Seeing yourself, owning your guilt

It’s sometimes painful to look in the mirror. Anyone who knows me can attest that I do a lot of self-reflection, sometimes way too much. There are a lot of reasons I do it, and one of the least important of those is because I don’t like to be blindsided by my own culpability when […]

Why you should love the church

I’ve been pretty critical of the American Church in several posts, and it strikes me that those who don’t know me extremely well may get the wrong impression regarding my esteem for the Church. It’s true that I’m concerned that American evangelicalism has essentially lost its soul chasing political power and has been consumed by […]

The point of Christmas: draw near

I’m worn out and depressed. I’ve been going through a lot of changes lately, and I’m not happy with many of the results. I lost a job and am adjusting to a new one with a long commute, and subsequently I moved apartments to cut down on said commute, so I’ve been packing and unpacking […]

Leaving Christianity

I’ve had doubts about my faith for as long as I can remember. I didn’t sleep well as a baby and small child, and one of my earliest memories comes from around the age of three or four, when one of my late-night wanderings into my parents’ room was initiated by a terrible thought that […]

Alone in church

I’ve felt mostly by myself in church during two periods of my life, neither of which have been the fault of the specific church I belonged to. The first time was in my mid-20s when I’d become burnt out through ministry and questioned the validity of the whole “church experience” as I knew it because […]

Yes, God loves even you

I write this specifically for one person whom I love. The Christian’s authority to act and speak on behalf of God The one who hears you hears me, and the one who rejects you rejects me, and the one who rejects me rejects him who sent me…Behold, I have given you authority to tread on […]

Second letter to politically conservative Christians

Dear politically conservative Christians, I love you dearly. I have been one of you for most of my life and, nominally at least, I remain one of you, though the “R” in my voter registration will soon be switched to an “I.” Almost all of my family identifies with you as do the bulk of […]