Like I do early each Sunday morning, I walked out of my apartment to take a contemplative walk around Denver’s Cheesman Park. Complete with coffee in hand, the bright Sunday morning sun shined through my apartment window inviting me into a needed quiet space in the middle of a normally busy city. The normalcy only …
Category Archives: Philosophy
The King & the Maiden: Kierkegaard’s Christmas Parable
I’m largely going to leave this post to Kierkegaard’s own words from his famous “The King & the Maiden” parable from his book, Philosophical Fragments. I do want to offer a few cursory thoughts as to why this parable is significant for us this Christmas season. Invoking “The King & the Maiden” is not new …
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The Sacred Space of Absence
The desert is a vacancy. It is a place of silence. It is harsh, both in its design and its impact. Yet even in a place as treacherous as the desert, one finds resilience. And it’s beautiful. The thing about the desert, as with all nature, is its welcome embrace of those who find themselves …
Embracing Empathy, Embracing Liberation
I’ve lately been reflecting on the relationship between liberation, empathy, and how we view others. In our internet age, we so often quickly succumb to mocking others in their very public failures. Whether it is a celebrity or sports star who has made a poor choice leading to public shame or yet another political scandal, …
Learning about Christ from an Unlikely Source
One of the glorious things about studying philosophy and theology is that sometimes you find allies in unlikely places. Lately, the “antichrist” himself – Friedrich Nietzsche has become a bit of a refuge with an interpretation of certain aspects of the Gospels. As I’ve been re-reading through Miroslav Volf’s marvelous text Exclusion & Embrace as …
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A Response to CT’s Mark Galli
Earlier this afternoon, Christianity Today editor Mark Galli published a short article entitled “2 Billion Christians Believe in Traditional Marriage.” As the overzealous title suggests, Galli’s central premise is that orthodox Christians only endorse a view of marriage that is defined between a man and a woman. Galli attempts to downplay Tony Campolo’s recent call …
The Engagement of Suffering
“Well, your suffering isn’t like Job’s…” Ever hear something along those lines? Frankly, I think it is largely an ignorant statement. Suffering is hard. What compounds the hardship is the difficulty by which we try to engage people when suffering occurs. It takes courage to admit struggle and suffering. If it is met with a …
Being “Ethical” & Ethical Knowledge
There is a short passage in Kierkegaard’s Judge For Yourself! that has recently garnered my attention. While my interest in Kierkegaard is many, the focus of my research is on Kierkegaard’s epistemology. Often, however, the epistemology of Kierkegaard’s authorship surrounds the ethical-religious spheres, thereby placing interest in the subjective. In every human being there is …
On Subjectivity
I often speak of the value of subjective truth, the truths by which are related to one’s self, inwardness, and basic desires and passions. Many who hear that I value subjective truth often quickly draw a conclusion that I am against objective truth, or, that I do not believe in objective truth. Both of these …
Freedom & Responsibility
I take the title of this post from a chapter of Jean-Paul Sartre’s Existentialism and Human Emotions. While Sartre is often drug over the steaming hot coals, I do find some meaning in his writings. Sartre purports that man is “condemned to be free” thereby endorsing ultimate human freedom. It must be noted that the …
Former Aspiring Philosopher 