"Show me your friends, and I will show you your future." In my Church youth group, this phrase was preached to warn teenagers about the company they keep. Although well-intentioned, it encouraged transactional relationships for personal gain while simultaneously urging youth to repress their problems among peers and choose friends based on outward appearances. In… Continue reading Friendship: A Folk-Punk Gospel
About a month ago, as I was preparing to start a centering prayer, I felt compelled to "speak in tongues" - a practice I have not done in years. It was an incredibly powerful and sacred moment. Honestly, this shocked me. I have deconstructed much of my Pentecostal heritage, and I thought the practice would… Continue reading Tongues part 2: The Language of Sacred Gobbledygook
"When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly there came from heaven a noise like a violent rushing wind, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting. And there appeared to them tongues as of fire distributing themselves, and they rested on each one… Continue reading Tongues part 1: My Upper Room Experience
"Our eschatology shapes our ethics." - Rob Bell, Love Wins Eschatology (the study of the last things) is often a reading and interpreting one’s own time. For ancient Jews and early Christians, eschatological readings of history were done through apocalyptic (revelatory) events or writings which colored their understanding of the last things. In this sense, an… Continue reading The Apocalypse of the Cross and the End of History
I started asking a question during my Junior year of high school which would forever change my life, "Why God?" To clarify, by "why God?" I didn't mean "why, God?" I wasn't pleading for God to reveal the hidden meanings of life's tragedies (although... to be honest, I contended with the absurdity of existence plenty… Continue reading “Why God?”
I believe I was in my Sophomore year the day when I realized we were going to have a substitute teacher in Theology I. As I walked into class on that Thursday afternoon at first I rolled my eyes because I thought I was going to get a subpar lecture from a 2nd rate professor. I could not be further from the truth.
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