In my last post, I responded to a John Piper article in which he justifies God committing genocide by basically saying, “God is God; he can do whatever he pleases.” Because I have such insightful and curious readers, I was hit with a follow-up question on my Facebook page. It reads: “If I may push back respectfully: How then do we reconcile the Biblical accounts and personal observations of things like childhood cancer and murder? I was hoping to read… Read more
Today’s frontpage article at desiringgod.org is a doozy. In it, John Piper, Calvinist darling and author of over 50 books, is posed the question, “Why was it right for God to slaughter women and children in the Old Testament? How can that ever be right?” And the answer he gives, while not surprising, is out-and-out insanity. He states: “It’s right for God to slaughter women and children anytime he pleases. God gives life and he takes life. Everybody who dies,… Read more
The other day, the Heretic Happy Hour podcast recorded an episode for our upcoming “decolonizing theology” series. Our guest host for the evening was Asian-American activist Sandhya Rani Jha. Without being too gushy, I’ll just say that she was absolutely incredible. I can’t wait for the episode to drop. Among the many brilliant things she talked about on the show, one thing that really hit home for me was something she said toward the end. We were all talking about… Read more
American Evangelical Christianity is where I come from, but it’s no longer the place I reside. Many of you reading this, however, perhaps still live there. If that’s you, then I have a whole host of questions to ask you about your faith, your theology, and your understanding of the world. I ask the following questions, not to mock or belittle you, but because I really want you to think about the things you believe in. I believe these are… Read more
Two staples I was given as an Evangelical: 1) Killing children is bad and 2) there is an age of accountability in which you will be responsible for your actions; mess things up by not accepting Jesus as lord, and you’ll spend eternity in hell. If this is the case, however, if crossing over the age of accountability puts you at risk of burning for all eternity, can we really say that killing children is bad? Of course, I say… Read more
I’m sure you’ve heard the news: Jon Kent, son of Clark Kent – you know him as Superman – is bisexual. Cool. I suppose. I don’t know, but I’m just not really into comic books, nor do I particularly care about the sexuality of fictional characters in general. I’m not a part of the LGBTQ crowd who personally needs a fictional character to identify with. I mean, if you are, then great. It’s just not something I, as an openly… Read more
I’ve been a part of the Heretic Happy Hour podcast for 4 years now. As of writing this blog entry, we’ve release 113 episodes, and have over 397,000 downloads. Our Facebook group, Heresy After Hours, has over 2,300 members. In addition to all this success, we’ve interviewed some of the world’s greatest theologians, from Rob Bell, Carlton Pearson, Nadia Bolz-Weber, Rachel Held Evans (RIP), and David Bentley Hart, to musicians like Dustin Kensrue of Thrice and Kevin Max of dc… Read more
As vaccine mandates start becoming more commonplace, religious folks are turning to exemptions in order to not get the jab. One common argument they are attempting to put forth is this: Because aborted fetal cells were used in testing during the research of the mRNA vaccines, as well as the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, we Christians have a right to legally opt out. Okay, fine. If you have a serious issue with abortion and want absolutely no association with these… Read more
Are you LGBTQ Affirming? Great! This article is probably not for you specifically. Let it instead be a resource you can share with friends and family. Are you non-affirming and never gonna change your mind? Then this article is also not for you, so you can just close your browser and move on. Are you non-affirming but open to changing your mind? Then let me share a few quick thoughts with you. First off, let me ask you this: Why… Read more
Answering a Reader’s Comment About God’s Wrath
In my latest article, I asked a whole host of questions to Evangelicals. That’s it. Just questions. Someone was kind enough to put a dissertation in the comments section, and while I didn’t have time to read the entire tome, I did come across one section that I wanted to comment on today. Answering my question, “If hell is a place where you are separated from God, then does that mean God is not omnipresent,” this commenter replied: “I think… Read more