Imagine yourself a cloned child created from the DNA of a wealthy person who wants to have your organs available for transplant, when he later needs them. The only life you know as a child is as one of a large number of other clones who are kept in the setting of an isolated English [...]

I have an actor friend, Joe Abbey-Colborne, who worked with me in campus evangelism nearly twenty years ago. When I first suggested a collaboration to him, he was nervous. He had had too many experiences of doing dramatic sketches, then having a preacher stand up and say, “Now, I hope you understand that this character [...]

…what consolation have we in this human society, so replete with mistaken notions and distressing anxieties, except the unfeigned faith and mutual affections of genuine, loyal friends? ~ St. Augustine, City of God, XIX.8
St. Augustine knew that friendship was a gift from God—that true joy in life was not to be found without friends and [...]

One of my favorite songs of recent memory is Tom Waits’ Chocolate Jesus because it so well captures and subverts our Western culture’s obsession with do-it-yourself “spirituality” (a nefarious term which, by the way, now only functions as a short form for “anything goes”).  With his distinctive voice, once described as sounding “like it was [...]

I’m not a big video-gamer.  With that said, I need to make a confession: it’s not because I’m anti-video game but because my parents knew full well that my addictive personality would have attached itself to video games and would never have let go.  So, I was never allowed to own a game system growing [...]

Having already conquered Europe, U2 is about to take on North America with their “360 Tour.” With a new set of songs to deliver, and a massive space-inspired stage (known affectionately as “The Claw”) to perform them on, it seems a good time to check in on the Irish supergroup’s latest musical direction, No Line [...]

We all know what Jesus did to the herd of swine in the gospel story when he allowed the demons who were harassing the demoniac to enter into the herd grazing nearby. Not a PETA poster moment, for sure.

Three weeks ago in Egypt, the government there began a pig slaughter on a slightly bigger [...]

After visiting the IKEA in North York a few weeks ago, I had to ask, “What does IKEA have that we—the church—don’t have?” This question is at once tongue-in-cheek and a sober one. On the tongue-in-cheek end of things, they’ve obviously got more comfortable seats, a great deal of marketing geniuses (have you seen their commercials?!) and a multi-million dollar advertising budget! On the sober end of things, IKEA, as a culture, presents and represents a challenge to the church.