A bit over a year ago at my brother-in-law’s wake, I spent several minutes chatting with my niece-in-law Danielle’s husband Matt (which I guess makes Matt my nephew-in-law-in-law–Danielle and Matt are expecting their first child in a few weeks). He was sitting quietly in a seat in the back row of chairs while just about everyone else was working the room. It struck me that sitting quietly with Matt was a good idea. We often gravitate toward each other whenever... Read more
A former student who wrote for our campus student newspaper once asked me during an interview for the paper what, after many years of teaching introductory ethics courses, would be my one-sentence summary of the moral life. As I described in a post a few months ago, my immediate response was “Don’t Be A Dick,” quickly changed to “Don’t Be A Jerk.” The Moral Life in One Sentence This past week as I scrolled through my Facebook feed (I do... Read more
I have been told on occasion by readers of this blog that “Freelance Christianity” is an oxymoron. I don’t bother to tell such folks that the other contender for the name of this blog over a decade ago was “Agnostic Christianity” (which fortunately Jeanne talked me out of). Recently, though, a commenter who seemed sincere asked me to explain what the difference between freelance and traditional Christianity might be. My sense was that his question was not a bait-and-switch effort... Read more
When I first started this blog a bit over eleven years ago, I told Jeanne that I would continue doing it until it became “just another damn thing I have to do.” There have been times that I came very close to that point, but then something–a comment from a reader, an unexpeted insight from an author I am reading–keeps me going. I’ve often said and written that this blog is a form of spiritual exercise for me, that its... Read more
Last Sunday’s lectionary reading from the Hebrew Scriptures is the story of God’s call of the young boy Samuel from First Samuel. Samuel was one of my role models as a child, because as a child he was perceptive enough to be able to hear the voice of the divine calling him when the grownups couldn’t hear a thing. But this is the second half of the story. The first half of the story is a tale with many familiar... Read more
In last few minutes of Franco Zefferelli’s Jesus of Nazareth, Zerah pokes his head into the tomb where he observed the dead Jesus of Nazareth being buried three days earlier. Zerah is a politically astute, power-hungry Pharisee who has been an enemy of Jesus since he first heard about the roving rabbi three years earlier. Zerah is the one who manipulates Judas into betraying Jesus. Zerah is the one who convinces the Romans to put a beefed-up military presence in front... Read more
The building looked like the love child of a logic problem and a crossword puzzle. Richard Powers, Orfeo Richard Powers is one of my favorite novelists, but I don’t recall ever having a conversation with anyone about his books. He is the sort of author whose books win awards, whose novels reviewers rave about as “brilliant,” a “tour de force,” and “his generation’s Herman Melville,” but few people read. But I read them. His twelfth novel, The Overstory (2018), was... Read more
In his 2014 book The Bible Tells Me So . . .” and The Sin of Certainty published in 2016, Pete Enns argues that interpreting the Bible should start with completely scrapping the idea that the Bible is a divinely inspired rule book for how to live a life pleasing to God, a rule book that rises above the fray of time, culture, and context. I was raised to believe that the Bible is inerrant, infallible, non-contradictory, and literally true—Enns... Read more
A number of years ago, at the end of a presentation to fellow resident scholars at an ecumenical institute where I was spending a sabbatical semester, someone exasperatedly asked “Vance, don’t you have to believe something with certainty in order to be Christian?” I responded (as philosophers) with a question of my own: “I don’t know. Do I?” Snarkiness aside, the question of belief and certainty continues to obsess me well over a decade since that exchange. One of the... Read more
The gospel lectionary reading for the First Sunday of Epiphay traditionally is one version of Jesus’ baptism by John the Baptist–this year we get Mark’s version. In a second season episode of “The Chosen,” a multi-year cinematic treatment of the life of Jesus that will be releasing its fourth season soon, Jesus has a private conversation with his relative John the Baptist (known to Jesus’ disciples as “Creepy John”). They clearly have known each other since they were boys; they... Read more
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