7.13.2020

I Was Cast Upon Thee from the Womb

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I like to do my devotional reading in the King James Version. I was reading Psalm 22, and a line struck me from Verse 10: "I was ca...
7.10.2020

The Gospel According to the Lord of the Rings: Week 27, The Divided Resistance

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The company comes to the borders of Lothlórien. There, due to their distrust of dwarves, Haldir demands that Gimli wear a mask as they ar...
7.09.2020

Post-Progressive Evangelism

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If you get a chance, check out the book Arguing Religion: A Bishop Speaks at Facebook and Google . The book shares expanded versions of ...
7.08.2020

No Voice Is Heard and the Speech Pours Forth

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We've been visiting our family this last week, on the shores of Lake Erie. Through the generosity of my parents, Jana, the boys and I ha...
7.07.2020

The Duty of Grace: Part 3, Grace, Faith and Love

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Of course, whenever you hear the word "obligation" and "duty" our minds think of pietistic religious performance. But ...
7.06.2020

The Duty of Grace: Part 2, The Obligations of Grace

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Following up on my last post. Grace and faith are terms from ancient patronage: grace/gifts are given by patrons and received by clients w...
7.03.2020

The Gospel According to The Lord of the Rings: Week 26, When Lore Wanes

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Having escaped the Mines of Moria, and needing to put some distance between themselves and pursuing orcs, the Fellowship contemplates going ...
7.02.2020

The Duty of Grace: Part 1, Patronage, Grace and Faith

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I've been increasingly struck, the more I study about ancient notions of grace and faith, how we modern readers of the Bible just don&...
7.01.2020

Perception, Location, and Virtue

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"What you see and hear depends a good deal on where you are standing. It also depends on what kind of person you are." --C.S. Le...
6.30.2020

"Death" By George Herbert

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Death, thou wast once an uncouth hideous thing,        Nothing but bones,  The sad effect of sadder groans: Thy mouth was open, but thou ...
6.29.2020

Why Heaven Matters

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What's the point in believing in heaven? Heaven has fallen on hard times. Outside of the faith, belief in heaven is the epitome of w...
6.26.2020

The Gospel According to The Lord of the Rings: Week 25, The Sacrifice on the Bridge of Khazad-dûm

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Unable to cross the mountains because of the snow, the Fellowship reluctantly decides to pass through the Mines of Moria. In the mines, t...
6.25.2020

Correct Theology

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I've written about before how psychologists approach the issue of theory, and how that has affected my approach to theology. Specifi...
6.24.2020

Anne Lamott On Welcome

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Then, in my thirties, my system crashed. I got sober, because I had gone crazy. A few women in the community reached out to me. They recog...
6.23.2020

Come Out Into the Tempest of Living

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Do and dare what is right, not swayed by the whim of the moment. Bravely take hold of the real, not dallying now with what might be. Not i...
6.22.2020

Weeping Prayer

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I recently have been reading about the Orthodox spirituality in Russia, though this observation may be associated with Eastern Orthodoxy g...
6.19.2020

The Gospel According to The Lord of the Rings: Week 24, The Fellowship and the Church

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So the Fellowship of the Ring leaves Rivendell, heading south. Rutledge makes the observation that the Fellowship is an image of the church,...
6.18.2020

The Bleeding Stinking Mad Shadow of Jesus: Part 4, Sacrifice

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We've covered the stinking Jesus and the mad Jesus, today the bleeding Jesus. The point here should be obvious. Following Jesus inv...
6.17.2020

The Bleeding Stinking Mad Shadow of Jesus: Part 3, The Shock of a Stinking God

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Of course, the author of Unclean has to love describing Jesus as "stinking." As I describe in Unclean , there is an emotional, ...
6.16.2020

The Bleeding Stinking Mad Shadow of Jesus: Part 2, Madness and Morons

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Let's start with "mad." By mad, of course, we don't mean angry, we mean crazy. Like the Mad Hatter in Alice in Wonderlan...
6.15.2020

The Bleeding Stinking Mad Shadow of Jesus: Part 1, A Transgressive Jesus

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In my blog header I feature a quote from Flannery O'Connor, from her novel The Violent Bear it Away . It's a quote about how Jesus...
6.08.2020

The Crucifixion of George Floyd

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This will be a week of silence, prayer, and lament on the blog. If you visit this week, I invite you to join with me in this prayer practice...
6.06.2020

Antichrist

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2 Thessalonians 2.3-4, 9-12 Don’t let anyone deceive you in any way, for that day will not come until the rebellion occurs and the ma...
6.05.2020

The Gospel According to The Lord of the Rings: Week 23, Appointment, Freedom, and Story

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Our final post about the Council of Elrond as we reach its climax. After Elrond sets out the course of action, to destroy the Ring in the fi...
6.04.2020

Masters of Self-Deception

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One of the great lessons of Sigmund Freud is that our minds are masters of self-deception. We don't see ourselves very accurately. We ...
6.03.2020

The Moment When God Is Closer Than Ever

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When we come to a point in our lives where we are completely ashamed of ourselves and before God; when we believe that God especially must n...
6.02.2020

Circle Prayer

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One of my favorite moments of the week is the concluding prayer of our weekly Bible study out at the prison. When our time is up we say ...
6.01.2020

To Believe in God

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To believe in God means to understand the question about the meaning of life. To believe in God means to see that the facts of the world a...
5.29.2020

The Gospel According to The Lord of the Rings: Week 22, Small Hands Moving the Wheels of the World

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The Council of Elrond finally decides that the Ring must be destroyed. Elrond sets out the task before them: "The road must be tr...
5.28.2020

Why God Matters: The Warrant of Love?

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In a recent post I shared that the theological labor of our time is to explain why God matters during seasons of a pandemic independently ...