word | spirit | world | church
This will initially seem like an odd claim to make, and a particularly odd claim to read on your phone, the most disembodying and dislocating device you own. Wisdom doesn’t feel embodied, wisdom is about ideas, surely? Ideas are immaterial if anything is, right? Your body isn’t relevant to things that we think, or so… Continue reading Wisdom is Embodied
We need to make distinctions. Is England a ‘Christian Nation?’ Perhaps unsurprisingly, it really depends what you mean by the question. There are reasonable definitions of ‘Christian Nation’ where England, and the UK, or one of the two, fit it, and there are reasonable definitions where they do not. This post is my attempt to… Continue reading Is England a Christian Nation?
I am pro ‘symbolic’ reading of the Bible. This goes by a few different names, which aren’t entirely contiguous with each other: typology, spiritual reading, the four senses, allegory, maximalism, and more. These things aren’t the same, and they might not all even really be the same neck of the woods, but they are all… Continue reading Bad symbolic reading
You carry in your pocket a whole world. That hand-sized brick of black glass is a window to anything and everything that there is. You could find out what is known publicly about anyone you meet. You could learn from someone else how they think you should complete any tasks you’re about to do. You… Continue reading The World in your Pocket
We read the Bible in two directions, horizontally and vertically. Or, because I really like the word, we read the Bible orthogonally. I’m using some of the language here of Michael Niebauer, who argues for these two angles of reading, horizontal and vertical. I depart from him in the below to some extent, but I’m… Continue reading Orthogonal Reading
If you want to mature, you’re going to have to suffer. Actually, that’s not quite right. You are going to suffer, that’s the nature of life under the sun. Some of that will be petty, some of it will be serious, and (heaven-forfend) some of it will be so psychologically scarring that you’ll be getting… Continue reading Maturity Will Hurt
Evangelicals love magic. On the face of it that doesn’t sound like a true statement, perhaps you remember the mild panic over Harry Potter in the early 2000s, or the much bigger panic over Dungeons and Dragons in the eighties—witchcraft remains something we are inherently nervous about, sometimes leading to absurd extremes. Which is true… Continue reading Magical Thinking
Once a day dawned dark, the clouds hanging limp like wisps of smoke that clog the lungs after a fire has burned beyond its life. Tear-stained faces watched a man displayed, his torn body nailed to a tree torn from the ground and weeping over its foul fate. His face contorted with pain as his… Continue reading Last Words
I currently have three quotes on the wall in my study at the church building. I suspect that this will change with time, but each phrase is a reminder to me and I hope will shape my ministry over the next few years. None of them is from the Bible, which perhaps itself is surprising.… Continue reading 3 phrases to live by
I’ve become enough of a trope of myself that friends quip about how much I talk about dragons. It’s part, apparently, of the trifecta of things I get excited about in the Bible: trees, tables, and dragons. In reality, I’ll rarely mention the word ‘dragon’ in my preaching and I can’t remember the last time… Continue reading On Dragons
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