Lie #25: God is Disappointed in Me.

By Wm. Paul Young from his new book Lies We Believe About God. Every child yearns to hear “I am proud of you,” not for performance but simply for being. Yet, most of us know what it’s like to feel the devouring abyss of disappointment, especially in the face and voice of others. My father …

You Can’t Duct Tape Fruit To the Tree

By Travis Reed from The Work of the People Catch the video and the full story here. I don’t have any credentials…I once managed to get 13 moving violations in 12 months though, and I have credits at a handful of junior colleges sprinkled across Northern California. I was kicked out of the Army. I …

Lovin’ On the Freakshow Sitting Next to You: The Church According to Twenty One Pilots

Here’s an excellent piece by Richard Beck at Experimental Theology, full post is here. In the gospels we observe Jesus extending hospitality to extreme outsiders. Jesus welcomed all sorts of extremely marginalized groups, Roman centurions, zealots, tax collectors, Samaritans, women, children, lepers, sinners, the demon possessed and prostitutes. Jesus welcomed the demented, the disabled, and …

Outrageous Scandalous Grace – the only kind there is!

By Jeremy Myers at Redeeming God Grace is the key to everything. And I am not referring to the week-kneed, limp, powerless, feeble grace that you find in most Christian theology today, but the shocking, outrageous, scandalous, indiscriminate, senseless, irrational, unfair, irreligious, ridiculous, absurd, offensive, infinite grace which Jesus exhibited during His life. The only people who …

Lie #1: God loves us, but doesn’t like us.

From Paul Young It is the middle of winter in northern Alberta, Canada. The temperature is well below zero, one of those days that is so cold your nose hairs feel like little sticks plugging up your nostrils and every exhalation of breath becomes its own fog bank. I was born not too far from …

Christian, Why Aren’t You Pounding On My Door?

By Chris Kratzer It’s not an issue of debate, at least, probably not for you. In sync with your faith understanding and interpretation of the Bible, you believe hell is absolutely real and anyone who doesn’t repent, say the “sinner’s prayer,” and make the proper life adjustments is destined to spend eternity there. For you, …

Democracy and the Demonization of the Good

From Experimental Theology by Richard Beck. A thought balloon about our current political situation. In After Virtue Alasdair MacIntyre makes the argument that because modernity lost its story, to use the words of Robert Jenson, we lack a coherent moral vision of our common life together. What we have, instead, are bits and pieces of …