Race for Lost Time

That total depravity thing really threw me off my game in my youth. The T in TULIP cramped my style big time. I spent a lot of energy as a young person and a young Christian denying myself as part and parcel of following Jesus. Which complicated my personal and spiritual development when the teenage…

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Coming Face to Face with Fear

My family and I watched an episode of Brain Games on the topic of superstition one evening. It was about how the amazing powerhouse situated in between our ears helps us learn, think, do a host of intricate tasks, but also tricks us into believing things that have no rational basis—such as knocking on wood…

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Five Ways to Listen Well

The word listen contain the same letters as the word ‘silent.’ ~ Alfred Brendel I am a good listener. This is who I am and not just an narcissistic opinion but one that is confirmed by my closest friends. It may not be obvious to my readers, because through my words you only hear my…

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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…

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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…

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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,…

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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…

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That Time I Hated Someone

Growing up conservative Christian there were a lot of protocols. Christian culture can be very formulaic. There were the prayers you had to pray a certain way, the testimonies of prescribed narratives that you told, and cookie cutter advice you gave to people in crisis. One particular policy procedure was how to proceed when you…

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Should Our Children Submit or Subvert?

Progressive Christian parenting is exhausting.  On the one hand we want to raise social justice warriors—kids who champion against inequality, care for the vulnerable, and subvert the power systems in our world by embodying the prophetic ways of Jesus. We want to activate their imagination and hope they do better than we did. Whether we…

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