kar0ling

Feb. 11 is Youth Day in Cameroon. Apparently, it was originally set aside as a holiday called Plebiscite Day, but I guess someone realized that was very unexciting, and they changed it to something with more promise. See "the leaders of tomorrow" marching through Bekondo below.

"Everything in our culture has a meta-narrative of good guys vs bad guys," says Vern Neufeld Redekop of St Paul University, Ottawa. He was speaking about reconciliation and economics, and why it's often hard to get to the point of choosing the communal good above personal gain. What really got me thinking was when he mentioned the amount of this rhetoric in George W. Bush's speech. It is unacceptable for someone who calls him or herself a follower of Christ to accept such false dichotomies in their thinking. We are to be agents of reconciliation in the world (2 Corinthians 5:18&19), and most of the rhetoric of reconciliation and healing begins with really listening to and seeking to understand the "other". This does not leave room for enemies, or "bad guys". Neither do the teachings of Jesus, who instructed us to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us (Matthew 5:44). It's not from malicious intent that Christians have often be...

Biking down Wellington Avenue today, as I passed palatial garages, I was struck by the fact that these people's cars have nicer houses than many people in the world. Before you think I'm picking on the rich, please hear that I then considered that any North American with a decent garage provides their cars with more substantial shelter than many people in the world sleep under. And while I thought it highly appropriate for this discrepancy to give us pause, this is not a call for guilt. Is it injust that some should have so much while others have so little? Certainly. Should we be aware of the imbalance, and our place on the overprivileged side of the scale? Absolutely. Should we feel guilty? I'm not convinced. Guilt is often not a helpful emotion. Unless guilt motivates us toward repentance, to turning away from those patterns that caused us to feel guilty, or to take action of some sort, it quickly turns into a swirling, sucking drain. How often have you heard or said, ...

It has been inexcusably long since I've written -- particularly given my resolution, just before the sharp drop-off in posts, to update regularly. Many blog posts have been half-written in my head, biking home from work, but somehow I lack the motivation, conviction, or courage to do the work to making them coherent and concrete writing. Since the best way to overcome the inertia of not getting things done is to start getting things done, I will take the easy route here, in order to at least make something happen. Thus, a quote that tickled my fancy from a Sightings (column produced by the Martin Marty Center at the University of Chicago Divinity School) article by Heather A. Hartel way back in 2008, on the Vatican's changes to the English translation of the central prayers of the liturgy. "The new English translation mandates the return of formal language," she writes, "by insisting upon better fidelity to the Latin Missal ." Apparently, the motive for...

“There’s no accounting for taste.” That’s my dad’s favourite way of explaining personal tastes that are incomprehensible to him, like living downtown, and riding bike in winter. The inexplicable factors which determine an individual’s likes or dislikes are probably the only way I can explain why my favourite nativity scene contains a horribly caricatured black magus, a random adoring child attired – to my fancy – like a Roma person, an old shepherd carrying some sort of blunderbuss. And a haloed holy family with an 18-month-old baby Jesus. This is the "Christmas Manger Set – the Christmas story in beautiful cut-out scenes and life-like figures." See how the 1940s-era family admires the realistic flourishes, like raw wood beams and straw protruding from the edge of the roofline; the rough, broken wood of the stalls; the tasselled camels; the richly dressed magi; the woolly sheep; the Bethlehemites on the path in the background, ostensibly out to get water, judging...

Two sets of bunkbeds crowd each of the three bedrooms in an East Toronto highrise apartment, dubbed “the DC” (discipleship centre) by the five guys who currently live there. Their living room is furnished Middle Eastern-style with beautiful Oriental rugs, cushions scavenged from the trash lockup outside, and a coffee table rejected from Grandma’s house. These young people have Moved In. And there’s room for more. What are they up to? (read the full article here )

Let's be realistic about apologetics in the post-modern world. Perhaps back when everyone was modernist in thinking, it was sufficient to simply out-argue the other side (though I doubt that). But certainly now, when "what you believe is good for you, and what I believe is fine for me" is the dominant take on life, it is imperative that we teach apologetics as a way to have conversations, a way to begin dialogue -- friendships, even -- not as a way to beat others over the head with facts until they cry uncle. It is imperative that those who learn apologetics exercise their discipline with grace, love, and a willingness to listen to, and even learn from, the others' perspective. I don't think anyone is going to change his or her mind because a dialogue partner crushed his or her perspective with superior logic. But that doesn't mean apologetics is going out of style, only that the style has changed.