Category: Christian Life

My AI Spiritual Director

After years working as a doctor in a hospital, a friend shared the most frustrating part of her job: patients whose online, amateur medical research weighs more heavily in their decision making than her professional opinion. She ended with a...

/ December 15, 2022

Dante Was Right: Suffering and Our Journey Toward God

“Midway on our life’s journey, I found myself/ In a dark wood, the right road lost.” These are the famous opening lines of Dante’s Divine Comedy and, even if you hate what follows, their brevity and archetypal power are hard...

/ December 12, 2022

Pursue Obscurity

Craig Bartholomew, who has been a friend and mentor to many of us younger Christian scholars, often repeats the admonition: “pursue obscurity.” It is not enough simply to accept obscurity, if it happens to be our lot. Rather, there is...

/ November 30, 2022

Kites

I taught my sons to fly a kite the other day. It was a beautiful Sunday morning and the wind was just right for it. They are old enough to know how a kite should fly but not old enough...

/ November 16, 2022

Can I Get a Witness?: A Response to Tim Keller

In his recent essay, Tim Keller has entered his bit in a persistent dialogue regarding how Christians should speak in public. The players in this dialogue, including James Wood, Aaron Renn, and Simon Kennedy, are working to sort out how...

/ November 14, 2022

Mocking Death

A few weeks ago, my two-year-old daughter and I were out enjoying one of the first crisp afternoons of autumn with a walk around our neighborhood. We turned a corner, and suddenly she stopped and pointed to a house down...

/ October 31, 2022

The Great Unmooring

Richard Sennett. The Corrosion of Character: The Personal Consequences of Work in the New Capitalism. New York: WW Norton, 2000. 176pp, $15.99. Anne Helen Petersen and Charlie Warzel. Out of Office: The Big Problem and Bigger Promise of Working from...

/ September 22, 2022

The Discipleship of Work

When we moved to our farm several years ago with a toddler and newborn in tow, we mainly had it in mind to experience a bit of the country life: to plant a large garden and perhaps raise a few...

/ September 20, 2022

The Cross in Our Calling: A Reflection on Mary’s Magnificat

Mary is chosen for the sacred work of bearing the Incarnate Son of God, and the unforgettable words we know as The Magnificat come tumbling out: And Mary said: “My soul glorifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God...

/ September 15, 2022

What Can Contemporary Christians Learn from the Desert Fathers and Mothers?

I am a working pastor. That means that I have joined the company of those for whom the care of souls is the sum and substance of the job description. It is our life’s preoccupation, our central work.

/ September 14, 2022