One of the weaknesses of modern Christianity is a lack of disciplines for self-observation, knowledge and mastery. This is partly due to Christianity’s outward focus on a God who saves and heals rather than an inward focus on self-knowledge, as well as an aversion to...
This past week, self-help guru and author Wayne Dyer died at age 75. He was beloved by celebrities like Oprah Winfrey and Ellen Degeneres, even officiating Degeneres’ wedding to actress Portia de Rossi. In addition, he appeared many times on PBS. As a champion of...
I chose to study and follow up on this Buddhist teacher and style of meditation because of all the spiritual disciplines, I feel that this one has had the most profound practical impact on me, despite the fact that salvation and time spent with the...
In 2001, during my journey out of Christendom, I attended a 10 day silent Buddhist meditation retreat in the California hills, which focused on a certain simple type of silent meditation called Vipassana. I published my reflections on it back then, and you can see...
Once upon a time there were three Buddhist monks who lived in a monastery. Each day, the monks would walk along a lengthy path to fetch water from a local well. As they were walking one day, the monks met a Christian missionary, and they...
I wrote this essay back in 2001 during my period of away from Christianity, while I was exploring Vipassana Buddhist Meditation. Begin Although it has been a few weeks since I did the 10 day course, it is still worthwhile to try and remember. In...
The Christian Muslim Forum, an interfaith group, has released what it calls Ethical Guidelines for Christian and Muslim Witness in Britain (PDF). Interestingly, some more conservative Christians don’t like a couple of the provisions because they fear that it could…
This post is part of a series In Part 1 of this series, I examined Pascal’s wager as a risk calculation exercise. In Part 2, I proposed some criteria by which one could evaluate various faith claims, even though those criteria were outside of direct empirical...
