• On January 27, 2008 by

    Spring of Hope or Winter of Despair?

    I believe in…
    The holy Christian church.

    -The Apostles’ Creed

    It was the best of times, it was the worst of times; it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness; it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity; it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness; it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair; we had everything before us, we had nothing before us; we were all going directly to Heaven, we were all going the other way.

    -A Tale of Two Cities

    To be in the church you must be in a church.

    To not be in a church is to excommunicate yourself from the church.

    But to be in a church is to become aware of the many warts and blemishes of the church.

    Welcome to reality.
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  • On January 23, 2008 by

    Igloo Ed and Loch Vale in a Gale

    Peri, Philip and I are in the mountains for three days this week. We’ll fly back home tomorrow. We went into the mountains on snowshoe hikes Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. The weather has been bitterly cold, but we came to be in the mountains, so in the mountains we have been.

    On Tuesday we met up with our friend Igloo Ed. Ed is a winter hiking and camping legend in these parts. He reminds me of Gandalf. He knows these mountains like the back of his hand — he’s truly amazing. He took us on a hike by a route known only to himself — it’s as if he knows every tree…maybe he does.

    When we began our hike it was 12 below zero and windy. Cold! But we had a great hike.

    Here’s some pictures:

    Igloo Ed

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  • On January 17, 2008 by

    What Does It Mean To Be A Christian?

    Beginning Sunday, January 20th, Pastor Brian Zahnd will be teaching a three week series entitled, “What Does It Mean To Be A Christian?” inspired by a question received on his Facebook page.
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  • On January 14, 2008 by

    Letter to an Atheist

    The following is a letter to an atheist friend. I sent it moments ago. It is a real letter to a real person. The following is exactly what I wrote, with only one word omitted.

    Dear Tim,

    You’re probably right about the weak points in ______’s book. I honestly think many of your points are valid.

    Still I would like to talk to you for a moment about God. Not condescendingly, you deserve better than that, but from my heart. Please allow me to have my say.

    Is there a God?


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  • On January 7, 2008 by

    When Do We Live?


    The glory of God is a man fully alive.
    -Irenaeus, 2nd century church father

    The medieval theologian Bede the Venerable gave a parable where he likened human existence to that of a bird that in the night flies out of the darkness into a dimly lit room of a castle, lights for a moment, and then flies out the opposite window. Bede meant to present human existence as transitory and essentially preparatory for the next. This was the prevailing medieval view of human existence.

    Then the Renaissance happened.

    With the Renaissance came a new way of looking at life. Human existence came to be viewed as worthwhile. Worthwhile for its own sake.

    For medieval theologians like Thomas Aquinas, all that mattered was the glory of God. Renaissance thinkers like Leonardo da Vinci emphasized the dignity of man. The mistake we don’t want to make is to think that these views are mutually exclusive. They are not. The dignity of man is that he is called to bear the image of God. And nothing confers greater dignity upon man than the Incarnation — that God could become human and lose none of his divinity.
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  • On December 19, 2007 by

    Cows

    Cow

    Cows.

    Eating grass. And all the rest.

    Stupid and content.

    They’re all pretty much headed to the slaughter. They just don’t know it. Thus the contentment of the brute beast.

    I talk to my cats about it all the time. I tell them…

    “This is your existence. But you don’t think about it, do you? That’s because you lack self-awareness. Thus you are not troubled by the meaninglessness that is derived from your lack of immortality. Happy, stupid cat.”
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  • On December 10, 2007 by

    Lamentation and Laughter

    ComedyTragedy

    To live is so startling it leaves little time for anything else.
    -Emily Dickinson

    To her, death is quite romantic
    She wears an iron vest
    Her profession is her religion
    Her sin is her lifelessness
    -Bob Dylan, Desolation Row

    We played wedding songs
    And you did not dance
    We played funeral songs
    And you did not weep
    -Jesus, Luke 7:32

    Humanity, we have a problem.

    If we don’t know anything else, we know this.

    To be human is to take the stage in a tragic comedy. One moment it’s laughter, the next it’s lamentation. In one scene we dance with one hand waving free, in the next we trudge along to the doleful sound of a dirge. And so it is.

    Religion exists to address the problem of the human condition and more often than not the solution religion comes up with is escape.
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  • On December 3, 2007 by

    All Too Human

    Much dubious Christology derives from the fact that many of us have trouble accepting the spottiness of our own concrete humanity, and loving what God has thus fashioned. In this scenario, perfect human beings demonstrate their perfection by being as unlike us as possible. And so we picture Jesus in such a way that he becomes a living reproach to humanity rather than an easily recognizable expression. By thus elevating him, we unprofitably abase ourselves and create a distance between us and him that defeats the purpose of the incarnation.
    -Michael Casey, Fully Human, Fully Divine

    During the years of Jesus’ life and ministry and in the few years immediately following his resurrection no one doubted the humanity of Jesus. He was obviously a human being. What people had to come to grips with was his divinity. But soon after, as Christianity began to develop, the opposite problem began to occur. Christians had no problem believing that Jesus was God, but they doubted his humanity. That problem remains with us today.
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  • On November 26, 2007 by

    Crazy Stuff

    Now everything’s a little upside down
    As a matter of fact the wheels have stopped
    What’s good is bad, what’s bad is good
    You’ll find out when you reach the top
    You’re on the bottom

    -Bob Dylan, Idiot Wind
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