The end of a story is like a death for its characters and our relationship to them. And so we start the story anew, we return to the book again, and make its world alive to us again. Retelling the story, and suspending thereby the true end of it all, keeps the story and its
What exactly do we lose if we hedge our bets on the historical Adam? This has become the question in ongoing debates over how important the idea really is to Christian faith and life. Most of these debates, animated as they are by the perceived stakes, tend hastily to gloss over some important distinctions, however,
Grief is a wandering through catacombs. Shadowy, unearthly, and lacking in that ordinary wheel of human existence: a goal. Aimless because there is no clear goal in grief, the mourner meanders. Plodding deeper into the darkness seems the only direction, if it can be called direction. In the biblical world, grief, that amorphous back-and-forth of
It occurs to me that there is a Nebuchadnezzar "feel" to the story of the "Prodigal Son" in Luke 15, and in both cases the story of Israel, and therefore of the Christ and his Church, is being told. Try it out. Both Nebuchadnezzar and the prodigal begin in a place of privilege and relative
Last week I received a brief but warm e-mail thanking me for something written that day in the comments section of the Reformed Forum blog. The comment in view was theological and in critical response to someone else’s remarks, with which my correspondent disagreed. One would expect, fairly, that I would be delighted to receive
The problem of mind and consciousness is captured well in a recent article on the hostile reception to atheist Thomas Nagel's book which questions the long-prevailing, materialist assumptions behind evolutionary naturalism. Regrettably, Nagel does not yet seem to have taken the step of reconsidering his own atheistic assumptions in light of naturalism's problems with consciousness. The
What do we mean by an “opportunity” to do or to be something? Our use of the word suggests something partaking of both the providential and ethical. How are these facets related? Reviewing the Bible’s use of opportunity language, it seems a sound grasp of the notion enriches our understanding of what belongs to spiritual
Michael Jordan turns fifty years old this week. For many people, including myself, that's a scary reminder of how quickly time flies. But it means more than that for me. Any mention of Jordan reminds me of one of the most peculiar moments of my youth, a moment that has only become more meaningful for
Isn't it best - even "good stewardship" - to give work to others if it would take away from your "own" time? In a culture obsessed with enlarging "me-time" by minimizing the to-do list, here is one of the best Christian rejections of the "time is money" confusion of the modern world. "But I do
Peter Berger, in Redeeming Laughter: The Comic Dimension of Human Experience (New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1997): "Conceivably, the experience of the comic is rooted in the human propensity to play. It may even be describable as a form of playfulness, but if so, it is a very distinctive form. Perhaps this distinctiveness is disclosed by