How the heart heals and loves again

Some of us are lucky in love. We have a high school sweetheart, fall madly in love, get married and stay married for 60 years. Others of us, it doesn’t work out quite like that. Be it the inability to find anyone to love us; a lack of faithfulness by ourselves or our partner; abuse; […]

Where fear, panic and despair die

Each of us lives in two realities. One reality is the external world in which we interact with each other, where we work, we go to school, and where objective things happen to us: we get a new job, babies are born, loved ones die, and so on. The other reality is our internal thought […]

How to make sense of God

I have a lot of experience being angry with God. It often feels like He has frustrated me to no end. The relationship I’ve had with Him has left a lot to be desired. Where to begin? Assuming you even buy standard Christian theology, you start from the premise that “I’m not God,” which means much of […]

How He loves

Many of us have heard of the Christian obsession with insisting that God loves us. I suspect for many, like me, that’s not an easy idea to buy. Life is full of heartbreak and hurt; disappointment and unfulfilled potential; tragedy and horror. At least that’s how it often feels to those of us who have […]

When Easter feels joyless

The celebration of Jesus’ resurrection on Easter Sunday is the high point of the year for Christians. It is the single historical event on which the entirety of Christian hope rests – it gives meaning to the crucifixion that would otherwise be simply a tragic martyrdom, and it demonstrates to the Christian that God has […]

Suffering, reconsidered

Two posts ago we discussed evil, pain and suffering. I suggested that evil may be most properly understood not as a “thing” in itself but as the absence of good; the absence of God. As such God would not have technically created evil, as it is a thing that exists as a consequence of His […]

Evil and pain

I’ve shared how I’ve been wrestling with God for a while, because I’ve realized that deep within me (below my conscious self) I have blamed Him for all that is wrong in the world and specifically all that is wrong with me. Of course that’s so common as to be laughable: swing a stick in […]