How to avoid thinking about climate change

Climate change is not an environmental issue. Of course, it has ecological implications (including making the bleak outlook for biodiversity considerably worse), but it is also an issue of justice (especially international and intergenerational), of national security, of resource (especially water) management, of economics, of agriculture and so of food security, of public health, of national and international law, of geopolitical stability, of refugees, of urban management, of energy generation, of cultural continuity, of archeology and so on, and so on.

Yet labelling it an "environmental" issue enables those who would rather not think about just how large and scary a threat it is to put it in the basket with other "environmental" causes and so to treat it (in accordance with some ideologies) as a "luxury" issue that we will get to with the time and resources left over once we've thought about the more important issues of the economy and, well, okay, the economy some more.

Here are some common strategies used to deflect or defer the matter from being a topic of common reflection at the dinner table, over the back fence or on the train (if any of these social interactions still occur in an age of T.V. dinners, local estrangement and iPods):

1. Metaphor of displaced commitment: "I protect the environment in other ways".
2. Condemn the accuser: "You have no right to challenge me".
3. Denial of responsibility: "I am not the main cause of this problem".
4. Rejection of blame: "I have done nothing wrong".
5. Ignorance: "I didn't know".
6. Powerlessness: " I can't make any difference".
7. Fabricated constraints: "There are too many impediments".
8. After the flood: "Society is corrupt".
9. Comfort: "It is too difficult for me to change my behaviour".

- S. Stoll-Kleemann, Tim O'Riordan, Carlo C. Jaeger, "The psychology of denial concerning climate mitigation meaures: evidence from Swiss focus groups", Global Environmental Change 11 (2001), 107-11.

Do any of these sound familiar? Each of these strategies may sometimes be founded on a half-truth, but even when that is the case, most of the time they are simply employed to avoid having to deal with an issue that is much more conveniently placed into the "too hard" basket.

The good news is that Christian discipleship, although not (of course) designed to prepare us for responding well to climate change, actually prepares us for responding well to climate change. Or at least, it ought to if we are sending down deep roots into the life-giving stream of God's grace. Each of the above strategies is countered by convictions arising from the gospel narrative.

1. "I protect the environment in other ways": Since we are saved by grace, there is no need to justify ourselves through our actions. Therefore, we are free to take the actions that will actually love our neighbour and glorify God, not simply do those we feel duty-bound to do to meet some minimum standard.

2. "You have no right to challenge me": Since our judge is also our saviour, we fear no one's condemnation. If others are making accusations against us, we can consider them soberly, without needing to jump to our own self-defence. Similarly, since God has poured out his Spirit on all flesh, we can never safely write off anyone's speech, since it may be a divine word addressed to us.

3. "I am not the main cause of this problem": That may be partially true, but if you are reading this blog, it is highly likely that you have enjoyed at least something of the kind of lifestyle that has cumulatively got us into this mess (this also applies to #4). God's forgiveness of even those who have sinned much means an honest acknowledgement of liability can become the first step into sanity. But even where it is largely true that my contribution to the problem has been small, loving one's neighbour isn't done out of obligation or based on quid pro quo. We love because God has first loved us, an experience that brings an unexpected realignment of our priorities such that even enemies are included within the scope of our care. Insofar as we have been forgiven much, the small debts that others may owe to us are no grounds for a diminishment of love towards them.

4. "I have done nothing wrong": Extending the previous answer, the good Samaritan was neither the main cause of the victim's problem, nor had he even done anything wrong, but he saw himself as the wounded man's neighbour and so helped him anyway, even at personal expense. Christ invites us to go and do likewise.

5. "I didn't know": Ignorance is not bliss; it can be culpable. Knowledge of God leads into deeper knowledge of and solidarity with the groaning creation, opening us to the vulnerability that comes from paying close attention. We may find that we are no longer merely observers, but get caught up in the action. As we begin to learn about the world and its fractures, what we do with what we know matters. Acting upon the (limited) knowledge we have is a privilege and an opportunity to learn more.

6. "I can't make any difference": In Christ, we are liberated from the impossible burden of saving ourselves. Our actions may not preserve a stable climate or rescue civilisation from collapse, but they can indeed make a difference. Empowered by the Spirit, the seeds that we plant or water may indeed grow into unexpectedly fruitful trees of great beauty. In the Lord, our labour is not in vain.

7. "There are too many impediments": Impediments to total solutions there may be, but the possibility of non-trivial action is secured by the Spirit's work opening the path before our feet to keep trusting, loving and hoping. Our actions need not secure ultimate ends to remain worthwhile.

8. "Society is corrupt": All too true. Yet it is the nihilism of despair to conclude that we ought therefore to eat, drink and be merry, to play the whole corrupt game because if you can't beat them, you may as well join them. Such despair overlooks the divine commitment to even this corrupt society: "For God so loved the corrupt world...".

9. "It is too difficult for me to change my behaviour": On the contrary, it is too risky to remain comfortable. The attempt to freeze history, or at least to distract oneself sufficiently from the rush of ongoing change to preserve the fiction of stability is one of the surest ways of losing all that one holds dear. Clinging onto one's life means losing it, seeing it ossify and decay from the very grasp with which one attempts to preserve it. Only letting go of control of one's life is the path to discovering that life is granted anew.

What are the sources of obligation?

In a discussion on Milan's blog, I was asked, "what are the sources of moral obligation to the state and/or parents, aside from consent?" I thought I would post my answer (slightly edited).

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What are the sources of obligation? Many and varied, though I would even want to question the language of “obligation” as a primary way of speaking about morality. I’d prefer to refer to concepts such as our freedom to love within moral community.

Opportunities to nourish the good and redeem what is evil are granted by God as gifts. They are occasions to reflect something of divine generosity and faithfulness and so to express our true humanity and creatureliness. Put in slightly less theological language, moral virtues are excellences in character that belong to what is properly humane and their development constitutes part of the gift and privilege of becoming more human, more ourselves.

A crucial aspect of human existence is our identity being formed in community, being received from those around us (not in a deterministic way, since the reception is not purely passive but can be creative). And so relationships of trust and mutual care are at the heart of ethical deliberation. We are therefore to honour the relationships into which we are born precisely as a reminder that our existence and identity are received, not self-forged.

These relationships may begin with a family circle (“honour your father and mother”) and move out from there. At higher levels of abstraction, such as a nation, then the appropriate honour may be quite limited. For a modern nation-state, as an invention of modernity, the appropriate form of honour may be quite minimal indeed. Established political authorities are part of the network of relationships into which we are born and which we are to receive with thanksgiving, though not without critical and creative receptivity to possibilities of growth and reform. And the necessity of such critical and creative work regarding the contemporary nation-state is evident in all kinds of ways, not least the ways in which most contemporary governments fail miserably in their appointed task of minimising evil in the ecological sphere, and so collude (with corporate power amongst other things) in the undermining of the conditions under which human society can flourish.

Such are some thoughts off the top of my head. Sorry if they are a little shorthand at points. Hopefully, they give you a little bit more of a taste of where I’m coming from. I began by noting the sources of moral obligation to be varied, and moved on to speak of our identity as humans (and as creatures: our moral community extends beyond the boundaries of homo sapiens). I could equally have spoken about becoming more like Jesus, the true human, or of living in light of God’s promised future, or living in line with the realities of the created order, or of the imitation of God’s gracious care, or of responsiveness to God's summons. Each of these require more unpacking. I guess my point is that I see morality as a web of sources and resources for growing in faith, hope and love. Consent takes its place amongst these resources as an aspect of human will expressed in relationships. Consent creates and requires trust (in some measure) and so forms part of faith (which is more or less another word for trust, in my book). Consent therefore has an important place in moral discussion, but not an exhaustive one (as is often assumed or claimed by many political liberals – using the word in the technical, rather than partisan sense, to refer to a worldview based on voluntarism and so placing consent at the core of interpersonal and political morality).

The impossibility of fear

“The first thing that must be said, and which can never be said powerfully and triumphantly enough, is that human fear has been completely and definitively conquered by the Cross. Anxiety is one of the authorities, powers, and dominions over which the Lord triumphed on the Cross, and which he carried off captive and placed in chains, to make use of as he wills. In the Old Covenant, too, there was a powerful command: ‘Fear not!’ But this command was challenged in various ways within the process of revelation: by the finiteness of the region illuminated by grace, by the fact that the grace that had been granted was characterised by hope for what had not yet arrived, by the incomprehensible threat of darkness breaking into the region of light despite the guarantees, and finally by man’s relapse again and again into sin. Christ removed both the finitude of grace and its modality of hope when he tore down the dividing wall between heaven and earth (by his Incarnation), between earth and the netherworld (by his salvific suffering and his descent into hell), and between the chosen people and the unchosen Gentiles (by his founding of the Church) and when the Father established him as the light of the whole world and the king of all three realms (Philippians 2.11). Thereby every reason the redeemed might have for fear has been invalidated. The ‘world’, which as a kingdom of darkness stared Christ in the face at his coming and yet was ‘conquered’ by him (John 16.33), has no more claim on the Christian. Neither can any of the ‘elements of the world’, those ancient ‘principalities’, ‘powers’, ‘rulers of the world’, and whatever else Paul may call the known and unknown principles of the created cosmos, in whatever dimension they may be and however they themselves may be disposed towards Christ their Sovereign – neither can any of these be cause for anxiety. And ‘the last enemy to be destroyed’, death, is not exempt from this victory (1 Corinthians 15.26), nor is the devil himself who ‘now’, in the tribunal of the Cross, has been ‘cast out’ (John 12.31) – those twin powers which until then had held the sinner in unbreakable bonds and of which he could only be afraid. From one end of the New Covenant to the other, from the ‘great light’ that dawns in the Gospel to the final victory of the Logos in the Apocalypse, we hear of this subjection and dismantling of all worldly powers under the Son of God, who was chosen from all eternity to be their king. And since this lordship has been entered upon once for all, and the Victor merely ‘waits until his enemies should be made a stool for his feet’ (Hebrews 10.13), anxiety too has been banished and overcome once and for all. And this is so not merely in a juridical sense and by rights, but, for those who belong to Christ, ontologically and essentially. Insofar as he posses the life of faith, the Christian can no longer fear. His bad conscience, which makes him tremble, has been overtaken and girded up by the ‘peace of God, which passes all understanding’ (Philippians 4.7). On Easter day Peter can no longer fear the One whom he has betrayed three times. His anxiety has been taken away, and confident love has been granted him in its place. John knows this most profoundly: ‘[although] our hearts condemn us […], God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything’ (1 John 3.20): he knows about the love he has poured into the erring heart through the Holy Spirit, a love against which all the self-accusation of the sinner cannot prevail: ‘Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you’ (John 21.17). The sinner surrenders, he no longer has any hope of countering, with something of his own or with anything else, the abundance of this hope that has been granted to him.”

- Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Christian and Anxiety
(trans. Dennis D Martin and Michel J. Miller; San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2000 [1952]), 81-84.

Balthasar has plenty more to say about fear and its place in the Christian life, but this is where he (and we) must begin: the old power of fear is broken. For the Christian, it is a defeated force; no longer is it a master of our minds or behaviour, but a mere servant.

And this is the key point for Balthasar. Utterly vanquished, fear still has a role to play even (and especially) in the obedient Christian life. But that is for another day. To begin with, it is crucial to allow oneself to soak in this reality. Whatever reason there was to fear has dissolved, whatever cause for anxiety, it is embraced and held in the love of the crucified one. We live in a new day and the shadows have lost their terror.
First image by CAC.

Only the beloved can love

Love makes the world go around. All we need is love. If love is so important, then perhaps we can build an identity on it? Perhaps we can say that we are defined by who and how we love, that the quality of our love shows the quality of our person? Indeed, the two commands (or double command) that Jesus revealed at the heart of human obedience speak precisely of this: to love God and to love neighbour (Mark 12.28-31). If these are the most important things we are to do, then might they not be the best way of understanding ourselves? We are those who love God and neighbour.

However, the object and quality of our loves does not provide an adequate basis for founding an identity, nor can they be reliably forged into a self-justification. We are only secondarily lovers. We are first beloved. And only when we are first beloved can we then love. This is true of children: being loved comes before any attempt to love in return. And it is even more true of us as children of God: "We love because he first loved us." "In this is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us and send his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins." (1 John 4.10, 19)

The good news is that this means that there is no anxiety in love. In loving others, we are not attempting to secure or prove or acquire or protect ourselves. If we sometimes fail in our attempts, we are not destroyed. Instead, the prior love of God for us frees our love from the constrictions that belong to fear. We are beloved; as such, we are brought out into a broad space of freedom and delight. Love is not a burdensome command that must be obeyed lest we fall into destruction. There is no need to beat ourselves up over the imperfections in our attempts to care for those around us. Love is a joyful free responsiveness to God's delight in us.

Of course, loving broken and hurting neighbours will not be all roses and smiles. Tears and suffering are also the fruit of love in a dying world. But our tears are not the price we pay in order to get some love in return. Instead, as beloved of God, we are invited into the sometimes painful privilege of echoing and sharing that divine love.

Who is a child? III

Back in August, I began a three part series exploring my current theological understanding of children and so of my new role of parent. It took me a month to get to the second post and now I'm finally getting to the third and final one. Since it has been so long, here (again) is the outline:

Who is a child?
• A precious gift of the Father and a member of the community of creation
• A brother or sister for whom Christ died and an image-bearer called into service of neighbour
• A recipient of God's Spirit, an addressee of God's word and a bearer of living hope

A recipient of God’s Spirit
Children, as members of the community of creation, are not only dependent upon the Father’s initiative and formed in and for the likeness of the Son, but are also quickened by the Holy Spirit. The Spirit is God’s pneuma or breath, which he graciously breathes into all living things. Hence, for children too, each breath is not earned but received as a gift. The length of their lives is not a right, but pure grace. Therefore, while early death is a tragedy, even so it is both possible and right to give thanks amidst the tears for whatever life was given.

Being alive also means being able to act, and to be acted upon: to give and to receive; to kill and to be killed. And children, for all their surprising capacities, are nonetheless more sinned against than sinning, more recipients than givers. We are all mortal and vulnerable to the violent attention of our neighbour. But for children, as their capacity for action is generally less developed, so their vulnerability to being harmed is greater, and their need for nurture, protection and provision increases.

Yet the Spirit is not only the source of life, but also its perfecter, drawing all things towards their fulfilment in Christ. And so the growth of a child in being able to give and receive love is also the work of the Spirit. Children embody an openness to growth and change that is at once fragile and full of possibilities. It is fragile because the accumulation of hurt can lead the heart to close up, to harden in vain pursuit of self-protection. But it is also full of possibilities, because only a childlike willingness to trust and explore can expand lives beyond the borders of the self. Such openness is not only for children, since from them we all might learn again of the renewal of wonder and the wonder of renewal.

And so the double vulnerability of human life is brought into focus by the lives of children: vulnerable to sin; but also vulnerable to grace. We are never so secure in one that the other might not break through. But belief in the Spirit means discovering that the fight is not evenly-matched. And so children are not condemned to repeat the mistakes of their parents or their culture. The gift of the Spirit is not simply being, but truly being, and ultimately, truly being ourselves.* The Spirit brings not only life, but power. Not power to pursue our whims, or crush our enemies, but power to become children of God, power to act despite fear, power to persevere in love, power to break free of destructive habits.

And so it is possible for children to learn their parents’ strengths without each generation being an inevitable degeneration. There are no guarantees of progress, but it is possible for parents both to aim to set an example, and yet hope that their children might yet exceed it.
*Thanks to Anthony for this formulation.

An addressee of God’s Word
Children learn to speak because they are first addressed. Their communication skills are gained though imitation, repetition and play. They are brought into a conversation they did not start but in which they are invited to play a genuine role. This is true both at a sociolinguistic and theological level. Parents and carers speak to an infant who can only reply with cries and gurgles, in the hope that one day the conversation will be richer and broader. God initiates a spiritual conversation with us, rejoicing over us with singing before we know who we are or how to respond. And we only learn through imitation, repetition and play, gradually discovering the language of love in which we are addressed and through which we begin to form our stumbling replies.

The word with which children are addressed is the same Word given to us all: the incarnate Christ, breathed out by the Spirit. And as such, it is a word of welcome and permission: "let the little children come to me". This divine word of acceptance is spoken through many messengers and generally begins in and with the love and acceptance offered by parents and family to a newborn. It may be more or less articulate, more or less liable to be confused or drowned by other voices, but it is never entirely absent.

As co-addressees of God's revealing and redemptive Word, children are therefore dignified. The divine address is a recognition and conferral of personhood. Before knowing anything, they are known, and loved. They are welcomed by God and so are to be welcome among us. We must make room in our lives for children. This is not to say that all have an obligation to generate offspring, but that no one may attempt to live a life that avoids or ignores the voices and presence of children. If God has recognised them, welcomed them, who are we to turn them away?

With this recognition comes the responsibility to respond. Communication is far more than a mere transferral of information, it is an offer of communion, of mutual sharing, of relationship. To be addressed is to be invited, summoned to reply. The same Spirit that breathes out the word also opens the heart to respond. And so all children are to be given room to hear and obey the divine address, to begin learning the language of faith, hope and love so that they may become full conversation partners. Fluency is the task of a lifetime.

A bearer of living hope
Finally, children are born into a dying world, a world filled with problems they did not create. They suffer deprivations and afflictions they have done nothing to deserve. They frequently succumb to the patterns of failure in which they are raised, or by rebelling against them, create an equally distorted mirror image of their parents' dysfunctions. Likewise, they inherit riches they have not earned and a cultural and familial legacy deeper than they can fathom.

And yet, children also represent a renewal of life, a new generation that will face different possibilities (and which may face similar possibilities differently). They are not bound to repeat the mistakes of their parents. They can grasp afresh the human condition and act in ways that are more than merely the sum of their inputs.

And so children are at once bearers of both continuity and discontinuity, ambiguous symbols of new life amidst decay, and yet still of death amidst even new life.

But children also live in a world ravaged by grace, inundated with the Spirit who raised Christ from the dead, and so a world infected by hope. Their lives, though arising from the dust, are not exhausted in three score years and ten. Their bodies, though frail and susceptible to accident, neglect and abuse, are nonetheless witnesses of an open secret: all things are to be made new. Even here, amidst the most beautifully fresh and thus also most poignantly flawed aspect of human life, the already-dying flesh of a newborn, even here, the Spirit of God hovers, waiting to breathe life forevermore.
See here for the first post and here for the second post in this series.
Image by Steve Chong.

Too late? A genuine possibility

We are now faced with the fact, my friends, that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history, there is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination is still the thief of time. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked, and dejected with a lost opportunity. The tide in the affairs of men does not remain at flood -- it ebbs. We may cry out desperately for time to pause in her passage, but time is adamant to every plea and rushes on. Over the bleached bones and jumbled residues of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words, "Too late." There is an invisible book of life that faithfully records our vigilance or our neglect. Omar Khayyam is right: "The moving finger writes, and having writ moves on."

A quote from the debate at the Copenhagen conference yesterday? A speech from a prominent NGO outside? No, it is an extract from this 1967 speech by Dr Martin Luther King, Jr. and concerned the Vietnam War. The man had a gift with words.

But the sentiment he expressed then about the challenges of his day still apply today to ours. Procrastination still kills. There is no guarantee that our civilisation will escape the fate of those dug up by archeologists. And there is no guarantee that our actions and inactions might not be material contributing causes to that result. As my fifth-grade teacher used to say "It is possible to avoid the consequences of our actions, but not to avoid the consequences of avoiding the consequences". In other words, we shall reap what we are currently sowing.

What of grace? Of forgiveness and the love of God? They are indeed a comfort, removing anxiety over past mistakes and giving us hope to act without full knowledge (to "sin boldly", in the famous exhortation of the older Martin Luther). But they are never an excuse. They give us freedom from guilt and fear, freedom to act, but never freedom from responsibility or the "freedom" to do as we please without consideration of others. This latter "freedom" is merely another kind of slavery, according to Jesus. It is slavery to our selfish desires. The great epistle of freedom is Paul's letter to the Galatians:

For you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love become slaves to one another. For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself.’ If, however, you bite and devour one another, take care that you are not consumed by one another.

- Galatians 5.13-15

Are we indeed loving our neighbour? Or are we simply consuming and thereby consuming one another? To follow Christ does not give simple answers. While we may find a new centre and coherence to our lives in seeking to love our neighbour, it does not remove the necessity of working out just what it means for us to love one another today.

So let us examine ourselves without any of the false safety nets of misplaced security or simplistic notions of freedom and ask: what are we to do today? Not "what do we want to do today?", nor "what will enable our lives to continue as they have been?" nor even "what must be do to survive?" But simply, what are we to do today? This question is not easy. The pressing needs of the hour do not remove its complexity. The answers are not found in the back of a book. The apparently obvious solutions put forward by so many interests do not remove our responsibilities to pay attention, to deliberate and to act.

May God have mercy on us all.

Who is a child? II

A few weeks ago, I began a new three part series hoping to reflect upon the theological assumptions behind parenting. Although it’s taken me a while, today I return to that series with my second post. A third will complete the sketch at some point in the future. My first post argued that a child is a a precious gift from the Father of all and a member of the community of creation.

A brother or sister for whom Christ died
If children are a gift from the one who is Father of us all, then they are also brothers and sisters with us in the same family. Our children are also our siblings. Although they may be younger siblings, they are nonetheless full members of God’s family and in that sense our equals. They belong within God's community as much as any adult and they are as welcome to approach God as the rest of us. Jesus said, “Let the children come unto me” - and woe to those who would turn them away. Children are therefore not proto or potential Christians, but can be welcomed from birth as those who are loved and welcomed by God. And in this, they are in the same position as everyone: we all only love because God first loved us. Our loving is always learned from a prior experience of receiving love.

Although it is a much disputed issue in some circles, this is the theological basis for the ancient and widespread Christian practice of baptising children. While their confession of faith might not yet be explicit, they are nonetheless already enfolded in God’s love, included in his promise and welcomed by Christ.

And God’s love is manifest to all through the death of Christ on our behalf. And this death was for all, and so also for children. There is a widespread belief in contemporary society concerning the primordial innocence of children. Yet this Romantic conception is relatively novel and only became popular during the Victorian period. If Christ died for the sins of all, then he also died for the sins of children. They are just as much in need of salvation and healing as the rest of us. Traditionally, this has been expressed in the doctrine of original sin. Despite much confusion, this teaching basically claims that we all begin in a broken situation, with divided hearts and amongst a fractured world. Even before children are able to express any kind of conscious or deliberate rebellion, they are born and raised in patterns of behaviour that dishonour God and diminish life. This teaching can be unhealthily overemphasised, but without it, our conception of children will be dangerously naïve.

An image-bearer called into service of neighbour
Like the rest of us, the young need to be taught how to live. To act naturally no longer comes naturally. It is only through repentance and humility that children (or any of us) come to learn what it means to be human. And when we stop trying to fly, we might learn how to walk. Indeed, the metaphor of walking is used repeatedly in the holy scriptures as an image of how we live. For those of us who seek to walk in the true and living way of Christ, learning how to live means learning to take up our cross and follow him. As Christ was the image of God, giving us a picture of God’s love and generosity, his gentleness and patience, his grace and truthfulness, so we are to mirror Christ and so also present an image of godly character to the world.

But what can it mean for children to be bearers of the divine image? Jesus said that the rule of God belonged to children, and that unless we become like children, we can never enter it (Matthew 18.3; 19.14). Again, it is not their alleged innocence or purity that we are to emulate, far less their ignorance, and not even their curiosity. To be a child is to be dependent; and children mirror to us the deeper truth that applies to us all: we all rely on resources beyond ourselves. Not one of us is self-sufficient. No one is a self-made woman or man. We have all received our existence from others and our life is lived for others. Ultimately, we have all received our lives from our heavenly Father and it is towards him that we are oriented. And so, to become a child in order to receive the kingdom of heaven means that God’s rule is acknowledged by those who give up the project of making themselves something and recognise the limited scope of their agency and responsibility.

Yet children are also to grow up. There is a way of embracing one’s limitations that is irresponsible and seeks to escape from the tasks placed before us, that uses our relative impotency as an excuse. Children need to learn and grow and become more than they presently are, to delight in new experiences and gradually to shoulder new (though still limited) responsibilities. To be mature is better than being immature. But if we listen to Jesus when he tells us to become like children, we also learn that part of maturity is recognising that I am not yet mature, that I still have room to grow, new responsibilities and possibilities to embrace.

And so we raise our children as equal siblings in God’s family. And we raise them as those who share the same vocation of mirroring God’s love. To grow in the capacity to give and receive love is what it means for a child to flourish. And we raise them aware of our continuing immaturity and the perpetual openness and ongoing repentance required of us all as we seek to grow up together.
See here for the first post and here for the third and final post in this series.
First image by JKS.

Jesus loves you

How many people have heard the good news about Jesus and think it goes something like this? How many Christians have tried to explain it and ended up saying this?

God Almighty

“God cannot be termed ‘the almighty’ in an absolute sense and seen as the cause of everything that happens in this world. What is almighty is God’s essential love which ‘bears all things, endures all things, believes all things and hopes all things.’ (1 Corinthians 13.7)”

- Jürgen Moltmann, Creating a Just Future, 33.

The problem of evil raises the question: is God good but unable to do anything about evil? Or is God able to end all pain and suffering, but simply unwilling? Or are pain and suffering not actually that bad after all? All three options are theologically disastrous, hence the problem.