I am a Christian thinker, writer, speaker, and counselor. My education is in what we call today practical theology, pastoral studies, or spiritual theology, something along those lines. Different cultures use different names.

The core of my thinking and the practical work that comes from it is a theology of the cross, which is a theology of how God is known through suffering. What I write here will, at least by my best intentions, come out of that.

With some theological training, pastoral experience, and my own suffering in this world I have come to value more of what the apostle Paul meant by being “in Christ" (see his letters to the Ephesians and Colossians).

That “God was [is] in Christ reconciling the world to himself" is the ground of my theology as well as my pastoral practice in the care of souls. I agree with Andrew Purves, when he says that God has only one ministry which is, “in, through, and as Jesus Christ". In Christ I am not free to create my own, but as a follower of Christ, of being a man in Christ by grace through faith, I can only minister in union with God, who always acts in Christ.

Being in Christ is entwined with the theology of the cross, for it is being in Christ that brings us into conflict with the world that lies outside of him and ourselves. It is this inside out relation of the Christian to the world that brings suffering to both us and the world.

Through the cross this suffering comes from God, for one cannot crucify themselves. And bringing suffering to both, God is revealed as Christ crucified, the God of grace to one who is dead to the world and alive to God in Christ. Jesus is revealed to the world as the One blasphemed and abused as the refuse of God. To one he is the Redeemer, to the other Judge.

"I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me." Galatians 2.20