Category: thoughts on Christ

on Lieutenant Dan

I share a name with Lieutenant Dan, a character from the film Forrest Gump. My mother has always teased me that we share a few more things than that: a soldier’s spirit, a love of glory, and a dangerous stubbornness. Lieutenant Dan is a soldier from a long line of soldiers. It makes him do his job well, but as events in the film unfold, you see that it haunts and crushes him. Now I’ve always thought that one of the best qualities of Forrest Gump is the way you see something new each time you watch; when I was younger I never quite saw anything of myself in Lieutenant Dan; he was a tragic but comical man who ain’t got no legs, but in the end makes his peace with God and moves on.

But watching the film again recently, I was haunted too by something he said after confronting Forrest Gump about his new disability: “What am I gonna do now?” Continue reading “on Lieutenant Dan” →

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on grace

The story of Mephibosheth recently came up in a morning talk. King David was given supernatural grace to love his rival, the speaker pointed out, and this is something we should pray for too.

Now when I heard this I flew into a self-righteous rage (more on this later) over the seemingly man-centric conclusion, because I reckoned there’s a better way to look at it: we are Mephibosheth, standing before the King. By all rights we are dead men, not (it seems to us) by any virtue of what we’ve done, but simply because of who we are, the blood that runs in our veins. But someone before us has earned the King’s favour on or behalf, and because the King honours promises, he not only calls us friend, but brings us into his family, gives us a home, a future, and his own riches (2 Sam 9:6-7). Continue reading “on grace” →

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on magic and prayer

I’m a high school teacher, and school starts again in two days. I’ve come in to school to do a little last minute prep, the sun is setting fast, and there isn’t a living soul in the whole building except for the security guard at the main gate and the resident cat. As I was leaving I got the urge to pray for the year ahead. Maybe even pray over my desk and my chair (I’m that nervous) for blessings this coming year.

Then it hit me: is this prayer, or magic? Continue reading “on magic and prayer” →

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on the Passover

The anger passed over us.

For all these years we’d held the Passover festival. What was it for?, we’d ask. The Lord had taught us long before, that his anger had come on to sin-soaked Egypt. The only way his people there had escaped the anger was to smear the blood of lambs onto their doorposts – the only way the anger would pass over them. Because though the anger kills, it could be satisfied by innocent blood. Continue reading “on the Passover” →

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wherever you go

Part of growing up is realising that the monsters are not outside – often they’re inside us. It isn’t the world conspiring to do us in, it’s our weaknesses, our desires, our bad choices that find us again and again. The monsters find us always. And how we deal with them shapes who we turn out to be in the end. Continue reading “wherever you go” →

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on believing in God

Disney’s Aladdin is flawed in a lot of ways – the cheesy story, the sometimes comically inappropriate racism (though to be fair things were a bit different in the 90s) – but in lots of ways it’s a great movie.

One line has always stuck in my head though: when Aladdin (or Prince Ali at this point) invites Princess Jasmine for a magic carpet ride, he asks her “do you trust me?”

That line for me holds a lot of theological water when we think about our faith. At times we’ve made it all a bit hard to understand, or we’ve made ‘believing in God’ a mark of faith without really defining what said belief means. What does believing in God mean? Believing he exists? Believing he wants the best for me? But I think at the heart of that concept and of our faith is that same, simple question.

Do you trust me? Continue reading “on believing in God” →

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on looking out in despair

You remember that scene in Return of the King where Denethor pines over the mortally-wounded Faramir? He thinks his biggest problem is that his son is dead and his line extinguished, but he walks to the edge of the cliff and sees that it’s much worse: the host of Mordor is at the gates and he’s had no idea. And so he despairs, telling his soldiers “Flee! Flee for your lives!” Continue reading “on looking out in despair” →

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on the place of the ten commandments

What place would you say the Ten Commandments still has for us today?

It has always struck me that for many non-Christians, and not a few self-professed Christians as well, the heart of Christianity is the Ten Commandments: whether or not you adhere to them, the similarity of your life in comparison to the standards and ideas laid out on those stone tablets. The measure of how good a Christian you are seems to hinge on your ability to mold yourself based on the Ten Commandments, your ability to transcend your own nature and force yourself to become godly and Ten Commandments-y. Continue reading “on the place of the ten commandments” →

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on buying things

Money has to be one of the strangest human inventions ever. Back in the dim and distant past our ancestors operated on a barter economy, exchanging certain goods for others – I chop trees, you herd sheep, I want meat and cheese and you want to build a house, there we go – but over time money evolved. Continue reading “on buying things” →

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