Leaving Our Fathers & Mothers: A Dilemma of Fear and Faith
At the end of Genesis 2, right before the shrewd serpent enters the next chapter, it states, “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast…
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The Hypocrisy of Outrage: The Drag Queen Last Supper Controversy
The recent Olympics Drag Queen 'Last Supper' controversy riled everyone up, including me—not because it happened, but because of how Christians engaged with it. One pastor posted his concern about the Christian outrage and vehement rhetoric. It went viral. The comments railed against him were harsh, to have more confidence in calling sin "sin" and confronting the evil in the world, that he was sinning by approving of sin. Here's the thing: those comments are evil and sinful. That pastor did call out sin and sinners wouldn't have it. Such reactions reflect a Christian's inability to address their lack of love, faith, and hope, revealing their unaddressed sins. The demand to throw the first stone, I'm sorry people, is a sin. If you're holding a rock in your hand (or have just thrown one), you can't walk away from Jesus without your name written in the sand.
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Nietzsche, Nihilism, and the Church’s Identity Crisis
One decade ago, God is Not Dead proved to the entire world that Nietzsche was wrong. The problem is that America doesn’t understand Nietzsche—we understand what the American church has…
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Faith Redefined & The Evangelical Disconnect
Faith is a pivotal point in Evangelicalism. Recently, I was working on a client website, an Evangelical organization I have personal experience with from my time as a pastor. In…
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An Evangelical Intervention: When Patriotism Becomes Idolatry
There's a dissonance, a discordant note that cannot be ignored. It's skewed, and ripe for manipulation and exploitation. Perhaps it feels comfortable, a familiar battle cry that resonates within your echo chambers. But if it incites anger and shuts down genuine dialogue, if it echoes the same primal sins that have plagued humanity since Cain and Abel, then it's demonstrably not the Gospel Jesus preached.
It's precisely this distorted gospel that's hemorrhaging members from churches across the nation. It's the reason a new generation, the "Exvangelicals" and "Deconstructionists" you readily dismiss, are walking away. They're the fruit of a poisonous tree, a movement born out of disillusionment and a desperate yearning for authenticity. They are a living testament to the corrosive effects of a gospel that has lost its way.
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From Honesty To Heresy:Rethinking What We Hold Certain
For years, I felt like a fraud, an imposter. It's something psychological like many people experience. I was a pastor, but deep down, my own beliefs were at odds with the doctrines I preached. I had a self-destructive habit of preventing myself from being fully authentic. I wasn't healthy. Leading a church terrified me. This internal conflict eventually led to a breakdown, and it took a rock bottom to force me to confront my fears and the issues within the church itself. I'm not the only one. It's amazing what a simple shift in perspective can do…eh, church?
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Love Thy Neighbor, Not Thy Cause:Examining The Rainbow’s Genesis
PRIDE Month is that time of year when rainbow flags are everywhere. On the interwebs, repeated posts from our Christian brothers and sisters appeared discussing the merits of LGBTQ’s choice…
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Egongelicalism #1: The Clash of Ego in Evangelicalism
The work of creating an image of myself who already exists, the work of trying to push that up and out while keeping the real me hidden and safe inside, and the work of dealing with communication breakdowns so I can filter Reality for the sake of my Ego is exhausting and unsustainable. From Genesis 1-3 through the Gospels and to Revelation, Ego is humanity’s issue. Jesus's Gospel was clearly an invitation to kill our egos and do the opposite—love.
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Let’s Talk Faith: Living Beyond Church Compliance
Faith is not an acknowledgment of truth or trusting in an eternal destination. It's much simpler. Faith is about this world and now. It's the story you decide to write. It's holding to a narrative and acting in such a way as if it were already true. Faith is messy because it head-on crashes into our current narrative. It’s choosing to let go of the ego, reacting differently, and living faithfully in daily moments. As Ted Lasso says, 'Belief doesn’t happen just because you put it on a wall.' Faith is about living in love and goodness, committing to a way of life that changes the narrative for ourselves and those around us.
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We Could Be AntiChrist: The Real Antichrists in John’s Epistles
Let's consider how our fascination with finding antichrists assumes that we aren't one. Christianity has been around now for 2000 years - that's a lot of generations of humans. What if we have been in the church and in the gospel of an antichrist the whole time? What if we are "the antichrist"? What if we've been looking at the Gospel wrong all along? The Gospel then might seem, to us antichrists, as a wrong gospel.
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