“It seems like all of us have an emptiness inside of us. You see it all the time when people are dating, they're always looking for somebody to complete them. They're looking for the person that will make them whole. But there's nobody out there that will make you whole, there's nobody who will fill that emptiness. All of us will always carry it with us. But that's okay. I mean if that was filled, if we were complete, if we were perfect then what would be have to live for? If we were like that life would be meaningless, we'd just die.”
“Well, I don't know… I wouldn't use the language of emptiness. I think it's more about intimacy. It's not so much about arriving at a point of being where that hole is filled, it's about engaging in a continual process of becoming. Because I think I've found a love that fills that hole. But I've got all sorts of things to live for, it's like I've only just come alive. What I engage in now is an ever deeper movement into intimacy. It's like Till We Have Faces: first we discover our face, we discover who we truly are and then we begin a true journey in loving and being loved. Of course until we discover our faces we will always be left with that emptiness.”
I saw well why the gods do not speak to us openly, nor let us answer. Till that word can be dug out of us, why should they hear the babble that we think we mean? How can they meet us face to face till we have faces?
C.S. Lewis – Till We Have Faces

Only in television commercials did Superman ever walk again.
In reality he wiggled his toes, breathed a few hours without a machine, and died.
All of us are prone to embracing fantasy, until fantasy itself becomes our reality.
“This is where I want to be, this is so much better.”
Soon the world of my own construction is the world God once pronounced good and I myself am the divine.
It is ironic that in such a situation the visionaries (the seers and prophets) are said to be blind. Dismissed as those who chase utopian pipe-dreams, those who do not take into consideration the true nature of reality.
Yet the prophets are those who have not only escaped fantasy but discovered a greater reality. They realise a truer way of being than those who have spent their lives fleeing that which is instead of facing it and discovering that which will be.

I support the idea of “wet” shelters and safe-injection sites. I support giving out condoms to prostitutes. I think that they are all part of the larger picture that is necessary in a society that has embraced harm-reduction as the model under which it operates. Thus for every dry shelter we need a wet shelter, for every drug treatment program we need a safe-injection site or needle exchange program, for every organisation that helps prostitutes flee the sex trade we need an organisation that helps prostitutes survive within the sex trade. Our society is structured around band-aid solutions and so we need everything we can to prevent people from abuse or illness or death. We recognise that we're not doing anything really effective at the level of the big picture and so we focus in on helping people survive in the immediate present.
However, I notice that, in the circles in which I move, a lot of Christians that I talk to favour safe-injection sites while opposing abortion clinics. Now, I've been thinking about this quite a bit over the last few weeks and I think that this is actually a double standard.
The same arguments that these Christians have embraced in the areas of homelessness, addiction and prostitution are arguments they have rejected when it comes to abortion. Abortions will continue to happen regardless. Abortion clinics are places where women can go and have an abortion without risking infection, serious injury or death. Therefore, even somebody who believes that a fetus is a living person, should, based on the arguments mentioned above, support abortion clinics. From that perspective a child is dying but the mother's life is being saved.
Funny how Christians seem more ready to humanise drug-addicts than they are to humanise women.
Here's the thing though. I am not entirely convinced that the harm-reduction model as a whole should be so fully embraced by Christians. I believe that harm-reduction is a necessary model for secular society but I believe that Christians should be addressing things at a much deeper, more big picture, level. If Christianity is about becoming fully human, than we should be offering something completely different than all these options. What may end up being the best approach in secular society does not have to be the best Christianity has to offer. Unfortunately, as with pretty much every other area of life, North American Christians seem to have lost any sense of their distinct identity.

Intelligent Christians are often the most dangerous.
Christians who have excelled in a particular discipline (Law, Engineering, Computer Science, whatever) often assume that they are equally qualified to speak authoritatively on matters of scripture or faith. Sure maybe they got gold stars in Sunday school, heck, maybe they even kicked a little ass in youth group Bible studies, but that certainly does NOT qualify them to assume they have a superior understanding of scripture or faith. Maybe they can form arguments that sound more persuasive, or appear more convincing than most people they encounter (maybe they're even more convincing than… drum roll… their pastor!) but, once again, this doesn't mean that they are right.
In fact, they are often quite wrong. And the consequences of their actions are often quite devastating (it's tempting to think all the Christians who support Bush are just high school drop-outs but we all know that's not true).
Now I'm not saying that all Christians need to throw their brains out the window when it comes to matters of faith. I'm actually saying the opposite. Christians need to treat their faith with the same respect that they treat the other disciplines. Christians need to start giving more credit to those who are scholars in the field of faith. Of course the fact that most Christians don't even have a clue about who such scholars are just shows how little respect they have (and the fact that people like Tim LaHaye or Bruce Wilkinson are considered experts is another shining proof).
Okay, you got straight-As in university. That's great, congratulations. Just don't assume that means you know anything about the Bible… or God… or the faith you profess to follow.

I pledge that I never will tie myself to parties who want to destroy Christianity… We want to fill our culture again with the Christian Spirit… we want to burn out all the recent immoral developments in literature, in the theatre, and in the press – in short, we want to burn out the poison of immorality which has entered into our whole life and culture as a result of liberal excess during past years.
If I didn't know better I would think this was a quote from George W. Bush. If he never said exactly these words I would think it was for reasons such as these that all those southern evangelicals voted him back into power.
Only it wasn't George W. who said this.
Adolf Hitler said this in 1922.
That's right. The German Christians who supported the Third Reich have a whole lot in common with the American Christians who support Bush.
Oh, and I should add that the same applies to those Canadian Christians who think it's their duty to vote for the Conservative Party.

I think we're supposed to be remembering something…
Oh right.
Today let's remember that war is the only way to peace.
Today let's remember that we need to attack a country to defend it… from itself.
Today let's remember that killing people is the only way to set them free.
Today let's remember that we need to sacrifice our children in order to protect them.
Today let's celebrate Hiroshima. Let's raise our glasses to the Enola Gay and thank God for all the lives she saved.
Today let's remember that we need to be willing to do it all again.
Isn't this why Remembrance day was established? Lest we forget.
__
*Latin saying: May the evil foretold not come to pass.