Blog
When Believers Do Not Believe
I have come to think people of faith are the most unbelieving bunch. In everyday parenting, there comes situations when I have to question my children on what they have done or not done, said or not said. If they sense that I have any trace of disbelief in their answer, their plea for me…
Art & Justice
A few years ago, at the height of my faith deconstruction, I was being swallowed whole by cynicism. My soul was so raw, the naivete of my childhood faith ruthlessly stripped away as I was learning hard lessons in the world. I don’t even remember how I behaved outwardly at the time, friends tell me…
Faith and Intellect
“I can’t reconcile a God who provides a fax machine but doesn’t rescue 800 refugees from drowning,” my friend says to me, referring to Christians expressing gratefulness for simple provisions juxtaposed with the realities of global suffering. This is not the first time I grappled with friends in conversations about the nature of God and…
He’s Not That into You
People who are in a relationship sometimes have their judgment clouded by the intense feelings that surround every relationship dynamic. For instance, recently a girl friend started dating a boy who does not treat her with the respect and kindness I think she deserves. When I pointed it out to her, she says to me,…
Tired of Justice
“Which chapter has been the hardest to write?” My friend Kate asks as I express anxiety at the overwhelming task I had writing a chapter on racism in my Unfundamentalist Parenting book. “All of them,” as I recall recently finishing my chapter on economic justice as it relates to children—how enormous the challenges we face in our…
7 Reasons to Stop Seeking the Will of God
“Just pray about it.” This is the phrase we throw around in Christian culture when someone needs to make a decision. “I prayed about it and God said to…” What we say after we’ve made the decision. The idea is that one must carefully discern each step of life to stay on a divinely ordained…
The Most Subversive Act of All
When I tell my story of faith shifting, moving from the conservative evangelicalism of my youth to my now quite-progressive-faith, I always refer to the start of my blogging career as the turning point of moving towards wholeness. This is the truth. The years before I began tapping words out into the internet, I was…
The Fight for Unfundamentalist Christianity
Real talk: sometimes I don’t know why I’m writing a Christian book. Engaging in the Christian conversation publicly gets exhausting, especially because it has become so wrapped up in political culture wars. Ugly. Divisive. Draining. It has become extremely tempting to simply walk away. I feel done reading and writing the same old arguments, explaining…
What Does Embodied Spirituality Mean to You?
One of the reasons I kissed evangelism goodbye is because of the troubling method of convincing our conversion target of their need to be saved. It’s Marketing 101, create the need then supply the solution. Both Christian establishment and global capitalism depend upon the same formula. The message we are bombarded with, both from secular…