While reading the First Epistle of Clement to the Corinthians, I paused over something he wrote about peace. This letter, written about 96 CE, is one of the very earliest documents we have (other than New Testament texts) from the young Christian movement. Clement was bishop of Rome and was writing to encourage the church…
A few years ago I stopped using the word “deserve”. The concept no longer has much value to me. Sure, there are some cases where perhaps an athlete running way out in front of a race is hit by a water bottle thrown by someone in the audience just seconds before the finish line. They…
We don’t use the word “joy” a lot these days. The Google Ngram below shows that the words “joy” and “happiness” occur with about the same frequency, but if you add “happy” and “happiness” together, then they occur about 3 times as often as “joy”. They can mean the same thing, but I think of…
In a recent conversation a friend spoke about the need to trust that God is in control. I’ve heard it before, and often in the context of a reassurance that even if your situation looks bleak, it is supposed to be comforting to know that God is in control. I don’t believe it. The God…
A recent article by Charles M. Stang (*) notes that “Thomas’s acclamation [in John 20:28] is the only place in the New Testament where Jesus is called ‘God’.” I think that’s pretty remarkable. Elsewhere Jesus is called Son of God, image of God, and other similar epithets, but only here is he plainly “God”. More…
I know those two lines are thesame length but the knowingmakes no dent in the illusionof their difference. In the Müller-Lyer illusion two lines of equal length are made to look unequal. One explanation of the trick is that our minds interpret the lines as the corners of buildings: the one on the left as…
While reading Miroslav Volf’s commentary* on 1 Peter I was struck by his thoughts on how the church establishes its identity in the world. By describing Christians as aliens and strangers in the world, Peter establishes a clear difference between the church and the culture that surrounds it. Volf asserts that, to Peter at least,…
At a Peter Rollins event last night, one participant spoke of how he has lost Jesus and wondered if he was hiding behind some curtain. Someone else countered that the curtain has been torn – I assume referring to (Matthew 27:51. Peter didn’t pick up that theme, although I know it is at the centre…
(Originally posted at Men of Strength on 1 March 2014.) At church this morning we sang Oceans again. Yikes! that is a scarey song! “Spirit lead me where my trust is without borders… Take me deeper than my feet could ever wander …” I advise you to think carefully before you voice that request to God. The place…
An unstated assumption that underlies a lot of my culture’s thinking is that evil deserves to be punished. As of today, I no longer believe it. That change of heart comes from a long line of influences. I read Butler’s Erewhon way back about 1985. It’s a humourous saga in the same genre as Gulliver’s…
