To Think God as Love

Listening to David Milch’s director’s commentary for “John From Cincinnati,” I came upon this: “You can mythologize any family experience and if it elicits in the hearts of the viewers a sense of the continuity of things, it works as religion.” Milch is right, I think. Etymologically, “religion” has to do with binding up, with [...]

In his “biographical” The Great Divorce, Lewis and his heavenly guide, George MacDonald, witness the tragic encounter of a Sarah Smith – a beautifully “heavenized” being, glorified in her experience of “deep heaven” – and her ghostly husband (Lewis describes him as a “ghost dwarf”), Frank, who is being de-humanized before their eyes, literally withering away into nothingness. [...]

In this sermon, Keller contends that accepting the reality of Hell is crucial for understanding your own heart, living at peace in the world, and knowing the love of God. Following C. S. Lewis and Soren Kierkegaard, among others, Keller argues that “Hell” is not retributive punishment God imposes upon all those who disappoint God, but the condition to which one [...]

And what have I now said, my God, my life, my holy joy? or what saith any when he speaks of Thee? Yet woe to him that speaketh not, since mute are even the most eloquent (Confessions, Book I). Most of us assume we know what we mean – and what others mean – when [...]

Recently, I picked up Moby Dick, to read it again. I hadn’t read it in a decade or so, and I found it more profound and provocative than I remembered. Anyway, one bit in particular has stayed with me after this reading. It is one of the more famous passages. The first mate, Starbuck, mocks [...]