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Bill Maher has been growing in popularity as of late. People are really jumping on his no-shit direct opposition to religion. In particular, he was recently on the Jimmy Kimmel show where he stated that “there are no great religions. They’re all stupid and dangerous.” This was in the middle of his rant about the […]

This morning we chatted a bit about guilt, shame, repentance, confession and this quote: The one way of not doing anything about a situation is feeling guilty about it, because when people feel guilty about a situation they most usually, instead of doing something practical to change it, they resort to all sorts of symbolic

In most conflicts between white folk and aboriginal folk we are usually presented with quite the bit of rhetoric that someone isn’t following the rules. In the recent situation at Ipperwash where Kettle and Stony Point band sent in trucks and workers to remove barriers that had been there for forty years there was an

In trying to follow the unfolding of the Michael Brown shooting and protests and the Burnaby mountain protests I am noticing several different trends in the conversation. 1. Individual Justice vs Corporate Justice – Many of the protests are about a larger injustice that is taking place, but the arguments against the protests are almost

I spent an hour of my evening tonight listening to Pastor Tim Gibb (the senior pastor of a decade or so at the Sarnia Pentecostal Church that I grew up up) ripping into the “gay agenda” (whatever that means) and the “gay theologians” (he never did mention their names, maybe I’m one of them! But

The last three weeks of the church calendar have been awfully depressing. Especially if we read them right. Parable of the Virgins (Matthew 25:1-13) Must read David Henson’s take | My sermon here Parable of the Talents (Matthew 25:14-30) Must read Sylvia Keesmaat’s take on this one Sheep and the Goats (Matthew 25:31-46) I’ve read

Early in May our house decided to get some ducks. Why? Well I think everyone had their own reasons. Rachel wanted someone to cuddle with. Dallas wanted to raise his own meat. Nick wanted companionship. I want to experience with urban farming. Max and Porter were big supporters as well, being eight and all, having

So this is interesting. The Pregnancy Centre in Sarnia applied for a grant from Ontario Trillium Foundation to open a second centre in Petrolia (a nearby town). The pregnancy centre here is well supported by the church population of this city with yearly galas and fundraisers. I’ve known the families and staff of the centre

Zygmunt Bauman’s book, Does Ethics Have A Chance In An Age Of Consumers is one of those books that I don’t know if I ever will finish. I’ve been reading 3 pages a week for the last few years and then get distracted. But occasionally a paragraph will stand out that I read a few

We have an affinity for stories. We like to tell them because they create a summary of something that we found important in our life. The stories we tell, the way we frame them all play into a narrative that we are trying to share about our life. For instance, if you hang out with

Just watched this little exchange with Sam Harris, Ben Affleck and Bill Maher. Not sure why someone like Affleck was on the show. Not only can he not debate well, he got all too personal and cheap. He could have made his arguments much better. Harris, who in many ways I disagree with wrote a

Christianity as a religion really isn’t that spectacular (and no it’s not because Christianity is a relationship and not a religion). We’ve got some interesting stories, most of which are rewrites of other stories. There is revelation that we hold to which leads to all sorts of different doctrine (most of which isn’t that unique

The first time I heard of Clooney/Alamuddin wedding – it was in a coffee shop in Toronto, and I was scrolling through the newspaper (I believe it was the Toronto Star). I started laughing and read the photo caption because it read something like “George Clooney marries Lebanese-born Brit.” Of course, my feminist wife (who

Every once in a while I like to sit in front of Facebook and leave some comments that will stir some thinking, or just confront strange statements or conversation. I don’t know what comes over me, but I do know that Rachel gets really mad at me. Sometimes I just can’t resist though. This is

The nature and origins of our institutions has been something that I’ve become more aware of over the last little while. By institution I mean systems of organization assembled by people. These organizations turn into amazingly complex and powerful organizations and have accomplished many fantastic and horrible things. One of these institutions is the church.

I’m preparing the service for this Sunday where we are performing three baby dedications/baptisms. I’ve been reading through the Free Methodist language and liturgy surrounding it. There is one section in our Manual that struck me as odd. So this is just a random thought/reaction I had to this. These are questions that we could

In Acts 11 we find out the “The disciples were called Christians first at Antioch.” What we don’t really know is when the term Christian was self-applied. In the three instances it shows up in the Scriptures we see it be attributed to a group of people. Other people who were not Christians would call

Since about 2006, when I moved back to Sarnia, and having read just enough Claiborne to be naive, I have always intentionally moved into the poorest and roughest area that I could find in Sarnia. It was the whole ‘moving into abandoned places of the empire’ kind of methodology. This isn’t saying much for a

Humans have this sort of innate ability to adjust to their surroundings. Well, I guess everything does. But with humans I find it interesting because there is more to the adjustment then just thousands of years of evolution. There is an intentional emotional and psychological evolution that happens that is generally a response or protection

Here is my train of thought on this one. Let’s say God doesn’t exist. Jesus is made up. The whole thing is just insecure humans contriving religions out of their lack of knowledge and science to know what is real or not. Let’s say all that is absolutely true. But we also know that current