Why Save Lives? They’ll just go hungry
My pastor in high school was Rev. David Stephenson, who is now a Reverse Missionary to Bolivia. On one of his many trips to the region, he sat next to someone who had the following conversation: I sat...
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Methodist Kudzu – The Problem of Beth Moore
One of the more frequent arguments I’ve seen in the church lately is about Beth Moore. A colleague was asked why they wouldn’t allow a Beth Moore bible study to be used by a Sunday School class. The...
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2012 for Vendetta: The Story is Bulletproof
Forgive me blogosphere for I have sinned. It’s a new year and this blog has gone through its longest posting drought ever: 22 days since my last post. Wowzers. I’ve got too many fingers in too many...
View ArticleWave of #UMC Social Justice startups on the horizon
I cannot tell you how excited I got when I opened my feed reader this morning and saw the writeup on a young adult-led initiative in the United Methodist Church. At first I was excited that I’m friends...
View ArticleFrom The Walking Dead to The Walking-Around Life
I finally got around to watching the Season Two finale of The Walking Dead, a post-apocalyptic series on AMC that deals with a world where Zombies have taken over and humans run, hide, and fortify to...
View ArticleDoubt is the Acid that Eats Away the False
Cherish your doubts, for doubt is the attendant of truth. Doubt is the key to the door of knowledge, it is the servant of discovery. A belief which may not be questioned binds us to error, for there is...
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Why Christmas, not Easter, Should be about the Atonement
What happened on the Cross? Before that…why are you asking at Christmas? We’re talking about baby Jesus not Jesus on the Cross! Weirdo!! The following is an attempt to offer a middle ground between...
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If God is invited in, all is well?
While any commentary on the horrors of Newtown, Connecticut, may be premature, there is no such prohibition on commentary of the commentary on Newtown. Specifically, commentary by two people...
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The Pastor No-Tipper: Why Everyday Hospitality Matters
This past week, all over the Internets has been a story on a receipt posted by an Applebees waitress that is pictured above. The diner was part of a large party and per restaurant custom the 18%...
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Theological Science Theatre 3000
A new occasional series will take place on this blog at the intersection of Science Fiction and Theology, which will be a sharable form of classes that I’ve developed at my local church. In January...
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Primer on Atonement Theories
For my Sunday School class, I have created the below graphic to help them understand what atonement means and the varieties of understandings of what it took for humanity to be reconciled to God....
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The Goal of Slacktivism is Community not Change
If you logged into your Facebook or Twitter in the past 24 hours, you might have noticed a lot of red. In response to DOMA and Proposition 8 being argued in front of the Supreme Court, folks online...
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Crowdsourcing: Forget the Afterlife. Where was the soul Pre-life?
Running the internet memes again is last year’s Mormon Flowchart, which gives a humorous but based-on-doctrine flowchart on salvation and souls in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints’...
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Pope Francis embraces Anonymous Christians
Everyone is just *shocked* that Pope Francis has said that non-Christians and Christians may end up in the same place in the grand scheme of things. I heard the news and yawned and said “Oh, Karl...
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What are the “Laws of God?”
In reference to the Supreme Court decision to strike down part of DOMA, a Bishop in the United Methodist Church offered the following commentary: They may adhere to the laws of the land, but I adhere...
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The Good Samaritan is Not-So-Good about Justice
In high school I took a semester of Economics (almost went down that career path too–I loved the “systems theory” part of that class and obviously I continue to use systems theory today). In the...
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Christianity is not Comcast, Cox, or FiOS
While having lunch with a friend, she told me of a recent trip with some new friends where she was “outed” as a church goer. As the trip progressed, her friends would make comments like: So you think...
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The Church as Hackerspace: Breaking Computer Code
In college around the year 2001, I took my only computer class. It wasn’t even a college class. It was a class offered by the Association of Computing Machinery (a college social/professional group of...
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Complementarianism: even in its best form, it is Patriarchy
There’s lots of conversations about Complementarianism these days. It may have started with Rachel Held Evans’ blog post “Will the Real Complementarian Please Stand Up?” which outlines and hotlinks to...
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Black Friday? Giving Tuesday? Where’s Justice Thursday?
Consider this past week: Black Friday (which became Black Thursday this past year) is the day that you get great deals at brick-and-mortar stores. Small Business Saturday is the day where you shop at...
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