Tag: marilynne-robinson

Christian Forgiveness: Unlimited and Unconditional

My wife and I were joking recently about whether we should forgive a minor infraction committed by a close friend. Suddenly, seriousness overtook her and she told me, “We must...

Fridays with Fred: Nietzsche, Fyodor and Meteors

Friedrich Nietzsche is often associated with nihilism. This might be because of the assonance between Nietzsche and nihilism. However, that association is also a good indicator that someone hasn’t read...

John Ames' Advice Against Defensiveness

Good advice is gold. That is, it’s as rare as it is precious. Unfortunately, the church is often a sanctuary for bad advice. In the same way that fugitives of...

Marilynne Robinson's Model Fathers

I’ve made a point of not crying in public. Perhaps my masculinity is too fragile. Maybe I’ve wrongly associated tears with weakness. Either way, this commitment recently made for an...

A Proposal for Reading Hebrews' Warning Passages

I’ve often joked that Hebrews languishes in the New Testament’s wilderness. Compared to the Gospels and Paul’s writings, most Bible Christians make a wide berth of Hebrews, together with the...

Personal Reflection: Tell Your Children The Truth

My wife and I didn’t want children. We weren’t convinced that the God commands married Christian couples to “multiply,” at least not in that way (Genesis 1:28). As people realised...

Doodle: A Cautionary Note On Apologetics

In my own life I’ve seen a marked resurgence of apologetics. This was in part a response to the New Atheism, while other factors exceeding my own abilities of analysis...

Doodle: Pharisees versus Prophets

Being passionate about literature I often attempt to pull threads of thought through multiple works. I realise that occasionally the result of this is that my writing resembles little more...

Reflection: Heaven and Friendship

A thought came to me the other day. Large portions of our lives are spent enmeshed with the transient. So much of this life is fading away, receding from view,...

Reflection: God's Grace in Gilead and Reductionism

Last month I found a second hand copy of Marilynne Robinson’s 2004 novel, Gilead. The book is a collection of moving memoirs (for lack of a better word) written by...