His Vigorous Heart

It’s that time of year again: the time I least like being a Christian. Because when it comes to Easter, I really think we’ve gotten the story wrong. (Which is bad, because if we get *this* story wrong, then we’re bound to get a lot of other things about our faith wrong, as well). I saw a quote the other day that went something like this: “What sort of predicament are we in that we should require the crucifixion of the son of God [to save us]?” (The quote then goes on to describe how horrible the suffering of crucifixion is, and how it was designed to make the victim subhuman, etc etc. The point being—I assume—that humans must be truly depraved and wicked if it required a sacrifice of that level to redeem us. The magnitude of a crucifixion sentence should make us somberly consider the ramifications of our depth of evil. We must be well and truly effed on an existential level if this is our only way out). But that assumes there’s a punishment mindset behind this whole story. That assume...

It's been a minute since my last blog post, so how's this for a kick-off sentence: If the person you were five years ago doesn’t consider the person you are right now some sort of heretic, then you aren’t growing. Let me unpack that a bit. Your faith right now has boundaries. Borders. An edge. If that edge is in the same spot a year from now, you aren’t learning, you aren’t growing, you aren’t changing. You’re stagnating. Some say that God is an ocean and our brains are a soda can trying to scoop Him up. But if you’re sitting here with the same canful of ocean water that you started with, you’re missing out on a whole lot of God. (And as my friend Sam Van Eman likes to say: “You can’t afford to stay at your current maturity level.”) If your boundary is growing, then at some point you're going to include ideas and concepts about God that you didn't used to believe. If you had built a wall around your border, you're just going to have to knock it down .  That’s why I’...

Easter. When I was a kid, I was fascinated by the colorful candy, the whimsy of dyed eggs, the thrill of the hunt. As I grew older, I learned the story of the God who became man, who loved us so much that he died in our place. They call it the most beautiful story ever told. But as I got older still, I began to question that narrative. Because no matter how I tried to contort my brain, I couldn’t get that to align with the rest of the Bible story. When I read the teachings of Jesus, I saw him proclaiming a God who had been completely misunderstood by humans. “You have heard it said this...” he would say, and then he would flip the common understanding completely upside down. Jesus taught about forgiveness, non-violence, peace, love, mercy, and grace, and then said that “if you have seen me, you have seen the Father.” (And frankly, it was precisely this subversive teaching that made the religious people conspire to kill him.) And so when Christian churches tell the Easter story, I cring...

It's a twisted view of forgiveness if we think it has to involve punishment.  Actions have consequences, sure. Reparations must be made.  But our imagination is weak if we can think of no restorative forms of justice. Our love is weak if it must rely on vengeance to make things right. Our forgiveness is weak if it only takes place in witnessing the destruction of others.  I wonder what our views about love and forgiveness teach us about how we think about God? I'm watching The Handmaid's Tale right now and I love it. It's brutal and dark and in many ways obviously unrealistic. But as a cautionary parable or metaphor, it shows us how easily religious doctrine can be distorted and misinterpreted in terrible ways that cause great pain to a lot of people. And if such errors can happen in this world, who's to say that we can't make similar mistakes in ours?  Just like Darren Aronofsky's controversial  Noah film, I'm fascinated by the ...

Recently, Nadia Bolz Weber shared an article written by my friend Connor about deconstruction. And today I came across a comment about deconstruction while I was stalking a Facebook post by a friend of a friend (as one does on the internet....no? Am I the only one? Alright.) 10 years ago--even 5 years ago--deconstruction meant something different than it does now. Back then (when cell phones still had hinges) it seemed like a perfect phrase for what I was going through. Like everyone, I had a boat , a house of cards, that I grew up within and was very familiar with. Not a "bubble", per se, but an entire personal framework and foundation for viewing and understanding the world around me. You could almost think of it as my identity; it was the way I interacted with the world, the container in which I held my conception of reality. It was comfortable in my little house, and I had a place to store every single thought or idea. But then slowly I started encountering things th...

That’s a provocative title, so maybe I’ll come up with something else to call it by the time I’m finished writing. (Here’s hoping) Here’s the deal. I work at a desk job where I do nothing but stuff envelopes all day (and don’t get me wrong, I’m grateful for it in so many ways; it’s teaching me a thing or three about grace , and I’ve already made more in 5 months than I’ve ever been paid in an entire year, so that's cool), but my point is, it’s not exactly what I want to be doing. I have a lot of time to listen to podcasts and reflect on my life and the deeper questions and issues therein, though. And in the process, I’ve discovered a few things about myself and my decisions and the shape my life has taken. So naturally I’m going to talk about it on the internet. First, (and these are in no particular order), I’ve noticed that it’s really, really hard to teach the way of Jesus inside a church. Here’s why: people who go to church already think they know everything. Most of them...

"New beginnings give me hope, but they also scare the living daylights out of me. Will this be the one? Will this make me happy? Will I be successful here? Can I serve Jesus here? Will it meet my expectations? What if they don’t like me? What if I don’t belong? What if I fail? What if I’m miserable? What if I suck at my job? What if I can’t do the things I want to? What if I’m too old? What if I’m too young? What if it’s not what I thought it was? What if…? So many questions, so many doubts, so many fears. As a millennial entering his 7th job and 6th city since graduating college a scant 4 years ago, I’ve had more than my fair share of transitions. From a support-raised ministry position in Chicago that burned me out, to a non-profit internship in Shreveport where I attempted to heal, to a swim school instructor job in Richmond just to do something different, I’ve put a lot of effort into keeping my options open. ...Mostly because I’m scared of commitment. If there’s one...