Growing up in one kind of Christian church made me take for granted that most Christians agreed on most doctrines. I know this is the experience of many others. We assumed that everyone agrees with our particular conception of God, Satan, the afterlife, and the world. This is simply not true, though.
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10 Things I Have Had to Unlearn
September 3, 2014 
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I once heard a preacher talk about raising his children in such a way that they would not have to “unlearn” too much as they grew older. While I am extremely thankful for the way I was raised, there are plenty of things that I have had to unlearn. I hope that those who learn […]
Continue reading 4 Heretical Truths
September 3, 2014 0 Comments
Faith has always been a place that is concerned about heresy. Communities of faith have been a place that teeter on the edge of heresy, struggling to condemn what is false while still discovering the things that are true. It is interesting that ideas branded heresy by one generation are often accepted as truth a generation […]
Continue reading Meditation for Holy Saturday
April 19, 2014 2 Comments
The Saturday prior to Easter is one that we often overlook in our preparation for Resurrection Sunday. Holy Saturday is the day between Good Friday and Easter. It is the day after Jesus was crucified. It is the day he lay in the grave. Church lectionary readings for Holy Saturday often include passages from Job, […]
Continue reading A Meditation for Good Friday
April 18, 2014 2 Comments
Good Friday is the day when we remember the crucifixion and death of Jesus. This is a solemn observance. Many churches hold services where the cross is draped in black and and the service finishes in darkness and silence. This allows us to experience the abandonment, desperation, and death of the cross in a unique […]
Continue reading A Meditation for Maundy Thursday
April 17, 2014 1 Comment
Also read “Meditation for Good Friday” and “A Meditation for Holy Saturday.” Maundy Thursday is the Thursday before Easter. It is traditionally recognized as the day that Jesus celebrated Passover with His disciples and then was betrayed by Judas. The word maundy is derived from the Latin word mandatum, meaning commandment. This refers to the commands Jesus gave […]
Continue reading 50 Things I Have Learned About Faith and Life
October 22, 2013 1 Comment
My thoughts and ideas have changed a lot over the past few years. I think perhaps that is the way we should all be . . . always learning and changing. People are more important than ideas Ideologues make bad politicians God is at least as nice as Jesus Poor people want the same things […]
Continue reading The Sin of Sodom
July 22, 2013 1 Comment
The city of Sodom has long been identified as the ultimate example of moral depravity. Genesis 13:13 says, “Now the people of Sodom were wicked, great sinners against the Lord.” There are two explanations of the wickedness of Sodom: the Popular one and the Scholarly one. Genesis 19 gives us the biblical account of Sodom’s destruction. Two angels […]
Continue reading When Scientific Ideas Change Our Theology
May 23, 2013 2 Comments
Our theology changes with scientific and cultural advancement. Even those who insist they are part of an unchanging religious tradition established by an unchanging God must admit that the development of the heliocentric model (the earth revolving around the sun), the invention of the printing press, the emergence of religious liberty, and the increasing value […]
Continue reading Extreme Grace, Extreme Love, and Angry Jesus
May 17, 2013 0 Comments
I know a guy who loves the grace of God. Several years ago he started to preach about God’s extreme grace. He started to tell people that God’s grace covers absolutely EVERY wrong thing they could ever do, and that the love of Christ is more powerful than ANYTHING. Church people can get pretty uncomfortable […]
Continue reading The Opposite of Good
April 14, 2013 2 Comments
What is the opposite of hot? The opposite of alive? The opposite of fat? The opposite of good? The opposite of tall? We probably all did some kind of activity in elementary school that required us to match a word with its opposite. Since then,the idea of opposites, opposing ideas, opposing forces, has been a […]
Continue reading Christian Pornography
February 8, 2013 1 Comment
Probably the most famous quote about pornography is by Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart: “I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description, and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it.” Perhaps pornography is […]
Continue reading Conditional Love
January 30, 2013 0 Comments
A story Jesus told: There was a man who had two sons. The younger one said to his father, ‘Father, give me my share of the estate.’ So he divided his property between them. Not long after that, the younger son got together all he had, set off for a distant country and there squandered his wealth in wild […]
Continue reading Jesus’ Shockingly Radical Perspective on Achieving Peace
December 12, 2012 1 Comment
The accounts of Jesus birth have become so common that few of us recognize the subversiveness present in the Biblical Christmas stories. When the books of Matthew and Luke speak of the newborn Jesus as King, Lord, and Savior they are making the bold, implicit statement that Caesar, despite the claims of the imperial cult […]
Continue reading Jesus’ Shockingly Radical Perspective on Justice
November 30, 2012 0 Comments
For most of us, justice has to do with getting what we deserve. We say that “justice has been served” when a person receives punishment for a crime they have committed. We strive to develop systems that mete out “fair” sentences; assigning retribution that is equal to the crime. If a person is given too […]
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