pastor || writer || speaker
Here is Marva Dawn halfway through her marvelous book Sexual Character: Beyond Technique to Intimacy on the ways in which an ethics of character, or virtue ethics, aptly shapes our engagement with love, sexuality, and the body: The main task of ethics is to enable us to ask better questions about the issues of our day. An …
Continue reading "Asking Better Questions: Marva Dawn on a Sexual Ethics of Character"
This quotation from philosopher and theologian Josef Pieper captured my attention over a year ago when I was preparing a series of messages for students on distraction and attention. Themes of distraction and attentiveness have become increasingly important to me as the information economy takes hold of our culture and shapes our lives more than …
Josef Pieper writes about strenuous effort versus free spontaneity in living the virtuous life with God: The strain of self-mastery, which for us countrymen of Kant is inseparable from any concept of upbringing and moderation and is generally tied to and fused with the concept of virtue, is an accompanying phenomenon only of less perfect …
Continue reading "Freedom with God: the radiant seal of spontaneity in virtuous living"
Over the next number of weeks, I am interacting with some of the writings of Andrew Murray. Murray was a South African pastor and missionary during the 19th and early 20th centuries. Murray is probably best known for his book With Christ in the School of Prayer, but he has many other valuable works. My writing …
This past weekend at Eastbrook Church I concluded our series "Unshackled: Joy Beyond Circumstances" on the Apostle Paul's letter to the Philippians. I took us through the last section of the letter, Philippians 4:4-23, where Paul draws together some final exhortations and personal reflections. This section has some of the most well-known verses in the entire letter, which makes it …
Matthew Erickson 