Gratitude
I’m preaching on John 12:1-8 this week and the piece of this story that continues to jump out to me is the extravagance of Mary’s gift. It was obnoxiously extravagant, and with one set of eyes Judas is right to complain, “Why wasn’t this perfume sold for a year’s wages and the money given to … Read more
The Noonday Demon
READ THIS: http://www.firstthings.com/article/2007/01/fighting-the-noonday-devil-14 R.R. Reno writes a fantastic article on Acedia, not Pride, as the vice keeping us from faith. He insightfully points to our pedagogy of critical distance as a contributing factor as well as modernist understandings of freedom that have no space for spiritual discipline. He suggests that spiritual disciplines are exactly that … Read more
Calvin on Image of God and Regeneration
“Therefore, in a word, I interpret repentance as regeneration, whose sole end is to restore in us the image of God that had been disfigured and all but obliterated through Adam’s transgression…And indeed, this restoration does not take place in one moment or one day or one year; but through continual and sometimes even slow … Read more
Fully Alive
I can’t remember when I first heard it, it must have been in college at some point, but Irenaeus’ quote, “The glory of God is a human being fully alive” is one that I’ve heard hundreds of times. It’s a wonderful quote, really, and especially so at a Christian liberal arts college like the one … Read more
Embracing Good Friday
In a paper that I wrote this past fall on theological aesthetics I relied quite heavily on a paper Jeremy Begbie delivered at the Wheaton Theology Conference in 2006, published in the collection The Beauty of God. In the paper, Begbie seeks to point to a way for Christian art to embrace beauty while avoiding … Read more
David Jones, Rowan Williams, Art and Prudence
So I’ve been working for a while now on a paper connecting Barth’s Christology and aesthetics. Specifically I’m saying that there’s something significant in Barth’s Christology (as developed specifically in IV/2 and IV/3) for our conception of Christian engagement with the arts. I’m sure more from that paper will show up on here as I … Read more
X-Files
Sam and I watched an episode of X-Files tonight. It was an episode called “Signs and Wonders” from season 7. Here’s an exchange between Mulder and Scully: MULDER: I don’t know, Scully. Sometimes a little intolerance can be a welcome thing. Clear-cut right and wrong, black and white, no shades of gray. You know, in … Read more
Paradigms of Creation Consciousness
Walking the 4.5 blocks from my front door to Lemonjello’s in the middle of February is supposed to be an arduous task. There is supposed to be a few inches of fresh snow to step through; underneath it there’s supposed to be a layer of ice; it’s supposed to be 10 degrees; College Ave. is … Read more
Pun Involving the Word “Prince”
So I wouldn’t be writing this post if I hadn’t written the one before it, but since I wrote a post about what the Tigers should do just a few minutes before they did the exact opposite, I thought I should comment. The Tigers signed Prince Fielder to a 9 year, $214 million contract on … Read more
Missing Victor
It seems like much of the baseball world, or at least my corner of it as a Tigers fan, has been talking incessantly about what the Tigers are going to do now that Victor Martinez has torn his ACL and is likely out for the season. Like any good fan I naturally consider my own … Read more
