There are so many good reasons to hate the book of Hosea, but today I want to tell you about my top three. I’m sure it doesn’t help that the last time I heard it preached was on Mother’s Day. Yes, you read that right–Mother’s Day. That may seem like an odd pastoral decision, but it’s not all that unusual and in a way it serves to illustrate one of the core issues I have with the book. Just a... Read more
Christianity, it turns out, has never been interested in democracy. People used to tell me it is, and I’m sure those people are still out there, feeding the same old narratives to an ever-dwindling and increasingly rural audience. But no one who has been paying attention to what’s happening in America could still say that with a straight face. Prior to the birth of America–the first country founded primarily as a business venture–the Christian church had always been hierarchical in... Read more
“This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me; They worship me in vain, teaching as doctrines the commandments culture wars of men.” –Matt. 15:8-9, NIV* Sarah is a former evangelical Christian whose life has forced her to rewire the way she sees the world so many times, she finds it difficult to identify with the woman she sees in the pictures of her younger self. Raised to orient her existence around the faith she... Read more
When you leave the Christian faith, people come out of the woodwork to impugn your motives for leaving. First I was informed that I did it so that I could have more sex, then I was told I did it to make money. Someone else said I must have a problem with authority because I want to call my own shots. Each accusation tells me something about them that they don’t realize they’re giving away. But even if all of... Read more
I live in the Deep South, and now that the Delta variant is here, I’m back to wearing a mask again wherever I go. School started back for us last week, and masks are mandatory because our district doesn’t have any wealthy white people bullying the school board into disregarding the pleas of every hospital and infectious disease expert in the country. Americans don’t appreciate expertise in general, in case you haven’t noticed. Even the ones who have achieved mastery... Read more
People like me are like flies in the ointment of evangelical theology. We did all the things they told us to do, we gave our hearts and our lives entirely over to Jesus, yet in the end we still found their belief system lacking. It’s not supposed to happen that way. We must have done something wrong. Defenders of the Christian faith like Tim Keller acknowledge that the belief system they’re pushing has gaps in it—places where the external evidence comes... Read more
In the penultimate chapter of his Reason for God, Tim Keller attempts to pull together all the loose threads strewn about this apologetic work, weaving them together into a coherent vision for the world. He offers his belief system as a superior alternative to the one the rest of the world wants you to accept, as if the myriad belief systems around the globe could be boiled down to a single alternative, variously disguised. That’s an unsurprising assumption, I suppose, if... Read more
Maybe I spoke too soon. I previously said that Tim Keller was done trying to build a logical case for Christianity and had moved on to sermonizing, but the second-to-the-last chapter in his apologetics work The Reason for God presents his final shot at arguing for the legitimacy of the Christian faith. In Chapter 13, Keller rehashes the story of the resurrection of Jesus, arguing that it must have really happened, not so much because he has positive proof besides a... Read more
With only three more chapters to go in Tim Keller‘s The Reason for God, it appears the pastor of Redeemer Church in Manhattan has abandoned the central thesis of the book. Perhaps we came to this with unrealistic expectations, but halfway through the book Keller confesses he believes everyone really knows there is a God, then he pivots hard into preaching for the remainder of the book as if his readers are already convinced. I have not tried to prove the... Read more
I remember once believing that my religion was unlike all other religions in the world. Christianity was special, possessing qualities that no other religion had, and for me that spoke to its authenticity. I can’t recall why I thought uniqueness automatically validates a belief system, but it was a core tenet of my faith that the deal you get with Jesus is better than what you could get from anybody else. It’s a deal so good, so intrinsically appealing, that... Read more
Godless in Dixie
