word | spirit | world | church
It’s Christianese for “I want to.” Maybe that’s harsh, but I suspect most readers have thought that too. I’ve had many conversations where someone is suggesting doing something which is somewhere on the spectrum between ‘surprising’ and ‘deeply unwise,’ where they tell me that God has called them to do it. I suspect for some… Continue reading What is Calling?
As is mine. That’s how faith works. We all have hand-me-down faith. Sometimes I hear people talk as though faith that someone else gave you is somehow worse than faith that you found for yourself. I think that’s a mistake. I just had the privilege of watching eight baptisms and heard eight stories of people’s… Continue reading Your Faith is Secondhand
In the Old Testament, the Temple was a microcosm, a miniature copy of reality. We see this in the way it’s structured; it’s built as a copy of the Garden of Eden: a mountaintop land with trees. The Temple is on the apex of a mountain, it’s full of trees (the lampstands and the decorations),… Continue reading Church as Blueprint
When I write on modernity, I suspect I give off the ‘vibe’ that everything was better in some golden age in the past. At the very least I sound like something is profoundly wrong with the moment in which we find ourselves. This codes me as ‘conservative’ in the broadest way: conservatives are those who… Continue reading On Nostalgia
Character matters. I suspect everyone agrees on that much. We say when appointing pastors that character is the thing that matters most—whether we follow through on that is a good question, of course—and we say the same thing about what matters in the Christian life. It’s vitally important. Jesus wants us to grow up into… Continue reading Restor(y)ing Character
Ambition is the sort of thing Christians don’t like much. It seems to stem from too high a self-regard, the idea that perhaps you could change the world (or your world), or perhaps from selfishness. I want to argue that ambition can be a good thing, and even a Christian virtue. It is good to… Continue reading Holy Ambition
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 requires suffering
We live in a strange moment of time and cultural winds that gets called all sorts of different names, but we can all agree its ‘modernity.’ Whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing, how concerned we are by it, and what features it has that we should embrace or push against are all… Continue reading The Bombadil Option
Our world is made of atoms, of spinning particles of energy careering around one another in a fabulously chaotic and surprisingly ordered way. Or so the story goes. I don’t mean to suggest that I doubt the scientists whose work informs our understanding of physics and matter; I have no reason to do so. What… Continue reading Repost: We Are Made of Stories
We live in what Charles Taylor calls a ‘culture of Authenticity,’ one where the primary values are autonomy, individuality, authenticity, and freedom. Which, since some churches talk about freedom a lot, can be confusing, because I’m not sure we mean the same thing. The freedom our churches talk about is the kind where you get… Continue reading Finding freedom from freedom
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