Back in January I wrote about how I was trying to re-enchant my disenchanted world. As I was reflecting on this, I couldn't help but notice that a lot of people around me didn't have this problem, but rather lived in a magical world. Faced with the prospect of a cold and unfeeling world, they … Continue reading My Year of Magical Thinking*
I’ve been thinking and writing a lot lately about how most contemporary conceptions about God are too small. The readings this week, as we settle into the hope and expectation of Advent, remind me that the same can be said for common ideas about salvation. For there is nothing that cannot be redeemed. There is … Continue reading The Big, Beautiful, All-Encompassing Salvation of our God (An Advent Reflection on Isaiah 29.17-24)
At the start of this series on knowing God, we need to think about what is we mean when we think or talk about God. It's fine — and necessary — to talk about God's will, God's initiative, God's revelation, and so on, but this can easily mislead us. Unsurprisingly, ‘God’ is a big topic … Continue reading GOD: Three Letters and a World of Problems
One of the great archetypes of world literature is the Quest: one hero given a mission to do something that seems impossible, whether that’s to conquer the unconquerable enemy, or scale the unscalable mountain. It’s such a stirring trope to the human imagination that it forms the basis of the Hero’s Journey, the universal narrative … Continue reading The Great Quest (A Reflection on Deuteronomy 30.11-14)
Over the past couple months, I have written about the conceptual relationships between religion and spirituality and language and linguistics. While my educational background in linguistics means that these connections fascinate me, there was a reason for doing this deep-dive beyond my own interest. Thinking about God and faith through this lens is essentially about … Continue reading Knowing God: Introduction
Matthew Root 