People often wrongly connect Darwin’s doctrine of the survival of the biological fittest, including reproduction, with superiority in other spheres, such as morality, intellect, aesthetics, and spirituality. If anything, the moral to Darwin’s ethical stance is that people should have big families, wherein the children reach adulthood. What is termed Social Darwinism should probably be labeled Social Spencerism, following Herbert Spencer’s social philosophy. Darwin did not fully accept Social Darwinism or “eugenics,” which was coined by Darwin’s cousin, Francis Galton... Read more

I struggle with those gated communities and that form of gated community thinking where people associate only with people of their own ideological and cultural bent. Such isolation. I also struggle with churches that function as gated communities of various kinds. Perhaps some churches exclude people of other ethnicities, economic brackets, those with “disabilities,” the elderly or young or singles, the vibrant or dying, or those with different worship styles,  personality types, hobbies, IQ’s, and political perspectives. The list goes... Read more

I remember someone claiming there is too much talk of justice in Evangelical circles these days. From what I recall, this person felt that highlighting consideration of justice was distracting people from placing due emphasis on the gospel. This individual viewed justice as an appendix to the gospel at best, or possibly even extraneous to it. Certainly, Evangelicals must focus consideration on the proclamation of the gospel or good news of God’s grace revealed in Jesus Christ; even so, the... Read more

As I prepare for church this morning, I think back to two recent trips to Ganshoin, a Zen Buddhist temple in Obuse in Nagano, Japan. Those sojourns inspired conversations with Buddhists and Christians alike. The temple is perhaps best known for famed Japanese artist Katsushiksa Hokusai’s painting of the Phoenix or “Ho-o Staring in Eight Directions.” The painting appears on the temple ceiling (pictured in this post). The temple grounds also feature the grave of daimyo Fukushima Masanori and the... Read more

Last week, I visited Nikko, Japan, one of Japan’s greatest historical and memorial sites. Nikko features Toshogu, Japan’s most extravagantly adorned shrine, and the mausoleum of Tokugawa Ieyasu, the Tokugawa shogunate’s founder. In keeping with his instructions for the year following his death, he was enshrined as a deity at Nikko by designation of the Imperial court. Ieyasu’s aim was to serve Japan from Nikko as its perpetual guardian. By most if not all standards, Ieyasu was a brilliant military... Read more