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And there is a second commandment, which seems to me even more incomprehensible and arouses even stronger opposition in me. It is: “Love thine enemies.”                                                                                     Sigmund FreudSigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents Trans. and Ed. James Strachey (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1961), 57. “…while we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the…

“What do congregations have to teach scientists?” This was the question that James K. A. Smith, Professor of Philosophy at Calvin College, asked at a Scientists in Congregations, Scotland, conference in St Andrews some time ago. The theme of the conference was ‘Christ and Creation’, and the aim was to draw the conversation on science…

On this day, we remember the unjust murder of an innocent man. And he wasn’t innocent in just a legal way, or even a “religious commandment” sort of way. He was innocent in a child way, an infant way.  Though a grown man, with a man’s strength and a great scholar’s mind (of course he…

The legendary fall of Troy was precipitated by the horrific death of the priest Laocoön, whose warning not to take the Horse into the city was punished by two sea serpents strangling him and his sons.  The tragic scene came vividly to life in one of antiquity’s most famous statues (c. 200 BC), characterized by…

Chloé Zhao’s Nomadland debuted last month in select theaters and on Hulu. On Sunday it won Best Motion Picture Drama at the Golden Globes, and Zhao took home the prize for Best Director. The film stars Frances McDormand as Fern, a widow who moves from job to job, lives out of her white utility van,…

About a decade ago, a first-generation freshman came into my office for her first academic advising meeting. As we talked through her set of classes, I asked her in what she thought she would like to major. With downcast eyes and quiet voice, she told me that she had no idea. In that instant, I…

In February I posted a piece in which I wondered how we think about our students’ vocations and how that might affect how we teach. I pointed to a common Protestant theology of vocation. Christians have a primary vocation to love God in Christ and to love their neighbor. This is worked out through an…

We know ourselves by what is reflected back at us. We see ourselves in the reactions, labels and facial expressions of others. In fact (oh, what danger!) this is primarily how we know ourselves. In a very real sense, we are always naked and helpless before others’ eyes. We depend on them for meaning, for…

In the first installment of this blog series, I established a basic framework for how Christians ought to analyze the place of winning in sports. In the second installment I expanded on that idea by examining how winning in sports is rightly understood as a “third order good.” Here I conclude by examining the biblical and…

In the first installment of this blog series, I established a basic framework for how Christians ought to analyze the place of winning in sports. I argued, following St. Augustine’s claim that virtue is the right “ordering of our loves,” that winning in sport could be loved, as long as it wasn’t loved more than…

Editor’s Note: In light of March Madness and our cultural obsession with sports, we thought it the perfect time to post this three part guest-blog series on sports: “Such an account…will enable us to distinguish what it is worth caring about a very great deal, from what it is worth caring about a good deal…

As theaters, museums, and concert halls struggle during these covidious times, I worry about the respiratory system of the arts. Only a year and half after I took my current job co-directing the Marion E. Wade Center at Wheaton College, which archives the work of seven culture-animating British Christians, the center’s museum and research-room were…

Matthew 5: Be Complete, Not Perfect I always begin my Humanities Philosophy course by discussing Matthew 5:43–48. In this provocative passage from the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus delivers the most demanding moral command ever uttered: love your enemy. You have heard that it was said, “Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.” But I tell…

During the pandemic, my wife and I often take extended walks around our neighborhood. During one particular walk, we waved to a man and his daughter (must have been around 4 or 5 years old) playing in front of their house, and the man returned the gesture. Immediately after this exchange, his daughter said to…

Since the U.S. environmental movement gained momentum in the 1960s, religious scholars and cultural critics have periodically portrayed Christianity as the progenitor of the worst of the Anthropocene. Rather than grouch about culture wars or academic one-upmanship, however, it is ethically more constructive to grapple with Christian failures in providing leaders capable of unraveling “wicked…

 According to Big Bang cosmology, time began at the moment of creation, along with energy, matter and space as constrained by the elegant equation E=mc2. Twentieth century astrophysicists quantified the expanse and duration of the cosmos. However, geologists were ahead of them on the duration thing by introducing the concept of deep time in the…

In 1505, the Renaissance artist Raphael Sanzio lavished his skill on a subject rather out-of-date: the legendary dragon slayer St. George, an early Christian saint generally associated with the martial and chivalric spirit of the Crusades. In his large painting of the subject at the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C., the holy warrior…

In my early academic career, I assumed being a pastor was a liability to my teaching. Perhaps it was my own perception of the academy or the true prevailing ethos, but my pastoral background seemed like a hindrance. I was too practical—not intellectual enough. I was too biased—not objective enough. However, after a few years…

The student who sat in front of me was having difficulty looking me in the eyes as he shuffled his hands. He slowly began to speak. He was a second-year engineering student having second thoughts about his chosen field of study. He knew he liked being creative, but he was becoming increasingly convinced that his…

Dear friends, I have decided to stop using the online test monitoring system.  I had felt conflicted about it throughout the semester last fall, because I was not convinced that it would prevent cheating and suspected it could worsen equity issues. Now I am finally abandoning it because it is bad for my soul and erodes…