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    Whales & Angels

    Jen’s mum went to be with her Lord and Saviour a few weeks ago. It was a tough time. We made it through the funeral, and afterward, we took a week to recuperate in Merimbula. Merimbula is a coastal town just over the New South Wales border. It’s a beautiful place, one we’ve returned to many times over the years…

  • Reflections

    Review: Mania by Lionel Shriver

    (Contains spoilers for Lionel Shriver’s novel Mania) Cognitive discrimination has been outlawed in the America of Lionel Shriver’s novel Mania (2024). Nobody is stupid, everyone’s brain is equal; the country is falling apart. Mania opens with Pearson Converse, the story’s protagonist, being summoned to remove her son from school after he used the “D-word” about the slogan on another child’s…

  • Reflections

    On Christ’s Two Wills: Responding to William Lane Craig

    A couple of weeks ago the renowned Christian apologist and philosopher, William Lane Craig caused a small flurry on the internet by declaring his rejection of the orthodox doctrine of the two wills of Christ (dyothelitism), and his preference for another Christological aberration known as Apollinarianism. I have a great deal of respect for Dr Craig and often enjoy listening…

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    An Easter Easter Egg

    I like a good Easter egg. Not a chocolate egg—I mean a secret meaning or symbol buried in a film or game or story. I included a whole bunch of them in The Blood Miles and had a lot of fun doing it. The Bible Is Chock Full of Easter Eggs The Bible is chock full of Easter eggs too. Alongside the explicit…

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    Spooky Stories and the Lord of Halloween

    I like a spooky story. Maybe I shouldn’t. Maybe it’s unhealthy. Maybe I should be more reformed and less medieval—more Zwingli and less Luther, as Carl Trueman would put it. I know there are definite dangers in thinking too much about spooky things—of drifting into a superstitious mindset where intermediate powers control the ups and downs of life. I know…

  • Still image from the opening of Greta Gerwig’s ‘Barbie’ movie.
    Reflections

    Considering Barbie (and Marriage and Singleness)

    Being human can be very uncomfortable … People make up things like the patriarchy and Barbie to endure how uncomfortable it is. Jen and I saw Barbie over the weekend. We both liked it; were both surprised by it. I thought it was funny and smart and multi-layered to a degree that I still haven’t fathomed. The film’s reframing of…

  • Cover illustration of Tolkien's "Smith of Wootton Major" by Pauline Baynes.
    Reflections

    What’s the Point of Christian Fiction?

    What’s the point of Christian fiction? Can it do any good? Should it even exist? These are some of the questions I have been mulling over as I have been working on several novels over the last ten (or thirty) years or so. I have found them difficult to answer, but here are some scattered ideas that I have tried…