Religious ritual is whatever you do repeatedly for the purpose of positioning yourself before God.Ritual becomes empty when it is done only for the purpose of performing the ritual, with no thought or concern for positioning yourself before God.
Read MoreToday I am here watching my mother die. She is not cooperating. I was about to say I am glad she is dying, but that’s not right. Not even close really.
Read MoreI spoke recently at the wedding of a friend’s son. I opened by comparing the couple’s decision to have me speak to Hitler’s decision to invade Russia. Not the opening for your traditional wedding talk.
Read MoreIt is quite possible that this post adds up to nothing. But, on this cold-clear day after Christmas, it has two good stories in it, so it is not, I think, a total loss.
Read MoreHow do Christians today think of this defining event in human history – God joining his creation? Three different conceptions of Christmas among believers come quickly to mind.
Read MoreA passage from a novel in progress—the third novel in the Jon Mote series that began with Death Comes for the Deconstructionist. Jon is a troubled soul, in many different but related ways. He tends to be obsessive in his thought life, which is the only life any of us really knows. He’s abandoned the religious faith of his youth, but is still haunted by it.
Read MoreWe have long known that many addictive behaviors are linked to the release of pleasure-giving chemicals in the brain—from drinking to drugs to risky behavior to watching football.
Read MoreSo what does a person like me do in a culture in which displaying anger is taken as a necessary sign of commitment and moral seriousness?
Read MoreOne way I think about the current state of public discourse is in terms of four birds, the chicken, the peacock, the ostrich, and the owl.
Read MoreIs The Great Gatsby a crime novel? Crime and Punishment? Moby Dick?
Read MoreWhat I think the Christmas story should call up instead is admiration for Christianity’s first evangelists and a determination on our part to tell the story of the good news with as much passion and joy as they did.
Read More“I have never really left Pennsylvania, that is where the self I value is stored, however infrequently I check on its condition.” So says the late John Updike.
Read MoreMost everyone seems to know what to think about Ferguson. I don’t.
Read MoreDan Wakefield has an article I enjoyed in the latest IMAGE journal about his long-time friendship with the tolerant atheist (the words don’t always go together) Kurt Vonnegut. Vonnegut.
Read MoreGrant Petersen was thrilled with his second place medal. While some of the players on the high school basketball team for which he is the manager sulked after losing the championship game, when Grant heard his name called…
Read MoreWe arrived in Ireland, a motley group of poetry lovers (some faking it), on the day in 1995 that it was announced that Seamus Heaney had won the Noble Prize for Literature.
Read More“Lacking intensity in our lives, we say that we are distant from God and then seek to make that distance into an intense experience.”
Read MoreI’m reading with pleasure the poet Christian Wiman’s memoir, My Bright Abyss: Meditations of a Modern Believer. With a poet’s gift for fresh words to express old ideas (“the hive-like certainties of churches”), he ruminates over his unlikely return to faith after decades away.
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