I have the good fortune to have a job right now, but many of my friends are out of work. Most have been searching for a while. Some are encountering a problem that has my full sympathy, something I’ve experienced myself at various times. I’m not sure I can solve it, but maybe I can help put words to what some are going through.
The problem unfolds in three distinct phases as the job search drags on.
Continue reading “When the Job Search Becomes Impossible: Three Phases of Burnout”
There is a special misery reserved for those caught on a little boat in the middle of the sea late at night when a storm is raging. True, there was no rain, but on this night the angry wind swept across unguarded water and threw up muscular waves to toss and knock and soak us. There was a little moonlight, and by it I could see my friends huddled low, heads down, shivering, worrying over the growing pool in the bottom of the boat. What else could we do?
Then we saw something worse. Off to one side there was a wave that leapt up and stood still, or so it seemed. Or was it the fin of a huge fish cresting the water, plowing directly for us?
But no—it was a man, or the shape of a man. A ghost! The ghost of a sailor lost in this place, a sailor sent to warn us of our doom or else tug us with him into the depths forever. Others saw it. Someone screamed, and another. It drifted over the water, coming—yes, definitely coming toward us, though slowly, cruelly, full of deadly anticipation. A great swell lifted the figure, then the trough as it swept past brought it low, as if it were gliding on the water like a child on snow. Now there could be no question: a ghost was approaching. I began to see eyes, gleaming eyes in the moonlight, and the terror rose into my throat. I told myself: I would not scream. But yes, soon I must scream.
Continue reading “Walking on Water”
When I graduated from seminary I was a wreck. I had become spiritually destitute. I came within one heartbeat of losing my faith.
I had enrolled to learn about God, to grow my love of Christ and to learn how to help others love him too. But all the study, the chapel services, the spiritual formation, even the rich conversations with fellow believers had somehow done nothing to draw me closer to a living faith in God. Instead they had masked a deep deterioration.
Continue reading “Reviving Faith: The Role of Imagination in Christian Belief”
I’m trying an experiment. Starting July 30 I will be publishing a book, The Last Family, on this website, in a strange and unusual way. The book will appear in segments, synchronized in real time with the events of the story.
It’s about an ordinary family of five: Brewer, Amy, and their kids Garrett, Claire, and Trevor. They get home from a hiking trip to find that they are all alone. Everyone else in the world has disappeared. They must figure out how to survive, how to find others, how to endure together in this strange new life.
The book unfolds as a series of diary entries, each member of the family telling their story with their own distinct voice and perspective.
The first entry appears on July 30 at 10:51 PM CT. The next appears soon afterward, and I’ll release it at the date and time of its writing. And so it will go, day by day, hour by hour, new entries appearing at various times, as long as the family keeps writing.
If you don’t want to miss anything, subscribe and I’ll shoot you an email each time a new entry is released.
If you like reading—or if you don’t like reading but like experiencing gripping stories in new ways—please join me for this little experiment.
Like most people, I experience pain. Physical pain, emotional pain, mental pain, perhaps even spiritual pain. It happens to the best of us.
It would be nice if something as widespread and commonplace as pain were pleasant and enriching. But as it turns out, I don’t actually like pain that much. You might even say I hate it. I would very much like to experience less of it. I would like so much to experience less pain that I’ve thought quite a bit about how to do so.
Recently while pursuing these researches I discovered something—a method not (alas!) of completely eliminating pain, but of greatly diminishing it. This solution, or mitigation, works against all the kinds of pain I know of: physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual. Nor is it an obvious solution. I don’t think I’ve come across anyone else talking about it, at least not quite in this way. So I’d better share it with you in case you are also one of those who dislike pain and would like to rid yourself of some of it.
Continue reading “First- and Second-Order Pain”Leaders command people. That’s kind of what a leader is: someone with the authority to direct the actions of others.
But people don’t often appreciate being commanded. When you step into leadership you face this challenge: how do you direct the members of your team without offending them? How do you become a good boss, but not be “bossy”?
Continue reading “How to Boss Without Being Bossy”
Believers and unbelievers alike ought to recall from Scripture how often it is true that the Lord works through nature rather than against it. (CS Lewis makes this point in his book Miracles.) Without wishing to be flippant, it’s almost as if the Lord surfs nature rather than slicing it or else making no contact with it.
Lewis points out that even in the feedings of the five- and four-thousand—in some ways the greatest miracles in history—the miracle was not to countermand nature so much as to accelerate it. Jesus didn’t pluck fish from the air; he received ordinary fish, passed hand-to-hand, that had been caught with a line and hook and bait from a mucky lake, and simply increased its mass. Somebody made—skillfully or not, burning or undercooking or baking just right—the loaves he multiplied. Jesus did not wave his arms in a magical gesture that caused purple light to shoot across the crowd, into their gaping mouths, filling their stomachs with magical sustenance. He took what was already present in nature and expanded it more rapidly than it otherwise might have. People chewed the miraculous fish with ordinary, sometimes broken, sometimes aching teeth. Those caught fish, had they been allowed to keep on swimming, might have multiplied into thousands of fish, sufficient to feed the crowd, in a few more generations; but that would have taken years. The wheat for the bread and the women’s labor to grind, mix, knead, and bake it could have fed the crowd in a few more years of harvests and long baking days. Jesus did in seconds what the natural process might have done more slowly. He didn’t contradict nature, he amplified it.
Continue reading “When God Provides No Miracle”
One day a young angel, only three and a half billion years old, very naive, with limited experience of the wide universe and eager for more, was called over by one of her elder brothers. “I have a special mission for you,” he said. “It is said that Life has appeared somewhere in the universe, in accordance with the purpose and timing of the Almighty. It is your task to seek out this Life, and when you find it, tell us so that we may visit the planet to nurture and guide it.”
Continue reading “Lyra”Here’s how it happened for me. I was sitting in the back seat on the passenger side. I had just asked the driver how long he’d been with Uber, and he said, like he’d answered the question a thousand times, “Six months.” Then I asked how many rides he’d given, and there was a sort of cool pride in his face and I was expecting a big number, when I saw—or really felt—a presence to my right, a buzzing, looming mass. I looked out the window, and there was the wheel of an eighteen-wheeler right beside my door, coming closer. I still don’t know whether it was changing into our lane or we had drifted into its.
Continue reading “Measures”I have been making video games for about 25 years. I’ve been a gamer since long before that, and a Christian since before that.
Games have changed a lot over the years. Prior to about 2005, there were a very limited number of good games, certainly a very limited number of “big” games that would take hours and hours of play. They tended to cost a lot of money: you didn’t get a lot of good gameplay for free. To be a gamer then meant to binge on a game for 20 or 40 hours, then wait several months for the next big game to come out. Therefore to be a “gamer” meant spending a lot of time not playing games. You’d get addicted to a game for a week or maybe a month, but then your sources would dry up and you’d go back to real life.
Continue reading “Can a Christian Play Video Games?”