New column:
Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category
Religion does not kill. People Do.
Monday, July 25th, 2011Oh, Wow!
Saturday, June 25th, 2011Our grandson, Henry, has found his first words. (Actually, he is working on others now as well.) But the first ones were, “Oh, Wow!” And they are almost always accompanied by a little hand pointing at something — the picture of sheer delight and wonder. The experience of watching him respond to the world around him has reminded me of some important truths:
All too often the journey into adulthood is one of accumulating cynicism. The “Oh, Wow!” moments of delight and wonder give way to “Oh, Sure” moments of weary and wary distrust. But the loss of delight and wonder is not a measure of sophistication.
A capacity for wonder is directly related to our ability to remain open, pliable, imaginative, and teachable. An “Oh, Wow” moment can lead to discovery and growth. An “Oh, sure” mindset knows everything it needs to know, forecloses on fresh insights, and judges the world from a single, suspicious point of view.
“Oh, Wow” moments also open us to the endless wonders that are an experience of God and God’s creation. We live on the endless frontier that is the experience of One greater than us where there is always something new to learn and experience. Wonder is at the heart of that experience, the engine of worship. Cynicism reduces the world to a place of dry mechanics.
Henry’s first words have also reminded me of this: Not all wisdom comes with the passage of time. It is not the exclusive (or inevitable) gift of aging. And there are times when the wisest thing we can do is to embrace the lessons a child has to teach us.
Wasteful Medicine
Monday, June 20th, 2011Wasteful Medicine
The last thing we need is a mindless, polarized debate that misrepresents the complexity of human suffering and the progress of medicine in the name of scoring political points.
New column when life sucks
Monday, April 11th, 2011Missed Opportunities: Spiritual Disciplines
Saturday, April 9th, 2011The phrases “spiritual discipline” and “spiritual practice” are widely misunderstood. For far too many of us, what we hear is “work” or “effort” and that immediately subverts our ability to connect with their purpose. Even sports metaphors (which the Apostle Paul used) can skew our understanding of prayer, fasting, contemplation, and worship.
These are not adventures in spiritual bodybuilding and the spiritual life is not the exercise of an unseen muscle. Spiritual disciplines are about opening a space in our lives in which intimacy with God is possible.
Contrary to what many Christians fear and some skeptics claim, it is not difficult to find God. It is difficult for God to find us. We are mesmerized by our surroundings, preoccupied with our fears, and diverted by the busy-ness of our lives.
Spiritual disciplines are perhaps better understood as those things we can do to make an inner conversation with God possible. They create a space in which we can stop, listen, and find some measure of God-given control over appetites and fears that threaten to dominate and shape our lives.
That may be a demanding, taxing experience at times. But it isn’t work with work as its own goal or discipline with discipline as its goal. It’s a process of liberation and the beginning of shalom — a life lived out of and in communion with God.
Missed Opportunities: Confession and Repentance
Friday, April 1st, 2011Some of life’s missed opportunities can be traced to the meaning of words. Not the dictionary definitions — the definitions we give to the words out of our experiences.
Confession and repentance are two such words. For many they are the dirtiest words in the Christian vocabulary. They refer to practices that are designed to make people feel badly about themselves, drive them back to church, fill them with guilt, and force them to need God.
Those are lies out of hell.
The goals of confession and repentance are not about any of those things. They are about ground clearing. They are about naming and removing the obstacles that keep God from getting to us and giving to us.
They are not about making it possible for God to love us. They are about making it possible for us to see that God already does love us.
Why miss an opportunity like that?
My wife, a not-so-secret obsession with Cheetos, and the spiritual life
Thursday, March 24th, 2011Is It Time to Write the Eulogy? The Future of Seminary Education
Tuesday, March 22nd, 2011Hollywood and digitally enhanced religion
Monday, February 21st, 2011Some thoughts on Hollywood’s white bread religion:
