Your questions, answered

June 2025

In my last letter I opened the proverbial mailbox, asking you to ask me anything. No question is off-limits. It can be silly or serious, theological or practical. You all wrote in with some thoughtful quandaries, and here’s my best attempt at answering them. Of course, you can always email or message me here with anything you’re wondering about. We can wonder together.

One more thing before we get into it - thank you. Thank you for trusting me with your questions, both serious and silly, and thanks for being devoted to wrestling through all of life together in this community.

Ok, let’s do this!

Q: To what extent do you feel like the average churchgoer is interested in the details of theology?

A: The average churchgoer did not attend seminary, reads fiction rather than footnotes, and cannot point to the Sea of Galilee on a map. That’s true of most people on earth, frankly. What the lay person and the clergy do share in common is a desire to know the meaning of life. I think that’s what brings most people to church.

Sure, there’s the tertiary stuff like the desire for community, the longing for comfort in grief, and just plain old family tradition. For all these reasons and more, we go to church. Yet underneath all of our surface-level needs is a deep demand to know the answer to this question – what is the meaning of all of this?

I believe that the meaning of life is to learn to love well. We receive love perfected from our Father in heaven, and we know what our Father is like through the revelation of his Son. We learn how to love well by the example of our brother, Jesus. For that reason, I think that the average churchgoer is desperately interested in theology.

Undoubtedly, the average churchgoer doesn’t care for Greek transliterations or divine transubstantiations, but the average churchgoer does show up to church looking for love. Theology is a discipline of many things, but if it’s one thing, it’s simply the study of the nature of God. In that sense, I believe that most (if not all) of our species, churchgoer or not, are unconsciously obsessed with theology. We are desperate to know that we’re loved. The details of the study of God? Maybe not so much. And maybe that’s ok, because in our desire to learn that we’re loved, we’ll likely find all that we’ll ever need to know.

Q: What’s your favourite thing to do with your family?

A: Rebecca and I have two lively boys, Asher and Aiden. They are the joy of our lives. When folks ask us how our life is, we get to eagerly exclaim, “We’re having a lot of fun.” In this season, our favourite thing to do is to enjoy Saturdays together. The sixth day of our week is dedicated to, simply put, nothing. We don’t do nothing, we usually end up doing lots of things. But we don’t do anything productive. We rest, or in Christian language, we sabbath.

Eugene Peterson famously said that sabbath is for praying and playing. Nothing more, nothing less. Over the last few years, we’ve been unpopularly intentional in our efforts to achieve that. I say unpopularly because it’s not fashionable to say no to travel sports, to second jobs, and to filling up a day off with efforts to produce. But we’re saying no and we’re saying it often, and in saying no, we get to say yes to so many holy habits.

Sleeping in, followed by Dutch pancakes for breakfast. A second cup of coffee, and a third later on. Playing in the mud with nothing to get cleaned up for. Impromptu pizza nights with family and friends in the backyard. We’re able to say yes to going for a bikeride and then going for another one shortly thereafter. Yes to some TV time in between. And yes to all the other little things that so often get denied by the pressures and priorities of the spirit of the modern age.

We do lots of things on Saturdays that make it our favourite time together as a family, but all the things are motivated by one thing – rest. Our sabbath is a weekly reminder that there is nothing we can do to earn anything more from God, we only ought to rest and receive more of his love.

Q: I’ve really been enjoying listening to the new Mumford and Sons album. The words “cause there’s no evil in a child’s eyes. It was made and it was good” somehow hit deep. I’ve heard many a message from the pulpit pointing out how children are inherently sinful, choosing wrong at every turn. Our inherited sinful nature plaguing us from birth. So I guess my question is - what is your view, or that of our church community on the topic of original sin? And perhaps more than that- what actually matters in all of this? How does what we believe on the topic lead us closer or farther away from Jesus and his calling?

A: Alright, let’s face this one head-on by getting theological for a second. The doctrine of original sin comes from the Genesis account, chapter 3 to be specific. There’s a man and a woman in a garden with a snake and with God. The snake made an accusation, “Did God really mean what he said to you?”. The humans made a choice that was contrary to life, and the result was death. Enter, sin.

The concept of original sin is that since sin entered the world through Adam and Eve, all of the children born of these humans are born sinful. Hello brother, hello sister, that’s you and me.

I’ve always been curious about the term – original sin. Of course, sin is a throughline of the gospel narrative. But is it our origin? When I read the creation account, the story doesn’t begin in chapter 3. There are two chapters of creative glory that precede the fall of man, and if anything appears to be original to me, it’s that we are blessed. We are good.

So theologically speaking, yes, sin entered the world through a deathly act of disobedience, disturbing the shalom of God in the garden. And no, that is not where the story begins. Originally, we are blessed, made good, and not separated from being at peace with our Father.

It’s one thing to think about sin theologically, it’s another to grapple with it practically. It’s one thing to wrestle with our own sin, mature enough to recognize it and take responsibility for it. It’s another thing altogether to hold the fragile frame of a newborn baby and have to make a judgment - are you a blessing to be held, or are you sin in my hands?

There it is, the sound of rubber meeting the road.

At this point in my spiritual journey with Jesus – a husband to one, a father to two, an uncle to a handful, and a pastor to many – I can’t in good conscience preach a gospel of original sin. I believe that we are originally blessed, and from the start deemed good. Yet I am plagued by sin, as is everyone that I know and love. So then, what shall we say of this?

Well, it seems to me that sin is in the air that we breathe. It’s a pathogen. A sickness that we cannot escape, infecting us from our earliest of days as a condition of being born into this world. Here’s the good news of the gospel - this is exactly why Jesus came. “Who needs a doctor: the healthy or the sick? I’m here inviting the sin-sick.” (Jesus, in Mark’s gospel).

I think this view of sin, which is to simply miss the mark of love, draws us lovingly and continually towards the embrace of the healer. We are sick, yes Lord, and you are the only one who can make me well. Contrarily, a view of sin that is original and innate, baked into the very fibre of our identity, can only keep us at a distance from the One who is called Good. We feel shame and we hide, yet the Doctor is drawing us into the light.

Q: Although these questions are posted anonymously, this next one is an exception. One night last week, our four-year-old rolled over in bed and asked me, Dad, if God three is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, how can he be one?

A: Good question, son. Ask your Papa.

Just kidding. The nature of the God revealed in Jesus Christ is trinitarian. That is to say, made of three parts. It’s the bedrock of our understanding of this deity, yet it has also been a point of great contention throughout the history of our faith. Truthfully, it’s virtually impossible to comprehend. Most efforts to try and put it into language fall short at best, and commit heresy at worst.

You may be familiar with popular metaphors for the trinity: “God is like H20 - water, ice, and steam” or “God is like an egg - the shell, the yoke, and the white.” These metaphors can be useful tools for teaching and talking with children, but in most cases, I find them to be reductionist to the point of making grave doctrinal errors.

In my best attempt to comprehend the Trinity, I lean on Saint Augustine. He said that “God is at once lover, beloved, and love itself”. God the Father, loves. Jesus the Son, receives that love. And the Holy Spirit, is the love itself, exchanged and experienced amongst a familial relationship.

In the very act of attempting to answer this question, I feel that I’m at risk of failing to make sense of something that is by nature mystical. That doesn’t mean it’s not worth wrestling with, though. In fact, I believe it’s imperative that we consider these things.

I can’t say much about the Trinity with positivity, but I can say this: the Trinity cannot be completely explained, adequately articulated, or even fully understood – it can only be believed. Or in other words, received.

Q: What role should AI play in our daily lives?

A: For the first time in human history, this is a reasonable question that anyone on the internet is responsible for reckoning with. We’re at the dawn of this new technology, so although this may be the first time you’ve considered pondering this question, it surely won’t be the last.

We live in a digital age. Unless you’re a luddite who has retreated to solitude in the woods (in which case, you’re certainly not reading this post), you’re connected in some measure to a worldwide web that entangles us all. We’re caught up in it. Some of us are looking for a way out.

As AI-generated content infiltrates every corner of our online spaces at rapid speed, we’re faced with this question. Can I use AI in my daily life? Should I use AI in my daily life? There are myriad of angles to approach this dilemma from, the preeminent being the moral slant. Is it good, holy even, to leverage this technology? I’m always eager to have that conversation. Today however, I’m interested in considering the formative angle.

Canadian philosopher Marshall McLuhan famously coined the phrase, “The medium is the message.” He argues that the form of communication, the medium itself, is as important as the message it carries. This is what interests me more than the ethical or economic concerns of using AI. It’s my belief that this technology is not neutral, even if its founders are convincing us into believing that it is. AI is a medium, and employing it in any measure is a message in and of itself.

It’s a message to your brain that says, “It’s ok, take a load off. Let me handle this one for you.” It’s a shortcut, an escape hatch, and a path that I fear leads to destruction. Destruction of our critical thinking skills and spiritual instincts. Destruction of our work ethic and creative energy centre. I know, this may seem hyperbolic, but I’m not exaggerating for exaggeration’s sake. I really do believe that the risk of regularly employing AI in our daily lives far outweighs the rewards.

Q: Asking as a Canadian myself, what are the distinct issues we must face as the Canadian church? Since we are so connected to America culturally, do you find the issues mirror or image what is faced in the church south of the border? Or are we facing global issues, the basic spiritual battles that apply to all believers everywhere?

A: This is a question that constantly ruminates in my mind. For starters, I am serially on the internet. I work 8 hours a day online, and the scope of my work is with predominantly American churches. Next, I married an American – from the South. And finally, I was born and raised in a border town. As a child, we would cross the bridge to get cheap gas, and as an adult, I find myself making the same journey to buy expensive snacks for my kids.

Beyond all of that, the geographic proximity of our two countries breeds a cultural relationship in which it becomes difficult to discern where Canada begins and America ends. It’s a real challenge to judge what is true, what has weight, and what is worth my attention.

Here are a few things that I do know to be true: Donald Trump is not our president. Algorithms are fueled by outrage. And your world is not as big as the internet would make you believe.

When I look out amongst our little, local congregation, I see a group of people rooted in a singular place and living in a particular time. The internet has afforded us many things, but one of the major deficits of our connectedness is that we become deceived to believe that the lives that we live online are more real than the neighbourhoods that we belong to. Donald Trump is not your president. Your algorithm is designed to prey on your fear and spark your response.

If we could all muster up the courage to unplug from the external sources of outrage (they are many, they are Legion), we would inevitably see the image of God in our neighbour, the suffering of Christ in our acquaintance, and possibly the mercy of Jesus in our enemy.

And that’s it! Your questions, answered. Thank you always for writing in so vulnerably, and we’ll be sure to do this again soon. To send you off, I feel compelled to leave you with some words from C.S. Lewis.

C. S. Lewis on the dangers of the internet (before it even existed)

“It is one of the evils of rapid diffusion of news that the sorrows of all the world come to us every morning. I think each village was meant to feel pity for its own sick and poor whom it can help, and I doubt if it is the duty of any private person to fix his mind on ills which he cannot help. (This may even become an escape from the works of charity we really can do for those we know.) A great many people now seem to think that the mere state of being worried is in itself meritorious. I don't think it is. We must, if it so happens, give our lives for others; but even while we're doing it, I think we're meant to enjoy our Lord and, in Him, our friends, our food, our sleep, your jokes, and the birdsong and the frosty sunrise.”