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THE RELEVANCE OF THEOLOGY
Reflections on Martin Luther King Day Sometimes theology—thinking carefully about God—seems utterly irrelevant. Today, Martin Luther King Day, as I write this, is such a day. On this day, we think again of the dream that has been at the heart of who we are as Americans, a dream forever outside our grasp and yet…
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READING THE BIBLE WITH JOY
Five Proposals for Discovering the Joy of the Bible I’ve lately been puzzling over the Bible. Not the Bible itself but the joylessness of its readers. Or would be readers. In the minds of many the Bible is a forbidding and severe book, a book of thou-shalt-nots. For others, an ancient self-help book that doesn’t…
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HEROD, THE MAGI, AND CHRISTMAS 2025
When the Bible Speaks Directly to Our Time The scriptures sometimes jump off the page into the headlines, as if they were written yesterday. Sunday’s gospel reading was a case in point. For churches that follow the liturgical year Sunday was the second Sunday after Christmas. The gospel reading was the last half of the…
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THE INFANTILIZATION OF THE HUMAN RACE
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SACRAMENTAL COMMUNITY ONE MORE TIME
A Note on Retrieving Church Just a note. In my last post, on sacramental community (“Retrieving Church”), I missed what might be the most important point. In the somewhat wonky center section of the essay (the part I suggested you can skip), I described a shift in medieval thinking about the body of Christ. In…
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RETRIEVING CHURCH
Congregations For years I stayed put. As I like to tell the story, River Terrace Church, the congregation I served for 31 years, gave me an office—a great corner office facing the campus of Michigan State University—and I didn’t want leave. All I needed was that office. A salary in addition was more than anyone…
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THE SHEPHERD SEASON
Christmas 2025 Merry Christmas in these unmerry times. Last night, Christmas eve, we once again sang Christina Rosetti’s “In the Bleak Midwinter,” set to that gorgeous Gustav Holst tune. It begins, as you probably know, with snow, a sort of “White Christmas” from a different time and a different place: In the bleak midwinterfrosty wind…
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TAKING EVIL SERIOUSLY
RETRIEVING A BIBLICAL VIEW OF EVIL We who grew Reformed pride ourselves in taking evil seriously. Total depravity, and all that. The doctrine of total depravity does make us wary of anyone who claims too much righteousness. We were taught that pious talk often serves as a cover for dishonorable motives. We expect people, religious…
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HOLDING TO OUR HUMANITY IN INHUMAN TIME
“Wake Up Dead Man,” a movie by Rian Johnson and “It Was Only an Accident,” a movie by Jafar Panahi We are just back from the Boston area, where we walked where some of my ancestors walked, explored places we had long heard about but never visited, had thanksgiving dinner with friends, and attended the…
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Retrieving Worship
Retrieving worship. Mostly when worship comes up in places like this blog, it’s the style of worship that’s on hand: worship wars, as they were once known. Where I lived, in the Christian Reformed Church, the wars were mostly about songs. Should one sing exclusively or, at least, mostly from hymnals? Or should the church…