – shaped how we see ourselves, who we have become, and – by extension – the children we raise and the communities we participate in. Many of us will have unwittingly adopted attitudes, paradigms, habits that were engendered in... Continue Reading →
I have been to enough of your concerts now that I am no longer surprised that you do your own thing and refuse to just follow the crowd. While all of the other children at your graduation sat, still and compliant, you participated fully in each moment: you mouthed the words to other classes’ songs,... Continue Reading →
Somehow this advent season has felt different, which I suspect is a result of the journey I have been on in terms of interrogating my own theology. When we put up our Christmas tree recently, as Nathan hung ornaments on every available space on the tree and sang carols loudly, adopting a liberal creativity with... Continue Reading →
I am going to start off controversially: if you believe that entry into Heaven is the Christian hope, you have misread the gospels. More than that, I believe that this belief that Jesus’s primary mission was to win us a free pass through the Pearly Gates is the single most damaging doctrine preventing us from... Continue Reading →
Until you can answer the question of why we need to pray, you cannot begin to engage with how to pray. I have been making the case that The Lord’s Prayer is much more a theological statement than it is either a magical formula for unleashing the power of God (which I don’t believe it... Continue Reading →
I find prayer difficult, I will admit. But I suspect it is because for too long I have misunderstood its point. For much of my life, prayer functioned as a mechanism to try to get the universe to work in my favour, all the while trying to concede that if it didn’t work out, God... Continue Reading →
I was struck by something Michael Hardin said (much of what I am about to say about the Lord’s Prayer in the next few posts is derived from his talk here): a prayer is a theological statement. Every time we open our mouths to pray, we are giving utterance to our theologies. If we find... Continue Reading →
I think it is a very sad comment on the church that I suspect that my son has a better chance of developing a sound Christian theology if I take him out of a Christian school. And before anyone argues that if what I consider to be a “sound Christian theology” and what the school... Continue Reading →
Vapors In The Wind 