I'm surprisingly unconcerned with what people in my church believe. Belief is going to be influenced by all sorts of things that I have nothing to do with, so I don't feel responsible for that. I'm re...
I thought of how God had sent a prostitute to help the Hebrew spies who would, through her help, and only through her help, conquer the city and fell the walls. I also wondered: Had that been humilia...
But here's the problem with capital total abstinence: when our country made drinking illegal and instilled fear in children about the evils of alcohol, it led, not to increase of holiness, but to a c...
Australia seems like a really faraway Canada, just with funnier animals.
A lot of people don’t experience that kind of freedom, and they’re hungry for it. Yet instead, people have been fed spoonfuls of nonsense and told it was Jesus.
This God, is revealed in Jesus Christ, who became flesh and walked among us full of grace and truth and who is so for us and with us that he would go to the grave on our behalf—when
Resurrection, we are made new. On the third day, Jesus rose again, and we do not need to be afraid. To sing to God amidst sorrow is to defiantly proclaim, like Mary Magdalene did to the apostles, and...
We had started out caring about each other, but in the end none of us knew how to care for each other. But this experience taught me that a community based on the idea that everyone hates rules is, in...
Wanting to get at this idea that God meets us first under the oak tree, when our feet are dirty, not just after we have managed to clean them up, House for All Sinners and Saints has the practice of ...
Very often I will avoid the truth until my face goes red like a toddler avoiding her nap; until limp limbed, she finally stops flailing and falls asleep and receives rest—the very thing she needs and...
The sting of grace is not unlike the sting of being loved well, because when we are loved well, it is inextricably linked to all the times we have not been loved well, all the times we ourselves have...
The beauty of our sky is really just a nice way for the earth to protect us from the terror of what’s so vast and unknowable beyond. The boundlessness of the universe is disturbing when you think abou...
Shit, I thought to myself, I’m going to be late to New Testament class.
Sex for Sara was at first incredibly painful, and for Tim incredibly frustrating. They both felt inadequate, angry, and confused, alternately blaming themselves and then each other. They had been told...
Repentance in Greek means something much closer to thinking differently afterward than it does changing your cheating ways. Of
Moments of unity—holiness—actually alleviate isolation, which is not the same as simply distracting us from our isolation.
McPreachy’s Kool-Aid fountain of positive thinking.
Maybe the Good Friday story is about how God would rather die than be in our sin-accounting business anymore. The
I’ve squandered plenty of ink arguing against the notion that God had to kill Jesus because we were bad. But when Caitlin said that Jesus died for our sins, including that one, I was reminded again t...
I’ve never fully understood how Christianity became quite so tame and respectable, given its origins among drunkards, prostitutes, and tax collectors.