Is church working for you?
He is a very committed Christian but recently said to me, “This church thing, it’s just not working for me. The kids are bored, I’m bored, a lot of what happens is silly, and I experience God a lot more when I’m out in nature than when I’m forced to sit still and listen to endless jabber from the front – all in that rather drab building.” My instinct was to tell him why he was wrong, and to think of a way to help him reframe things. But even as the shape of a few rebuttal sentences formed in my head, I remembered this wasn’t the first time I...
Read MoreProlonging the Incarnation of Christ…
It was a comment in a Nomad podcast on the thought of Ivan Illich that I’ve been thinking about ever since: “The Christian vocation is to prolong the incarnation of Christ.” Ponder the sentiment. Those speaking readily acknowledged that a cheap and easy pushback is possible. “How audacious to think we can somehow prolong the incarnation of Jesus – as though our paltry efforts will come even close to resembling his. Rather we should point to the incarnation of Christ as the source of inspiration for our lesser virtues and endeavours. And the incarnation of Jesus...
Read MoreWhen experience holds us back…
I’ve always viewed experience as an advantage. When you’ve gone through something a few times you pick up insights along the way, and learn what to embrace and what to avoid. If you keep making the same mistakes you have only yourself to blame, so other than experience meaning we are a little older, what’s the downside? I guess every advantage has a shadow, and it’s as well to be aware that even experience has potential hazards. Think of a few… Those who have experience assume they know, but what if our experience was at the ho hum level, and we never ask if we...
Read MoreWorld expanding words…
Wittgenstein noted that “The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.” It’s an interesting sentiment. Can I understand what I cannot adequately name? Does a restricted vocabulary mean a reduced ability to enter into the world of another, or my own world? Do I need the nuance of alternate words to more perceptively comprehend what I am trying to grasp? In Scripture, words matter. God speaks the creative words “let there be…” and reality springs into being. Jesus is described as the Word who was at the beginning, the Word through whom all things...
Read MoreIf You are Willing: On Power and Possibilities
In Matthew 8:2 a man with leprosy approaches Jesus not with the anticipated “will you heal me?” but a statement, “If you are willing you can heal me…” The man has no doubt about Jesus’ ability, just his willingness. It’s a little confronting. Perhaps he had heard of the man who had been an invalid for 38 years before Jesus healed him at the Pool of Bethesda (John 5:1-16). He might not have enthused about the wonder of this miracle but asked about the others at that pool who weren’t healed – did Jesus not care about them? Did Jesus only...
Read MoreA Walk in the Woods…
This week Rosemary and I managed a short escape down Margaret River way, in part to celebrate my 66th birthday. Most of the family joined us and we were amply accommodated in a cavernous home that could have coped with a party twice our size. The weather was great in a wintery way – cold and sometimes misty, but nothing to stop us carrying out our plans, one of which was to walk the Chimney Trail in Wooditjup National park – a walk suitable for both 5 and 65 year olds (we did it the day before my birthday, when I was younger). A few things struck me from our walk in the woods....
Read MoreThen I remember, death comes before the rolling away of the stone
It was a throwaway line in a talk by a speaker whose name I have now forgotten: “We feel more moral, more right, more cheaply than ever before.” It was a comment on the shrill nature of much public discourse, and how easily we feel moral because we have expressed a noble sentiment, though expressing it has cost us nothing. Although not necessarily the intention of the speaker, it set me thinking about spiritual and moral formation, and how we learn and grow in life. And then I stumbled upon this magnificent conclusion to Mary Oliver’s poem At Black River “Then I...
Read MoreWhen Leaders Fall…
To be clear, this post isn’t a reaction to some new scandal and I’m not making any veiled references to some unsavoury incident soon to shock and dismay the Christian community. It is true that there have been so many moral failures that we should be disturbed – but even if you immediately attach a name to what I am about to write, I am not thinking about any one person – just a disturbing trend that impacts us all, no matter which flavour of the Christian faith you adhere to. Come to think of it, it’s not simply Christians who are impacted, for when we talk...
Read MoreBecause Biography is not Identity: From what we do to who we are…
In a throw away line in a podcast shortly before his sudden death, philosopher-poet-theologian John O’Donohue observes that, “biography is not identity.” Think about it. We spend so much time trying to impress people about what we do, or the achievements we can list on our CV, and far too little time focusing on the inner landscape of our life. In his book The Road to Character, David Brooks differentiates between what he calls resume virtues and eulogy virtues . The first focuses on the virtues that leave people saying “wow, I’ll employ you”, the second...
Read MoreCoram Deo: Living in the sight of God…
While I am by no means a Latin expert, there is a Latin phrase I love. Given you’ve seen the title of the post, it won’t come as a surprise that it’s “coram Deo”, which essentially claims that all of life takes place in the sight of God. We live and move and have our being before God’s face. Nothing is unknown to God, nothing a surprise to God. Should God ever get into a discussion about us we can be assured that nothing the discussion partner says will see God’s hands fling up in surprise with a startled, “Oh my goodness! I hadn’t heard...
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