The basement of a bar.
Like.
Whenever people annoy me beyond reason, I can guarantee it’s because they’re demonstrating something I’d rather not see in myself.
We have to hear again and again who God is for us and what God has done on our behalf. We must free each other from bondage through our confession and forgiveness.
Our purity systems, even those established with the best of intentions, do not make us holy.*4 They only create insiders and outsiders.
My mother claims that the first time I said more than one word at a time, I skipped the two-word combinations altogether and went right to Do it self. Yes, thank you very much, I will do it myself. I...
It’s about how God continues to reach into the graves we dig for ourselves and pull us out, giving us new life, in ways both dramatic and small.
I think this is why we at House for All Sinners and Saints sometimes say that we are religious but not spiritual. Spiritual feels individual and escapist. But to be religious (despite all the negative...
Everything else is temptation.
We’ve relegated death, birth, and even making music to the professionals…all things that, until a few generations ago, used to be done by regular people like us in the home. What used to be natural — ...
We cannot create for ourselves God’s word of grace. We must tell it to each other. It’s a terribly inconvenient and oftentimes uncomfortable way for things to happen. Were we able to receive the word...
Until I face the difficulty of that question and come up, as Philip did, with no good answer… until then, I can only look at the seemingly limited space under the tent and think either it’s my job to...
Trent had just spent an hour describing what he learned as a kid from his church: how the only way to please God, the same being who created him with a sexuality to begin with, was to not engage with...
This was the bonus to liberal Christianity: I could use my reason and believe at the same time.
The last shall be first and the first shall be last. This is exactly, when it comes down to it, why most people do not believe in grace. It is fucking offensive.
The crucifixion portrayed on our show was undertaken by the son of God, a trained professional. Do not try to crucify yourself at home.
The Bible is not God. The Bible is simply the cradle that holds Christ.
The Bible had been the weapon of choice in the spiritual gladiatorial arena of my youth. I knew how, wielded with intent and precision, the Bible can cut deeply, while on the one holding it can claim...
Oddly, it’s in these times that I feel closest to God. Not when I’m on a mountaintop, but when I’m lying in bed half-asleep, feeling defenseless. But as soon as my ego reengages, it’s game over.
My Christian faith tells me that good news is only good if it is for everyone, otherwise it's just ideology.