Archive for category Christians

Love Does It My Way

coverThere have been very few instances in my life where someone has shown me a book, I’ve read it, and it significantly changed my life for good or ill. So when, for nearly a year, my Twitter feed and Facebook timeline routinely had quotes from and reviews of Bob Goff’s book Love Does: Discover a Secretly Incredible Life in an Ordinary World, I had cautioned optimism that perhaps there might be something I was missing out on by not yet having read it myself. So, after finishing a fiction book this summer, I decided to finally give the book a try. My cautiousness was warranted. Read the rest of this entry »

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Response: How to Suck at Your Religion

This is starting to pop up in my social circles so I figured I might as well write a response to it now. Recently, Matthew Inman, the cartoonist of the very popular and funny The Oatmeal, posted a comic in which he laid out his view on how people suck at their religion. The cartoon seeks to enumerate Inman’s problems with religion, or at least his problems with the adherents to religion, in a humorous fashion. While I didn’t particularly find it as amusing as some of his other work, others online have already taken to using it as a kind of argument against religion and hail it as a kind of “Finally, someone said this in a succinct way.”

In this post I would like to attempt to add my commentary to the arguments Inman lays out. I do this, not because I hate silly internet cartoons (in fact, I love The Oatmeals other comics), but because Inman has conveniently posted a list of some of the most common arguments against religiosity, and I figure this is a good a time as any to do a survey on why I think they are misguided.

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Egg on the Face

A few days ago was the Western Easter and as normal, the old facebook was filled with the types of things you’d expect on Easter: posts about redemption and Jesus, simple “Happy Easter”s, and pictures of little kids in suits hunting for eggs. Yet a couple of things that I had hardly noticed last year around this time cropped up again this year and in more force.

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Lent Week 1: Prayer

So after not updating this site in nearly a year I am now going to write an article nonchalantly and act as if nothing at all is amiss.

Ever since I decided to once again participate in orthodox lent people have been bugging me to start blogging again. In particular, one minister from Mitchell. I messaged him this morning with an offer. I had two ideas for writing this week. One on prayer and one on scripture reading. Laying down these offers on the virtual canvas between us I slammed my hand down and declared “You shall choose!” To which my office mates looked at me funny and told me to sit back down. But I still got the answer I wanted from Mr. minister.

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Depression, Suicide, and the Self-righteous

About a month ago I was invited on facebook to join a group called Four guys, one destination, one mission: Suicide Prevention. The point of the group, obviously, is to prevent suicide. however, their methods seemed a little dubious to me. First of all, they are riding bikes across the continent to prove to those who are depressed that anything is possible. Second, they are trying to draw attention to the problem of suicide using this ride and the group. A noble cause you might say, but it seems to me that the people who made the group and also the people who joined and commented in it know next to nothing about what actual depression and suicidal thoughts are like. I wrote the person who sent me an invite to the group and stated these thoughts. They in turn asked me what I would say to a suicidal person. My response is the point of this post.

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