I am a now-retired seminary professor. One of the occupational hazards of my tribe is getting asked theological questions at unexpected times and in all kinds of places. For a Reformed theologian these include the usual touchy points of the Reformed faith – Why do we baptize babies? Is God fair when he chooses some…
The title character of the British comedy-drama Doc Martin is a successful vascular surgeon in London whose career is derailed because he develops hemophobia, an extreme irrational fear of blood. He is forced to take up a humbler vocation as a village General Practitioner in the fictional seaside Cornish village of Portwenn (Port Isaac). Until…
My title has a double negative because I am reluctant to call myself a “Christian Zionist.” The overwhelmingly negative connotation of the term “Zionist” today – after the UN General Assembly in 1975 equated Zionism with racism – closes off further conversation, contrary to my hopes for this article. My own view has changed in…
You can’t go home again is the title of a Thomas Wolfe novel published posthumously in 1940. Since then the line is frequently used as a caution whenever someone longingly and wistfully begins to reminisce about the days of childhood; perhaps when life was thought to be simpler and better. But is this conventional wisdom true? Is it impossible to go home again?
The summer I graduated from seminary and was waiting to receive a call from a church, I took a job in landscaping knowing it would likely be the last time I did real work. That’s the peasant-labourer prejudice coming out: “real work” is milking cows, digging ditches, planting and harvesting wheat, driving truck, building a bridge, plumbing a house and planting trees.
The period in the church calendar between Advent/Christmas and Lent/Good Friday/Easter can leave us spiritually somewhat uncertain. Can we learn anything from this “in-between-time”?
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