I recently completed a three week sermon series at St Pauls, Symonds Street in Auckland. The topic was Discipleship in the 21st Century. I basically made three points over the three weeks. First, we are called to make a difference because we see the world differently because of Christ. Second, we are called to be . . . → Read More: Discipleship in the 21st Century 
One of the skills we need to develop if we are to be insightful observers of culture is recognizing that cultural artifacts (the things humans make) are not neutral. They embody, shape or legitimate certain understandings of the world. I was reminded of this fact while listening to some of the recent reports of the death of . . . → Read More: Vidal Sassoon, Haircuts and Worldviews  Channel-surfing through some daytime re-runs on television last week, which I don’t get the pleasure (?!) of doing that often, I came across a fascinating interview between Oprah Winfrey and Portia de Rossi from Nov 2010. For those of you too young or too uncultured to remember Ally McBeal, Australian-born de Rossi starred as lawyer . . . → Read More: Portia de Rossi, Ally McBeal and Anorexia… 
Most mornings I try and read a Psalm, to still myself before God at the beginning of each day. It turns out, this isn’t the safest practice in the world. Recently I’ve noticed many of the Psalms are challenging my habitual ways of seeing the world. It doesn’t take a particularly thorough read of the Psalter to . . . → Read More: God and the World I grew up reading C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia, but I don’t think I’d ever really appreciated the deep thought and theology behind the series (apart from the obvious, Aslan is a little like Jesus) before I listened to Rowan Williams’s Holy Week Lectures on Narnia. Williams is Archbishop of Canterbury and a world-class theologian; it was fascinating . . . → Read More: Rowan Williams on Narnia 
One of the great biblical insights is we become like that which we worship. Worship idols, and we become like idols. Worship the living God, and we become living people. As a culture, one of the most common objects of our worship are celebrities. We turn to them for “wisdom” and “blessing” (celebrity endorsement); we hunger . . . → Read More: Almost Famous 
In a fascinating article in The New Atlantis, Paul J. Cella III argues the current global financial crisis is a result, at least in part, of a misunderstanding of what it means to be human. He argues that certain biases in the modern mind – in particular our love of abstraction and our extreme confidence in . . . → Read More: The financial crisis and the way we think
I recently came across some beautiful words by Archbishop Rowan Williams about being a creature. In a reasonably difficult, but rewarding, article on Creation, Creativity and Creatureliness: the Wisdom of Finite Existence,Williams reflects on the importance for discipleship of remembering we are creatures. The whole article is worth a read, but the following words struck me as . . . → Read More: The discipline of being a creature 
Andrew O’Hehir at Salon.com has written a brilliant review of Michael Bay’s latest blockbuster, Transformers: Dark of the Moon. O’Hehir’s article is the Shakespearean drama of movie reviews – lyrical and inspired, both comedy and tragedy. It is a stunning critique of the cinematic logic of Summer blockbusters. The whole thing should be read, but let . . . → Read More: “As a performance-art act of juvenile id-fulfillment, it’s magnificent” 
Half a week has passed since downtown Vancouver was set aflame by riots following an ice-hockey match. Taking their disappointment to the streets, fans of the Vancouver Canucks burned cars, smashed and looted stores and fought police in response to their teams Stanley Cup final loss. It was a shocking meltdown in one of the world’s . . . → Read More: We didn’t start the fire (but we love how we look in its light) |
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