Religious Liberty: Balancing Rights And The Common Good

Last updated on: August 11, 2025 at 5:00 am By Henry Karlson

Religious liberty has been a very important concern of mine for quite some time. As someone interested in both Inter-religious Dialogue and Comparative Theology, I want my dialogue partners (and teachers) to have the freedom they need to practice and express their faith in public. However, I have also seen people abuse religious liberty, using it to excuse themselves from doing what society expects from them or to justify themselves when they do something wrong. When people threaten society, and... Read more

Learning From Jesus: Cultivating Peace Through Silence

Last updated on: August 10, 2025 at 2:11 am By Henry Karlson

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All of us need time with others, time with our community, but also time to be alone. We need times of rest and relaxation, sometimes with friends and family, but at other times, all by ourselves. Sometimes, we need to cut off all chatter, both the chatter which comes from others, but also the chatter which comes from within our minds, and it is easier to do so if we go on some form of retreat. We need the time... Read more

Defending The Common Good Against Mammon

Last updated on: August 7, 2025 at 2:01 am By Henry Karlson

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We can’t serve God and mammon. The two lead us in two radically different directions. God is love, and to serve God, is to serve the expectations of love. Mammon, on the other hand, tries to become like God and imitate God by perverting what love is, making us hold money as being the absolute good, and the accumulation of money as our goal. It should not be difficult to see where this perversion leads: mammon has its adherents believe... Read more

Matter, Grace, And The Light Of Tabor

Last updated on: August 6, 2025 at 1:58 am By Henry Karlson

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God’s eternal activity, God’s uncreated energy, can be engaged by us; if we welcome it in our lives, we will receive grace, and not just any kinds of grace, but deifying grace. With it, we will end up being transfigured like Christ was at Mount Tabor. What the apostles saw on Mount Tabor was both the hidden glory of the incarnate God-man made manifest, but also, the blessed light of grace which can be taken in and incorporated by all... Read more

The Transfiguration And Hiroshima: Two Forms Of Glory

Last updated on: August 4, 2025 at 2:42 am By Henry Karlson

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Many people say, due to divine providence, that there are no coincidences in the world. That, I think, is true to some degree, but not always in the way people say this mean. God certainly is engaged with history, tying things together, but we are not puppets under God’s control. We have free will, and the interaction between people in history will create all kinds of patterns, many of which will be intended, but many of which will not be,... Read more

Every Christian Should Heed Paul’s Call For Unity

Last updated on: August 3, 2025 at 2:02 am By Henry Karlson

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While we tend to think of the early Christian community as being utopian, peaceful and without strife, it wasn’t. It was every bit as divisive as it is now; to be sure, there were far fewer Christians, so the raw number of extreme egos and conflicts which arose was less than what we see today, but they were there. Paul, who understood Christianity was meant to bring people together, tried, as much as he could, to break through those conflicts... Read more

How The Holiness Of The Saints Inspires Us

Last updated on: August 1, 2025 at 2:02 am By Henry Karlson

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Holiness, wherever it is found, reveals some aspect of the glory of the kingdom of God; this is why the saints, insofar as they are holy (for we know they are sinners like the rest of us), serve as extraordinary representatives of the kingdom of God to the world. Saints were men and women of their times; they were not perfect, nor should we expect them to have been perfect. In their thoughts and deeds, we can see the influences... Read more

DEI Initiatives Reflect Christian Social Justice

Last updated on: July 30, 2025 at 2:02 am By Henry Karlson

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Just the other day I heard that Belmont University was being criticized by Rep. Andy Ogles; he said that the university should be investigated for violating Trump’s anti-DEI rules. It immediately brought to my mind the time I spent a summer in Nashville working with refugees who were mostly but not exclusively Kurds. I had just finished my sophomore year in college, and I had signed up to do “mission work” through the Baptist Student Union (by the time the... Read more

Transcending Gender: God Beyond Masculine And Feminine

Last updated on: July 28, 2025 at 3:12 am By Henry Karlson

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One common hermeneutic mistake many readers of Scripture (and the Christian theological tradition) make is to literalize the conventions used to discuss God (and the persons of the Trinity); they do not understand the words are mere conventions which hint at and point to truths beyond the conventions themselves. The words used to describe God must be understood analogically; they must not be interpreted as meaning the same thing for God as they do for God’s creation. This mistake is... Read more

The Gospel In Action: Healing, Love, And Community Care

Last updated on: July 27, 2025 at 2:01 am By Henry Karlson

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Jesus was an itinerant preacher; he went to the people so that not only would he offer them wisdom, but because be doing so he could meet them where they were at and show his solidarity with them. He gave comfort and solace to the oppressed. He healed the infirm. His message was far more than about the dangers of sin and why those who were cruel and oppressive had to change their ways: he talked about God’s love, how... Read more

What caused the sailors to throw Jonah overboard?