Since it’s International Suicide Prevention Day, I wanted to share some reflections about my suicide attempt during my third year of college on December 11th, 1998. It made no sense. I was a student leader at UVA. I had a very loving family. I was pledging the Alpha Phi Omega service fraternity and meeting tons of new people. But I was desperately lonely. And I was caught in a panic attack over my final paper in my Religion and Drama... Read more
It’s International Buy Your Priest a Beer Day, and I’m feeling like the woman who recently needed to lash out against Instagram white woman wine culture. I used to love beer, the darker and stouter the better. I genuinely miss the taste of it, but it’s also true that beer was part of my cool pastor image. I was the pastor you could get a beer with, and if you ever did, I would drop the f-bomb early on in... Read more
This church sign captures everything that is wrong with toxic Christianity and why it positions itself against the struggles of marginalized people, whether they’re brown, queer, female, or poor. The root presumption of toxic Christianity is that order and authority are right by default. Sin is defined as rebellion against authority. Adam and Eve’s rebellion in the Garden of Eden is understood to be the paradigm for what sin looks like. It may seem straightforward to start with Eden in... Read more
This week on Crackers and Grape Juice, I talked with one of my favorite people Jarell Wilson. We started off talking about Satan, but as our conversations often go, we went a whole lot of places. One of the basic unresolved dilemmas that we raised is how to tell the difference between when we’re being satanic accusers and Christlike prophets, because Jesus was a “problematic fave.” He didn’t always behave in that meek and mild manner that we attribute to... Read more
The hopes and prayers from the past few months of planning and preparation have come together: it’s the beginning of a new school year. The first few weeks of a fall semester are very full in campus ministry. We worship together. We eat together (a LOT). We stand at tables, offering a smile, a donut hole, a cup of cold homemade iced tea on a hot day, and some information. We play games. We welcome new friends, and reconnect with... Read more
When Donald Trump’s surrogate infamously declared that there will soon be #TacoTrucksOnEveryCorner unless somebody stops the Mexicans, the internet rightly rejoiced. There are very few ways in which I’ve ever been ahead of the hipster curve, but taco trucks are one of them. I’ve been eating from taco trucks since 2008 because it was the family enterprise of a family that I met at the first church where I served in seminary. In fact, I believe that the Lopez family of Durham,... Read more
Everyone is always marketing. I suspect there were hundreds of college classrooms that began their first meeting this semester with that claim. It’s a true statement, especially in an hyper-capitalist society like ours. The world teaches us that each of us has a brand which must be managed and promoted in the right way so that we can win other people over to accomplish whatever goals we have. We are marketing ourselves every time we have a conversation with an... Read more
If you haven’t heard about the latest drama on the Interwebz, San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick decided to sit down during the National Anthem at an exhibition game as a protest against the way black people are being treated, and his twitter feed immediately filled up with good white patriots calling him the n-word. This visceral reaction reveals the danger of our culture’s idolatrous nationalism. What is it that makes America great? Supposedly, it’s our democracy manifested in our freedom of... Read more
Well, the University of Chicago has been all over my feed lately because of a “welcome” letter they sent to incoming students informing them there wouldn’t be any “trigger warnings” or “safe spaces” on their campus. Naturally, the pundits have been tripping over themselves to crank out a new round of think-pieces about how ridiculous those hypersensitive millennials are to need a safe space. It seems a bit ironic to me when these manifestos defending the so-called “intellectual rigor” of academia settle... Read more
This week’s Crackers and Grape Juice episode addressed the question “Is Jesus the only way to God?” We answered this question as we answer most questions by saying it depends on what you mean. The most common Bible verse that people cite when they make a claim about Christ’s exclusivity is John 14:6, where Jesus says, “I am the way, the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father except through me.” Like many biblical proof-texts, this one... Read more
Mercy Not Sacrifice
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