More Articles on Theological Reflections

FaithTheological Reflections

Rewriting Our Scripts

| 13 min read

“It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no knowing where you might be swept off to.” – J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring The instant we step out of our homes and put our feet down onto the sidewalk, we are swept up into a powerful and deep story. It is like stepping into the current of a mighty river. Our feet get pulled along by the undertow of a constantly moving, even if subconscious, narrative. And it is a complex, layered narrative: the narrative...

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FaithTheological Reflections

After Easter: Certainty in the Gospel

| 9 min read

A few years ago, my daughter and I were playing Battleship, and she shot misses on spaces C 8,9, and 10. Or that’s how I remember it and had it marked. But later she said “C9,” and I said, “you already tried that one, sweetie.” She said “No I didn’t. I shot J 8,9, and 10.” And I said, “No, I marked them; you said C 8,9, and 10.” She insisted just as vehemently, “No, Dad. I said J 8,9, and 10.” Now, of course, there’s a true answer to that question, but we’ll never recover it, because we were...

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FaithTheological Reflections

The Image of God: Rest

| 12 min read

Karioshi suggests that the necessity of rest can be a matter of life and death. This Japanese word essentially translates as “death from overwork,” a tragically regular phenomenon in Japan in which men and women die, whether of natural causes or suicide, because of too much work and no rest. Even though this concept is given a name in Japanese, it’s not a foreign concept to the American worker. We have a problem with rest. We don’t do it. In the United States nearly 50% of workers do not take full advantage of their paid time off. Further, Americans are...

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FaithTheological Reflections

The Image of God and Work: Freedom From the “Second Question”

| 9 min read

Do you want to know who are some of the most dangerous people in the world? Who comes to your mind when I talk about dangerous people—people that can do great harm? Here’s who I have in mind:  toddlers. Yes, toddlers. Here’s why I say so: toddlers have newfound mobility, ability, and autonomy, and yet they have no idea how the world works; they have no idea of the proper place for things. Toddlers do not know that the proper place for the fork is not the electrical outlet; they do not know that the proper place for paper clips...

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FaithTheological Reflections

The Image of God: Dignity & Diversity

| 11 min read

In the 21st century, social media writes new narratives and storylines almost minute by minute, expressing what this or that person thinks, believes, desires, supports, likes, dislikes, all the while advocating what they think should be the storyline or worldview everyone must follow.  Chief among today’s social media narratives is diversity.  Diversity: a word loaded with meaning in our world, in our news, in our schools, in our laws, and in us. What does the Bible tell us about human diversity? Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over...

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FaithTheological Reflections

The Image of God: The Base Layer of Human Dignity

| 15 min read

One of the lessons I learned early on about being outdoors in the cold, especially hiking, is this: you need to have a base layer. When it’s super, super cold out and you’re hiking, you need layers to keep you warm, but if you just drop on layer and layer, it won’t actually work right. Those layers, the outside ones, only keep you warm if the bottom layer, the one closest to your skin, is right. Underneath them all, right next to your skin, you need a layer that wicks moisture out and away from you. With that correct base...

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FaithTheological Reflections

Why I Still Believe in Denominations

| 9 min read

Denominations used to dominate American Protestantism. Lutherans, Methodists, Baptists, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, and other denominations used to make up the majority of churches you would drive past in your neighborhood. Now new names pop up on church signs, names that denote no denominational affiliation. Non-denominational churches have been growing rapidly in recent years, and while I celebrate any faithful proclamation of the gospel and resulting growth in Christ’s kingdom, I still work in a denominational setting, and not by accident, but on purpose. Some may say that this rise in non-denominational churches is inevitable, that denominations are now “past their prime,”...

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FaithTheological Reflections

Jazz as a “Lead Sheet” for Living the Christian Life

| 9 min read

My favorite recording of my favorite Louis Armstrong tune, “Struttin’ With Some Barbecue,” features the great trumpeter Byron Stripling and his friends. They bring that great jazz masterpiece[i] to life in ways that would make Louis smile that great big grin of his. As jazz performances frequently go, this one begins with the entire ensemble playing the melody, follows with individual soloists (two trumpets, trombone, clarinet, piano, and drums) taking turns improvising on that melody, and culminates with all the musicians returning to the main melody at the end for a thrilling, joyful romp. Together, these artists follow what jazz...

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FaithTheological Reflections

An Untapped Resource for Spiritual Transformation

| 11 min read

Let’s play a game. I’ll quote a Bible passage and omit the last word. See if you can fill in the blank. (If you already know this verse, this game loses its effect. And no cheating: Do not open your Bible for this game.) “Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children. And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God. But sexual immorality and all impurity or covetousness must not even be named among you, as is proper among saints. Let there be no filthiness nor foolish...

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FaithTheological Reflections

Eternal Functional Subordination of the Son (EFS), Part II: Why It Misunderstands Us

| 9 min read

In my previous article, I argued that characterizing the eternal relations of the immanent Trinity as authority and submission blurs theological and philosophical distinctions that are crucial for maintaining Trinitarian orthodoxy. Further, because EFS is employed by its main proponents to ground a certain version of anthropology and gender roles, we must also address EFS’s implications for the doctrine of humanity. As EFS totalizes authority and submission in Trinitarian relations, it totalizes authority and submission in men and women respectively, thus distorting the image of God and human relationships. Genesis 1:27 tells us that God made man “in his own...

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FaithTheological Reflections

Eternal Functional Subordination of the Son (EFS), Part I: Why It Misunderstands God

| 9 min read

Over recent decades, a number of evangelical theologians have argued for a novel understanding of trinitarian relations, one driven by a desire to support a particular version of gender roles.[1] Whereas traditionally, Christian theologians have understood relations in the immanent Trinity as relations of origin or processions (i.e., the Father is unbegotten, the Son is begotten of the Father, and the Holy Spirit is begotten of the Father and the Son), several modern theologians describe such relations as authority and submission (i.e., the Son submits to the authority of the Father, and the Holy Spirit submits to the authority of...

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FaithTheological Reflections

Sanctifying Inconvenience

| 5 min read

There is theory, and then there is practice. And more often than not, the distance between them–the concentrated effort it takes to get from theory to practice–is profound. To be human is to know this in your bones. Take this for example. Theory: we ought to love and selflessly serve our community with a cheerful heart, out of the abundant love and selfless service that we have received from Christ. Practice: sitting in obscene Sunday afternoon traffic on I-495, running a seemingly inconsequential errand for friends who would likely not compensate me for gas or time. It was a significant...

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FaithTheological Reflections

Radical Unity: Against Protestant Consumerism and the Spirit of Schism

| 10 min read

If you belong to a local church, I wonder if you’ve felt the way that I have recently. Maybe you feel like those in church leadership agree with you on fundamental issues, but your neighbor in the pew clearly does not. Or maybe you and your neighbor have found deep agreement but find yourselves diametrically opposed to the leadership (or leader) in your church. One need only mention masks, critical race theory, social engagement, or even worship styles to spark and then quite literally feel the division that lurks beneath the surface. In this environment, it is all too easy...

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FaithTheological Reflections

Common Grace for the Common Good

| 8 min read

Scripture, as God’s good word to his creation, is beautiful and challenging in its depiction of humanity and our call to faithfulness in the world. The Bible paints a compelling picture of creation as inherently good, and yet deeply marred and distorted by the reality of sin. With the entrance of sin to our world, there came a distinction in humankind: those in Adam and those in Christ. This distinction is true at a base level, and yet it seems to lack explanatory power regarding the abundance of things good, true, and beautiful among believers and non-believers alike. Is some...

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FaithTheological Reflections

Rediscovering and Relearning the Bonds of Community

| 12 min read

The physical presence of other Christians is a source of incomparable joy and strength to the believer. —Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together If this world was made by a triune God, a being of community, then relationships of love are what life is really all about. —Timothy Keller Since the early days of 2020, COVID-19 has wreaked social and economic havoc across the globe, responsible for the deaths of more than 5 million people as of this writing. It has pummeled world economies, with at least 90 percent of nations experiencing a significant contraction in per capita GDP, the highest simultaneous contraction since...

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FaithTheological Reflections

The Role of Imagination in Evangelism

| 13 min read

Author’s Note: This article is adapted from my recently released book Mere Evangelism: 10 Insights from C. S. Lewis to Help You Share Your Faith. My childhood house had a vestibule. It’s a seldom-used word for a seldom-seen structure. Built onto the outside of a house, it serves as a halfway stop between outside and inside. When my brothers and I returned from a camping trip, my mother insisted we take off our smoky, smelly clothes in the vestibule before entering our house. When C.S. Lewis criticized secular writers, he snuck in an image: these writers did not “see this...

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FaithTheological Reflections

Reweaving Shalom: An Interview with Author Hugh Whelchel

| 13 min read

Things are not the way they are supposed to be – COVID, racial injustice, political division. The list goes on. Does the very fact that everyone agrees things should be different mean anything? Hugh Whelchel thinks so. Our recognition that things are not as they ought to be points us to a deeper reality – the reality of shalom. Whelchel is the Executive Director of The Institute for Faith, Work, and Economics (IFWE) and his newest book, Reweaving Shalom, is concerned with this exact tension: what is the biblical framework to which Christians can look to anchor our daily lives...

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FaithTheological Reflections

After the Flood – The Promise and Perils of Unity

| 11 min read

The aftermath of contentious elections is typically followed by calls for national unity, calls to heal the divisions exposed by the electoral process.  Will it be so in the aftermath of this election?  Early returns are not very good, as the parties seem girded to embrace battle, not unity for our nation.  What will it mean and what will it take to reunify a badly splintered body politic in the United States?  That is a question far beyond me, one for better minds and those more trained in the political world.  Can our nation even be reunified?  I do not...

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FaithTheological Reflections

The Promise and Perils of Faith, Vocation, and Culture: Part II – Suffering for Changing the World

| 8 min read

The New Testament’s Crooked Narrative Arc: In Part I last week, I began by noting that the New Testament is not entirely straightforward when it comes to the subject of faith, vocation and culture. Revelation says that in a certain era — the era in which actual Christians lived — there was a situation where Christians could not buy or sell. In Acts, when Christians impacted culture and economics, it often turned out badly. To this we may add Jesus’s life, which was not exactly “normal,” even by first century standards of a stable society. If his life was merely...

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FaithTheological Reflections

The Promise and Perils of Faith, Vocation, and Culture: Part I – The Danger of Nationalism

| 7 min read

Why do the Old Testament Scholars Get All the Fun? This may sound like a strange thing to say, but I’m jealous of those who get to teach the Old Testament. I get paid to teach the New Testament, which I love doing, but I’m envious of those teaching the Old. Why? When it comes to faith, vocation and culture, they have it easy. Why? There’s immediate payoff for any Old Testament teachers when it comes to faith, vocation and culture. There’s a rather natural narrative arc created at the start of the Old Testament which can then be used...

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FaithTheological Reflections

Reflections on Knowing God & Knowing J.I. Packer

| 11 min read

“I know Mr. Rogers, but does Mr. Rogers know me?” A long time ago one of our little ones asked us this question, perplexed by the technology of television. We smiled as we did our best to wade through the epistemological challenges of being human in the modern world— not laboring very long over them, I confess, as we mostly wanted to honor the very good question it was. How can I “know” someone, if they don’t “know” me? Knowing about is not the same thing as knowing. I can know about the city of Vancouver, without ever knowing what...

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FaithTheological Reflections

The Beautiful Community: A Conversation with Irwyn Ince

| 9 min read

In our current landscape with COVID-19, the push toward racial justice, and an upcoming election, we are all imagining what a “new normal” might look like, how life might be different (and hopefully, better) when we emerge on the other side of these various crises. Already there is talk of how our workplaces may change as a result of both the pandemic and diversity and inclusion trainings, as well as our institutions such as schools, colleges, and universities. But what about other institutions, specifically, the church? When we envision a new normal for Christianity in America, what do we hope...

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FaithTheological Reflections

Does God Judge Nation-States Today?

| 13 min read

As the US has now tragically ascended to the place of having the most reported COVID-19 deaths in the world — over 71,000 as of this writing, more Americans than died in the wars in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq combined, as well as in the attacks on 9/11 — the predictable spate of articles has begun, variations on the theme “Can’t you see that God is judging America?”  I remember similar articles and sermons after 9/11, and they have occurred many times before that and since then. Into that milieu, NT Wright published his Time magazine article Christianity Offers No...

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FaithTheological Reflections

Shadow and Light

| 3 min read

Shadow and light. Watching the mysterious interplay between the sky and the grass, the trees and the flowers, I found myself thinking about the way shadow and light makes its way through life for every one of us. We live amidst both glories and ruins, all day long having to make sense of the very beautiful and the very broken… and the metaphor of shadow and light reflects that reality in its own limited way. Two phone calls today reminded me of a time a few years ago when three good friends and I were invited to speak together in...

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FaithTheological Reflections

Seeing Seamlessly

| 3 min read

“If we lose God in the world, we also lose meaning and purpose, accountability and responsibility.” When I first read Vaclav Havel arguing this stark thesis, I was intrigued— more than that, I was dumbstruck —having read enough of him to know that he made no profession of faith, a theist of sorts perhaps, but more intellectually than religiously. The Czech playwright who became a prisoner who became a president seemed to me an unusually honest man, someone willing to see where the lines-in-the-sand are; in a profound sense, to look into the abyss of a godless universe, and not...

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Institute for Faith Vocation Culture

FaithTheological Reflections

The Ordering of Our Loves

| 3 min read

Ordo Caritatis. Some words and ideas are worth holding onto, especially ones that take us to deeper places of the heart, that ask us harder questions of the heart— and even more, ones that offer the hope that all is not lost, and that our fragmented selves can be reordered, that we can be made new. For a very long time some of the most thoughtful people in the world have been asking about the ordering of our loves, seeing in that task the most important of all questions, i.e. who are we and how shall we live? We do...

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FaithTheological Reflections

On Faith

| 3 min read

“Do you have faith?” We were sitting in a cafe for lunch today, talking about the world and our place in it. A generation apart, she came to Washington a few years ago, and works on international human rights questions, hard questions that they are. This question mattered to her too. I looked back across the table, and then around the room, “Everyone here has faith. Every man and woman in this room believes certain things are true, and certain things are not true. We have metaphysical commitments about the meaning life, about the nature of the universe, about who...

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FaithTheological Reflections

And Crying Too

| 3 min read

“Here am I, O God, of little power and mean estate, yet lifting up heart and voice to Thee before whom all created things are as dust and vapor. Thou art hidden behind the curtain of sense, incomprehensible in Thy greatness, mysterious in Thine almighty power; yet here I speak with Thee familiarly as child to parent, as friend to friend. If I could not speak to Thee, then I were without hope in the world. For it is little that I have power to do or to ordain. Not of my own will am I here and not of...

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Institute for Faith Vocation Culture

FaithTheological Reflections

On Laughter and More

| 4 min read

“The devil laughs because God’s world seems senseless to him; the angels laugh with joy because everything in God’s world has its meaning.” When I first read those words, I was struck by their hard-won wisdom. Milan Kundera, one of the great novelists of the 20th-century, wrote about the challenge of being human in the modern world, embodied in Prague under the weight of totalitarianism, the “totalistic” worlds and worldviews of Naziism and Marxism. Perhaps best known for The Unbearable Lightness of Being, his subject was always the world that Nietzsche had warned about a century-and-a-half earlier— that when we...

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FaithTheological Reflections

A Disposition to Dualism

| 4 min read

A disposition to dualism. The image caught me, thinking through my work last week. From teaching here in Washington, to speaking in Birmingham and Chicago, those words captured what I saw and heard. But what is dualism? and why does it matter? On Thursday morning this jumped into my face, standing in a large circle of folk in Birmingham’s 16th Street Baptist Church gathered for what was called “a holy and historic moment” for the city, a prayer breakfast drawing black and white together for the sake of the city, hoping for the flourishing of their city. Hand-in-hand we sang,...

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FaithTheological Reflections

Honest Questions, Honest Answers

| 3 min read

“I have a question.” These last few days I have been walking among the aspens of southwestern Colorado, just south of Pagosa Springs, not so far from the New Mexico border, listening to the questions of students who have taken a “gap” in their schooling. Some are just out of high school, some are in their university years, but all are young men and women who want to learn more than they have learned so far in life. Having come to a similar place at age 20, I understand them. After trying to learn in college, I dropped out— and...

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FaithTheological Reflections

On Mere Christianity

| 2 min read

Most of my life ago I decided that I only would believe things in my truest heart that honest Christians had believed in every century and every culture. That has been my hope, stumbling along as I do. Good folk like Richard Baxter and C.S. Lewis argued for this in their time, seeing a “central hallway” running through history– calling it “mere Christianity” –with the most important beliefs about God, the human condition and history at the center of this long conversation among sons of Adam and daughters of Eve. The Orthodox would have their door off the hallway, as...

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Institute for Faith Vocation Culture

FaithTheological Reflections

Stumbling Along, Longing for Grace

| 3 min read

Stumbling along, longing for grace. I don’t think we do better than that… in any part of life. Last week we spent Sunday morning with the people who call themselves Grace Vancouver, and I found myself reflecting on its name, and why it matters to us— a cosmic line-in-the-sand the very idea of grace is. Pastored by friends, Mike Hsu and Mark Swanson, these folk work hard at being a church for the city, especially their neighborhood, for years making sure that the neighbors are their neighbors. Not surprisingly for the city of Vancouver, BC, the congregation is about half...

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FaithTheological Reflections

Love in the Ruins

| 4 min read

A long-loved love. On Saturday we attended the wedding of young friends, the groom having been my student over the last months. We met a year ago in his final semester at the University of Virginia, and after a lecture he came up to me, asking good questions. The longer we talked, the more intrigued I was, and I invited him to come study with me when he graduated— which he did, taking part in the Fellows program in Washington DC. With eager happiness we drove to Charlottesville in the afternoon, and with a community of family and friends took...

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Institute for Faith Vocation Culture

FaithTheological Reflections

Missio on Joseph: The Means Matter

| 4 min read

In Genesis 41 Joseph rises to unimaginable power over Egypt, being second only to Pharaoh, and through his wise governance as Egypt’s grand steward, Egypt is saved from famine, as is the whole known world.  This rise to power, however, is not a tale of selfish ambition; rather, it is a tale of Joseph’s faithful service to God and man through the application of his God-given gifts.  In the same way, as we work, we must ensure that our heart is set on honoring God and not on selfish ends.  I intern on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC and I...

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FaithTheological Reflections

Knowing & Doing

| 3 min read

As I left Pittsburgh yesterday, I decided to leave slowly, lingering through some of its neighborhoods on my way back to Virginia– so I got off the parkway, and drove through Oakland one more time, stopping near the Cathedral of Learning. For several years I worked and studied here, entering into the PhD years of my life. They were so very busy, so very full, and there were moments along the way when I seriously thought of stopping. Someone has to have compelling reasons to jump through all the hoops required. But along the way of those years, I began...

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Institute for Faith Vocation Culture

FaithTheological Reflections

Pay Attention

| 4 min read

Pay attention. I have been teaching for a long time, and I confess that while I am always hoping that my words find a home in a student’s heart, I never know. As the rabbi Jesus said at the beginning of his teaching, “If you have ears to hear, then hear.” That is as deep a wisdom as teachers, and their students, get. Always and everywhere, there is a responsibility for knowledge, a response built into the very act of teaching. The truest truth about learning is that we are able to respond, responsible. So we choose to either take...

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FaithTheological Reflections

Always Winter, Never Christmas

| 2 min read

“It is winter in Narnia,” said Mr. Tumnus, “and has been for ever so long…. always winter, but never Christmas.” There are words that capture our imaginations, often from the very first time we hear them. I confess that when I read this so long ago now, I understood them— though now years later, I understand them so much more fully. At that first reading, they made sense of my life and world, young as I was. Now I have lived with them, and within them, for most of life, and I feel their weight deeply. Like every other son...

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FaithTheological Reflections

The Hopes and Fears of All the Years

| 4 min read

As I woke this morning, all I could do was shake my head, wondering why and how it could possibly be that yesterday happened; some days are more like that than others. Over the noon hour I spoke to a group of men and women from across Phoenix who deeply care about their city, and month by month come together to think and pray, to talk and talk some more, before they go out into the Valley of the Sun for another try at the flourishing of the city, taking up the complexity of its social and educational institutions, its...

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Institute for Faith Vocation Culture

FaithTheological Reflections

A Visit to the Reframing Shop with Jesus

| 2 min read

We all live our life by some narrative, even if it’s only “I owe, I owe, so off to work I go.”  The narrative frames the activity and gives it meaning.  Of course, most of us have lived our lives without thinking carefully about the narrative that drives us.  We go to work because everyone else does…and because we have to.  We keep the house at the standard of the average in our community.  We wear the things that seem appropriate.  It’s all activity driven by a narrative given to us from the world we live in.  And it’s amazing...

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Institute for Faith Vocation Culture

FaithTheological Reflections

Havel on the Human Condition

| 3 min read

“It’s as if we were playing for a number of different teams at once, each with different uniforms, and as though—and this is the main thing – we didn’t know which one we ultimately belonged to, which of those teams was really ours.” I am drawn to wise and good people. If I have my choice, I will always choose to spend my time with people who ask deeper, harder questions, born of the reality of living in a very now-but-not-yet world, who at the same time are surprisingly kind and humble, showing courage about things that matter most. So,...

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