Thinking After

Tag: culture of death

  • Editor’s Intro to “Death and Resurrection” Issue of Didaskalia

    Unfortunately, the upcoming issue of Didaskalia has been held up in production.  However, it sounds like it will soon finally make its appearance.  In anticipation of its appearance, I thought I would share my editor’s introduction to the issue.  We are once again making this issue available at the special rate of $5 for those within Canada and $10 for those in other countries.  See prov.ca/didaskalia for more information.

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  • “Death and Resurrection” Issue of Didaskalia

    There is another excellent issue of Didaskalia on the near horizon.  Once again, we have been able to make the issue available to interested readers at the special rate of $5 for those within Canada and $10 for those outside of Canada.  You can sign up to receive the issue here.

    To whet your appetite, I’m able to provide a sneak peak of the list of content for the upcoming issue: (more…)

  • Living Well, Dying Well

    I had the privilege of preaching at Niverville Community Fellowship this morning.  In November, I will be presenting series of seminars in their adult education program on ethical issues surrounding Medically Assisted Dying.  However, from a Christian perspective, it’s impossible to ask what it might mean to die a good death, if you don’t first consider what it means to live a good life.  Hence the title of my upcoming series, “Living Well, Dying Well.”  In advance of that series I preached a sermon this morning that brought Psalm 8, Genesis 3:1-7 and Hebrews 2:5-18 into conversation.  You can watch the sermon here.  (The sermon begins around the 36 minute mark.)

  • Life Under the Power of Death (Series on “Minding the Web”)

    “Consider how death is reported in the news. Those that produce the news seem to know that we have a morbid desire to know how some­one died—in an automobile accident—because, as Tolstoy observed, a passion for finding the “cause” of someone else’s death can be a way of satisfying ourselves that they died accidentally or fortuitously by virtue of special circumstances affecting the one who died (but not me). It seems that we are at once obsessed by death while striving in every way possible to conceal its power over our lives. Accordingly, we ask those charged to care for us when we are ill to do everything they can to get us out of life alive. This is yet another form of self-protection, as it means we then get to blame health-care providers for any miseries related to keeping us alive at all costs.”[1.Stanley Hauerwas, “Resurrection,” in Minding the Web: Making Theological Connections (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 185.]

    This is the fifteenth in a series of posts highlighting captivating, provocative, or simply entertaining quotes from the forthcoming book Minding the Web: Making Theological Connections by Stanley Hauerwas edited by Robert J. Dean (Cascade).

  • A Matter of Life and Death: A Samson Sermon

    The following is the text of a sermon I preached this past Sunday as a guest speaker at Toronto Chinese Alliance Church.  The congregation has been working its way through a sermon series on the book of Judges.  I was assigned the daunting task of preaching on the Samson story (Judges 13-16).

    For the past week, my thoughts have been preoccupied by a single figure. A blustery and boisterous man, noted for his both his crudity and his cruelty. A man whose track record of troubled relationships with women is well-known. A man who is thought to stand as a paragon of strength and power, despite the strange coif of hair on his head. A bully, who always seems to be the last man standing. A man seemingly tasked with the responsibility of making his nation great again. (more…)