Category: Living Our Faith

I’m thinking a lot about the cross lately. The obvious reason is that we are entering Holy Week. One of my best friends built a 12-foot, 350 pound cross with his father that we hang from our church rafters each Lenten season. It’s ruggedly beautiful, inspires deep contemplation and is impossible to ignore. It reminds… Continue reading Just Do It

Lately I’ve heard rumblings about how mainline pastors are talking too much about politics. I must be reading and listening to a different set of pastors – and these days you have an overwhelming wealth of options online to choose from – but I don’t hear outright political messages. I hear messages against the cruelty… Continue reading Too Much Politics?

I’d love for you to take a deep breath right now. The world has lost its mind. But this is nothing new. In fact, after that deep breath and before you proceed to read below, I’d like you to read Psalm 73. Didn’t that feel like it could’ve been written this week? The world has… Continue reading Is There Knowledge in the Most High?

We’ve entered special time in America under the Trump regime. It’s a time of complete regression as those in power seek to set us back by decades in terms of social justice, environmental protections and civil rights. It’s a time of despair as we see all three branches of government acting together to erode democratic… Continue reading Finding Forgiveness Through Empathy and Humility

I recently wrote about how I believe the Bible fully supports inclusion for transgender people. I used Isaiah 56 as support. In this chapter, God commands Israel to welcome the foreigner and the eunuch into temple worship. Because transgendered people are under attack right now, I spent the majority of the article writing about them.… Continue reading There are No Immigrants on Earth

I recently wrote some simple thoughts about Christian universalism and mentioned that a question I get a lot when I share my universalist beliefs is, “then why even be a Christian?” That always strikes me as strange and transactional, but the fact that I get this question from both believers and secularists makes me think… Continue reading What An Atheist Friend Taught Me About Church

I was grumpy in Bible study this week. I didn’t know why. Something was nagging at me about the lectionary gospel reading (I’m quoting a bit longer here than the lectionary text because I think the whole story is important): Luke 4:16-30 When he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went… Continue reading Make Them Run You to the Cliffs

As we enter a new year, I don’t think I’m alone as I obsessively scrutinize the widening gulf between the views of the right wing in the U.S. and the teachings of Jesus. On the one hand, I’m pretty sure it will provide a lot of blog fodder for me this year and beyond. On… Continue reading Responding with Love and Compassion

Imagine this: you are born into the Roman Empire in the year zero. Oppression is everywhere. You smell it in the marketplace. You see it on the tired expressions of the friends around you. You hear it in the clamor of armor on the soldiers marching through your streets. Every day, the threat of violence… Continue reading The Humble Birth of God

So many of my favorite things about Christmas come from church tradition and not strictly speaking from the Bible. I think that should tell us something about our wider faith. Your Christian faith didn’t stop with the canonization of the Bible, it continued to evolve over centuries of thought, debate and tradition and it should… Continue reading A Very Unbiblical Christmas