Category: Theology and Practice
When the Therapeutic God Isn’t Sufficient
There was blood everywhere. The dead child – a baby of about 20 weeks gestation – just delivered, lay at one end of the table. The nurse took the body away. My wife, at the other end, laying in anguish...
The Sin of Curiosity
Medieval theologians think that you should stop being curious. This confuses us: Despite our common axiom that “curiosity killed the cat,” modern people typically see curiosity as a virtue. If a person does not ask questions and feel a drive...
The Doom of Choice
Choice is one of Tolkien’s great preoccupations in The Lord of the Rings. He is fascinated by the existential challenge that confronts one at certain moments in life. I do not think they come often. You’re presented with two options. In...
Jeanne Guyon: Learning to Pray in the Digital Age from an Imprisoned Mystic
Jeanne Marie Bouvier de la Motte Guyon (1648–1717) discovered a particular discipline of prayer in which she could inhabit the “peace of God in the very midst of oppression and intense hardship.”[1] Her autobiography and books of Biblical study are...
On Taking Small Children to Church
Regular church attendance is probably not convenient for anyone. Consistent and whole-hearted participation in the divine liturgy, an active work of service and attentiveness to God and others, a demanding labor beyond passive observation as an audience, is not something...
Redeeming Neverland: The Question of Shame & the Crisis of Agency Facing Modern Men
J. M. Barrie first wrote Peter Pan as a play in 1904, expanding it into a full novel in 1911. Nothing he wrote before or since would ever come close to sparking such popular reception. It tapped into and articulated...
Once More, Church and Culture
Christendom is the name we give to Christian civilization, when society, culture, law, art, family, politics, and worship are saturated by the church’s influence and informed by its authority. Christendom traces its beginnings to the fourth century after Christ; it...
Two Truths for Dark Days
Like many parents, I’ve sent my kindergartener to school recently with a pit in my stomach. Horror of the recent school shooting has ripped across the nation in the last week. My mind is preoccupied with terror. My kindergartener attends...
Colonized by the City
We planted a church in Boulder under no illusions regarding its warranted reputation as one of the most left wing cities in our nation. It is no secret that Boulder is a bastion of progressivism and regularly listed as one...
Modern, Yet Faithful: Lessons from Herman Bavinck
Herman Bavinck was the son of a conservative Reformed preacher, born in 1854 in a relatively small town (Hoogeveen) in a small, low-lands country (the Netherlands).