A reader of this blog, named Peter, asked me a couple of questions recently. He had been at church where he heard a priest speak about a controversial issue with a kind of rhetoric that implied “this is what God wants for the church.” So Peter writes: So I put 2 questions to him. 1. Does he know there is a God and 2. Does he also know God’s plans. If yes, then I requested his...
Mysticism is important because it implies an experimental spirituality — it's not something you learn from a book, but it's a reality that we live, in our own heart and minds and bodies. But does this mean that there is no room for doctrine and faith in the mystical life?
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Sometimes, people grow up in conservative churches where the Bible is often read in a very literal or fundamentalist way. Such persons might go on to study at a college or university where they are exposed to a more scholarly, historical-critical way of reading the Bible. This usually feels more informed and honest than the fundamentalist approach to the Bible — but often it seems that something...
In response to my previous post from last October, Why Experience Is Not the Foundation of (All) Spirituality, a reader recently posted this comment on Facebook: As someone who struggles with fear and nihilism I often find myself craving an experience of god to help “cast out all doubt.” While in…... Read more at Patheos
What is the relationship between prayer and joy? If we enjoy our prayer, does that mean we are avoiding the hard work of spirituality (which, at least in Christian terms, is meant to make us holy, not to entertain us)? I had an interesting little exchange on Facebook the other day, when a reader, who is a priest of the Church of England, took exception to the headline of my post from last year...
As a young man growing up in the American south, I heard the phrase “God fearing” a lot. As in, “He’s a God fearing man.” I think it comes from Psalm 111:10: “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom,” or its near corollary, Proverbs 1:7: “Fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge.” So someone who is “God fearing” is...
One of my favorite quotations comes from Karl Rahner: “The Christian of the future will be a mystic or will not exist.” It’s a prophetic statement, from a man who died in 1984. When paired with the demographic realities of the last 30 years (Americans who identify as Christian comprised 85{b583bb596bb2c84984aee1f32e70a80b80285001a0226212b58cbda01f2115e7} of the population in...