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When Relational Spirituality Breaks Down

By on September 16, 2008 in spirituality, theology

We were strolling through the National Gallery in London, overdosing on great art, when there it was. Sharing space with some of the finest visual wonders ever created, it still stuck out in its deep yellow boldness: “Sunflowers,” by Vincent Van Gogh, the great Dutch painter. I’d seen anemic reproductions of it before, but this was different—a head-on blast to the senses.

Later I recalled Van Gogh’s self-confessed mission in life: “I want to grasp life at its depth,” he once said. Many of us can resonate with that passion. I worry that I lack Van Gogh’s intensity, but I too want to grasp life at its depth. More specifically, I want to grasp and experience Christian spirituality at its depth. Trendy new ideas, or some partisan viewpoints, are not satisfactory. We want to tap into the strong subterranean currents that have sustained Christians across the full spectrum of churches and through the centuries.

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The Fading Legacy of Jonathan Edwards

By on June 5, 2008 in history, spirituality, theology

Last weekend we attended a family wedding reception in New England. Checking things out beforehand on MapQuest, I was ecstatic to discover that we would be just fifteen miles from Northampton, Massachusetts, the one-time home of Jonathan Edwards (1703-58), America’s greatest-ever theologian. That’s where we discovered the vestiges of a colonial romance, and also learned a lesson about how history sometimes moves on.

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Subverting Excellence: The Balaam’s Donkey Argument

By on May 19, 2008 in spirituality, virtue

The June 2008 issue of The Atlantic contains an article entitled “In the Basement of the Ivory Tower,” a biting piece by an anonymous “professor X” who toils as an adjunct instructor at what he calls “a college of last resort.” The students he teaches, he claims, chose his particular college “not on the U.S. News & World Report rankings but on Mapquest” (p. 69). As an instructor obliged to grade student work, he feels squashed in the collision between two societal forces: the expectation that pretty well everyone should go to college, and the reality that only some have the capacity to meet university-level expectations. Especially in schools big on marketing, and ambitious to grow, the pressure on professors to validate sub-standard work is almost overwhelming. I am grateful to be employed by a seminary that has valued high holistic standards, but all of higher education is feeling the pressure to dumb things down these days.

Every church and academic institution I know is officially committed to excellence. But for many the pursuit of excellence is just a cliché. There is no substantive commitment or achievement behind the marketing and branding rhetoric. “Good enough” more accurately describes their true disposition. That’s because achieving excellence at anything—rising above the mediocre and commonplace—is agonizingly difficult at the best of times. But the drive toward excellence is even more seriously sabotaged when people buy the Balaam’s donkey argument.

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A Mother’s Legacy: Bitterness Begone

By on May 12, 2008 in mothers, spirituality

I feel blessed whenever I remember my mother. She was a godly mentor and a wise woman. She died of nasty cancer nine years ago, and I especially miss her every time Mother’s Day rolls around. But she left a wonderful legacy, and part of it is how she responded to hurtful people and painful experiences. She refused to allow them to make her bitter. She had an inexhaustible capacity to keep on loving people anyway.

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