The Gospel of Sin Management (Gil Dueck)

Our community is in the middle of a four-week sermon series on the nature of the gospel.  We are discovering that “the gospel” is an expansive and inclusive thing—perhaps much bigger and deeper than many of us have considered it to be at various points along our journeys of faith.  The gospel is good news that goes far beyond individual souls and their eternal destinies, and has implications for all of life and all of  the world.  

Making Space

I’ve remarked here before that I am, by nature, a bit of a pessimist.  I’m not particularly proud of this, but my default position seems to be  to see the glass half-empty.  I tend to expect the worst in life, for myself and for those I love, as a kind of protective mechanism—this, despite the fact that this strategy has proved to protect me from precisely nothing and, in fact, almost certainly closes off certain possibilities for joy and peace.  Just this morning, in a conversation  with someone about a person of mutual interest, I responded to an expression of hope and optimism in with something like, “yeah, well I’ll believe it when I see it.”  

Freedom From Ourselves

I’ve come across this in a number of places this week… Apparently, you can now purchase software to force yourself off the internet.  Freedom is a program designed to keep you offline for up to eight hours at a time, freeing you up to be creative, productive, on task, and healthy and happy to boot, no doubt.  Technology to save us from technology.  Just what we need.

Fragmented People

This past Sunday’s sermon touched briefly on the experience of meaninglessness.  The text was Genesis 1:1-5 and I focused on how the creation narrative portrays God speaking life and light and beauty and purpose into the cosmos.  Yet so often, in our world and in our lives, this seems more than we can believe.  We postmoderns are restless people who have difficulty accepting that there is a big story within which our individual crazy, chaotic stories can find their place.  We are fragmented and unmoored people who are divided and distracted in so many ways.  

Proselytism and “The Deep Slumber of a Decided Opinion”

I just sent off a review of Elmer Thiessens’s The Ethics of Evangelism and find myself with proselytizing on the brain.  Despite the fact that I was largely persuaded by Thiessen’s argument that ethical proselytizing is not only possible but, in a qualified sense, obligatory, I’m still a bit  suspicious of the word “proselytize.”  I don’t quite know why.  Perhaps I don’t like the way it is often used or the images it conjures up of eager missionaries eager to add another convert to their checklist.  Perhaps the word has somehow picked up the connotation of objectifying and people and treating them as means rather than ends (to borrow Kantian language).  Perhaps I just don’t like the way the word sounds.  I don’t know.

Grace—For Another Year

So, 2012 has arrived and another year presents itself.  Another holiday season draws to a close, and the liminal days of the season give way to the normal, the mundane, the predictable, and the familiar.  Perhaps unsurprisingly, I find myself in a bit of a reflective space today as I look back on the past year and ahead to the new one ahead.

Control Yourself!

A new year looms on the horizon and with it, thoughts of new beginnings, life changes, the sloughing off of old, destructive habits, etc, etc.  If there is a practice that is more widely and enthusiastically embraced with less empirical evidence to ground its optimism than the New Year’s Resolution, I am not aware of it.  Rare is the occasion when our resolve makes it past, say January 15.  It’s just too difficult to control ourselves.

Gratitude

Gratitude was the topic du jour on my morning commute today.  CBC Radio’s The Current had a psychologist from Northeastern University on the program to talk about the “upward spiral” of gratitude and generosity that can result if we cultivate these attitudes and behaviours, and how this upward spiral can be passed down our social networks leading to strengthened relationships and healthier mental well-being.  Sounds pretty good!

They Must Not Believe in God

“They must not believe in God.”

These words from my daughter came after a conversation we had been having at bedtime about someone who she had heard yelling at their baby.  For her, it was clear: someone who believed in God simply would not do something as monstrous as scream “shut up!” at an infant.  People who believe in God don’t do such things, after all.  Right?

A Labour of Vision

This morning, I read of Christopher Hitchens’ passing and felt very sad.

I did not know the man personally, of course, nor did I share many of his convictions about the world.  Indeed, Hitchens spent a good deal of time and energy (articulately and entertainingly) attacking some of the things most important to me.  But today’s news really hit me.  It was kind of like hearing that a friend had died—or at least a distant cousin that you once stayed up late into the night having an intense conversation where you both got really worked up and ended up simply having to agree to disagree!  

Children as Gospel

This past Sunday evening was our children’s Christmas program.  It was a wonderful and wonderfully diverse production.  From pre-schoolers playing “Silent Night” on hand bells to high schoolers’ strumming “Jesus Messiah” on electric guitars, to little Marys and Josephs in housecoats and shepherds and angels and botched candle-lightings and memorized poems and rousing renditions of familiar carols, it was a delightful collection of parts that contributed to a marvellous whole.  

Wilderness

One of the texts that I spent some time on during last Sunday’s sermon was Isaiah 40:1-11 which speaks of good things coming from the wilderness—words of comfort for beleaguered exiles, words of hope in the God who raises the valleys and brings low the mountains, words of good tidings to be proclaimed from the mountaintops, that the Lord comes to his people with strength and with compassion.  Good words, from the wilderness.

Rejoice Always

Last night, I was sitting on the sofa after dinner looking over the lectionary texts for the coming Sunday, trying to decide which passage or combination of passages I could preach on.  When my wife wandered over and inquired as to what I was doing, I immediately solicited her advice in choice of texts.  She read them over, hummed and hawed noncommittally, then took a deep, trepidation-filled breath, and said, “Can I make a suggestion?  Do you think this week’s sermon could, you know, maybe focus a bit less on the negative?”

Welcomed From a Distance

One of my morning Scripture readings today was the famous “by faith” passage in Hebrews 11 that talks about how the heroes of faith did not receive “the things promised” and lived as “foreigners and strangers” on earth.  It’s a beautiful text, a powerful portrayal of longing, faith, and hope.

It Is To You My Heart Calls

One of my trusted companions throughout each Advent Season over the last few years has been a little reader put together by the folks at Regent College called The Candle and the Crown.  Each day there are two Scripture readings and short reflections by Regent faculty, alumni, and others—one for the morning and one for the evening.

Among the Scripture readings this week was the twenty-seventh Psalm, which has long been one of my favourite psalms.  The combination of joyful, expectant hope, longing, and raw honesty has made this psalm a frequent destination for me.  As with so many of the Psalms (and Scripture in general), I find that these ancient words narrate and interpret my own experience so many years later.

The Path to Peace

Steven Pinker has a new book out called The Better Angels of Our Nature and is currently doing the rounds to promote it.  I heard part of an interview with Mr. Pinker on CBC’s The Current yesterday, and today read an article on the book from The New York Times.  I’ve not yet read Pinker’s (apparently massive!) book, but as I understand it the basic thesis is that, contrary to what one might expect to hear from an evolutionary psychologist committed to the a view of the world that sees natural selection as the driving force behind human history, we are becoming more peaceful as a species.

The Challenge of Pluralism (Gil Dueck)

Over the last few months, one of our adult classes at church has been reading through Brian McLaren’s A New Kind of Christianity.  We’ve had some very interesting conversations, a few of which have revolved around the issue of what the Christian approach to pluralism ought to be.  Is McLaren endorsing universalism?  Relativism?  Do all paths somehow lead to the same God?  Is he advocating the abandoning of religious particularity in favour of a kind of fuzzy quasi-Christian humanism?  These questions and others have animated some lively discussions about how we ought to live and think in our pluralistic context.

“Love Cannot From its Post Withdraw”

As another week nears its scrambly conclusion, and as the pace of life begins to pick up as it inevitably (and unfortunately) does each year around this time, and as I begin to turn my heart and mind towards themes of Advent—themes of waiting, expectation, longing, hope—and as I begin again to ponder once again what it means to affirm and follow a God who I believe has come, continues to come, and will come, it was wonderful to hear Derek Webb’s version of  William Gadsby’s classic hymn “The Love of Christ is Rich and Free” come through the random iTunes shuffler this morning.