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A Short Christian Philosophy of Trust

Trust is essential to our lives. We trust in the predictability of laws of nature like gravity, magnetism, and lift. We trust in the economic decency of others when we shop online, in person, or sell our stuff online. Without trust, our basic functions of society would break down. Trust goes much deeper than that though: into our homes, across our tables, and into our beds. We trust our siblings, so we share our insecurities with them and find we are not alone; we trust our parents, so we let them tuck us in and comfort us at night as children and find salve for harassing thoughts in dark and lonely nighttime moments. Breaches of paternal and sibling trust are written about as grave tragedies by social scientists, novelists, and playwrights alike. Trust defines us in intimate and sometimes ruinous ways. What if there was a matter of trust even greater? What of a trust that runs deeper? What could be more frightening than discovering a trust more profound and intimate, and thus, more da

The Church's Ongoing Pandemic

Photo Credit  People don’t go to church for a lot of reasons, but a Christian without a church is a Christian in trouble. Sadly, the number of professing Christians is far larger than the number who attend weekly meetings. Many churches experienced an acceleration of this trend during Covid as well: professing Christians have returned to school, work, and leisure, but have not returned for regular church gatherings. Why? Everyone is a unique case in the specifics, but there are trends we see in the wake of the pandemic: people have elevated political and medical (mask & vaccine) opinions over faith commitments and demoted their faith so it is not the primary identity marker in their life. What does this mean for the church? Is it doomed? I don’t think so, but Christians need to rediscover that the church can have different political and medical opinions, but still love each other, be on mission, and gather for Jesus. Christians need to remember that the fact that Jesus died on th