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...
I remembered that, at one point in my life, my own depression had felt so present, so much like a character in my life, that it had actually felt right to go ahead and give her a name. I named my depr...
I realize God may have gotten something beautiful done through me despite the fact that I am an asshole, and when I am confronted by the mercy of the gospel so much that I cannot hate my enemies, and...
I need a place to confess that I don't have everything figured out. Christianity is not a program for avoiding mistakes; it is a faith of the guilty. There is no right or perfect way to be. We learn f...
I have come to realize that all the saints I’ve known have been accidental ones — people who inadvertently stumbled into redemption like they were looking for something else at the time, people who ha...
I hate that this is God’s economy. That the salvation of my enemy is tied up in my own. Which is why I sometimes say that the Gospel is like, the worst good news I’ve ever heard in my life.
I also had to deal with the fact that I simply could not express the level of antiracist outrage I wanted to, knowing something that no one else would know unless I said it out loud: despite my politi...
Her relationship to God wasn’t doctrinal. It was functional.
Being part of Christ’s bizarro kingdom looks more like being thirsty and having someone you don’t even like give you water than it looks like polishing your crown.
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.
The violence and fear, it’s still always worth it to love God and to love people. And always, always, it is worth it to sing alleluia in defiance of the devil, who surely hates the sound of it. On the...
Sometimes the best thing we can do for each other is talk honestly about being wrong.
Even though this is often how we treat Jesus, like we are trying to shelter him from reality. We often behave as though Jesus is only interested in saving and loving a romanticized version of ourselve...
Considering the question, what’s the difference between Judas and Peter,*3 I’ve wondered what would’ve happened if Judas would have had a forgiving encounter with the resurrected Christ in the same w...
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...
Trying to prove scientifically the historical accuracy of events in the Bible is to faith what having your spouse under twenty-four-hour video surveillance is to marital trust.
Those most qualified to speak the gospel are those who truly know how unqualified they are to speak the gospel.
This, to me, is the point of the confession and absolution in the liturgy. When I first experienced it—the part where everyone in church stands up and says what bad people they are, and the pastor, fr...
This is our God. Not a distant judge nor a sadist, but a God who weeps. A God who suffers, not only for us, but with us. Nowhere is the presence of God amidst suffering more salient than on the cross....