About Jake

Jake Wiens has worked as a teacher for most of his career: seven years as an elementary school teacher in Williams Lake public school system and 21 years at Cedars Christian School in Prince George. Here he taught a variety of high school courses and served as well as teacher - librarian in the K-12 library. Of interest would be the many school trips he made with Grade 11-12 students both to Mexico (building homes for the poor and children’s Bible Day clubs for street kids). He also led the annual class trip for the Grade 11 class to Vancouver East side. The purpose of these trips was primarily to help young people develop roots for their faith and gain added life perspective for the decision-making years ahead. He took a break from teaching after the 7-year stint in Williams Lake to work in Germany as a church pastor assistant. These overseas years did help develop greater perspective in understanding our own cultural moment.

Jake retired in 2014, spent the next season of his life building their retirement home in Prince George. During this same time he authored a book to provide some answers for the question as to why the church and Christian school community continues to lose so many young people to the faith after they have left the safety of the Christian School and the church youth groups. Life’s Ultimate Questions: Exploring the Stories that Shape our Everyday This book has since been revised and is available on his website.

As a culture watcher Jake is keenly aware of the critical cultural moment we are in. The foundations of our country are being eroded at an alarming rate. The Christian foundations created such a great advantage for this country and western culture. His passion is to speak truth to culture; only truth can restore the fortunes of our country. Running as a candidate for the Christian Heritage Party was just a natural fit.
Jake Wiens is married and together they have raised 4 sons. All are doing well in career, family, and faith.

Life's Ultimate Questions

The popular charge that religion is an evil that needs to be eradicated for the wellbeing of humanity needs to be answered. To be sure religion has been at the center of so much evil throughout world history. But so have economic resources, so have ideologies like communism and fascism, so has sex (the Trojan wars were fought over the divinely beautiful Helena) so has the ethics of revenge, so has alcohol, and we could go on and on. The common factor in all of these issues is the human heart and its desperate and so often pathological self-centeredness. Religion is the domain that asks, “Why?” Whenever psychology, criminology or sociology (or any other ‘ology’ for that matter) addresses these issues they are religious by nature, i.e., they are ultimately operating on the basis of foundational religious assumptions: what does it mean to be human, what does it mean to be good, and what is with all the bad in us?

Atheism’s visceral anger came out of the closet after the 9/11 attacks on the Twin Towers in New York City. This anti-any-religion reaction is further strengthened every time the media picks up a story of a religious extremist on a rampage of some sort. Actions by extremists, fundamentalists, religious fanatics etc. all make terrific nation-wide headlines (by our left-leaning media) so often far beyond the scope of the actual event.

We do need to remember, however, that many horrific events are perpetrated by seemingly ‘non religious’ people (e.g. mass shootings more than once a day within the USA). Possibly many of these random acts of violence are committed by people who have absorbed the religion (or unreligion) of modernism (i.e. there is no god, no judgment day, no karma, I am just an evolved animal with natural inborn aggression, this is how I create my meaning in this senseless existence, death is the end, go out with a bang, etc.)

This visceral reaction against religion may seem logical from within our contemporary western mindset but it may be very misguided.

Atheists are asking the question, “Is religion at the root of so much evil?” That may be the wrong question to ask. We should be asking:

What is it about religion that can cause it to be such a powerful force for so much evil … as well as so much good? (For Christianity think anti - slavery, beginnings of public education, public hospitals, prison reform, care of poor, healing of many a marriage etc.)

The answer is not to avoid the topic of religion as our culture is hell-bent on doing. The much better answer is to create the forum that allows for personal reflection, for honest and respectful discussion, for debate and for research surrounding the issues raised.

My hope is that this book is a help, a guide for this quest that must be taken if our individual lives are to develop the heart-center that enables us to live with meaning and purpose. This personal quest is the ultimate coming of age story of our lives. It sets the parameters for a life that hopes to be well lived.

The ultimate challenge we all face is to understand the mystery of our lives. Religion is one of the pieces of that puzzle. It may very well be the most important piece, the piece that integrates all the rest. To question that statement may mean that we are unaware as to what religion really is.

-- Excerpt from Jake's Book, "Life's Ultimate Questions"