My dear friend and podcast-mate Jason Micheli just wrote a very kind review of my book. So I suppose it’s a bit ungracious of me to jump immediately into a quarrel with him over the existence of an eternal hell. He wrote two posts here and here that argue against hell. I still believe in hell and I want to believe in it because I believe in God’s solidarity with the oppressed. It may be ironic but the strongest argument... Read more
In most of my book events, I’ve been talking about my book How Jesus Saves the World from Us but not reading directly from it. This Monday night at the Regulator bookshop in Durham, they wanted me to read a little bit of the text. So I decided to share the conclusion since it’s a distillation of what I say in the book as a whole. Here it is. Christianity has always been about getting saved. But today what we... Read more
I knew the comment was coming. I was bracing for it. My heart sank when I first heard that the shooter was Muslim and it sank again when I found out he was gay. Not because it would make it any more or less terrible otherwise, but because these simple demographic facts would allow a certain kind of Christian to write in my comment section: “We’re expected to take responsibility because a GAY MUSLIM killed people? We’re not gay, we’re not... Read more
I came across a poem today in Cynthia Bourgeault’s Wisdom Jesus. It is attributed to 11th century mystic Simeon the New Theologian. There’s something exquisitely queer and deeply nurturing about it that seemed apropos this week. So I thought I would share it. Christ’s Body We awaken in Christ’s body as Christ awakens our bodies, and my poor hand is Christ. He enters my foot and is infinitely me. I move my hand, and wonderfully my hand becomes Christ, becomes... Read more
A wicked thought came into my mind when I learned about the shootings in Orlando: This is why people need to read my book. Thankfully, before I could post anything stupid on Facebook, the Holy Spirit convicted me with a second thought: This is why you’re still toxic. I don’t think I’m the only one in the age of social media whose first instinct is to respond to every trending news item by snapping it into the self-justifying narrative called This is... Read more
I had some really rich conversations this weekend with very thoughtful, compassionate conservative evangelicals at our annual United Methodist gathering in Louisiana. And then the Orlando shooting happened. Since I speak evangelical, I wanted to offer some suggestions to my people about ways to respond and not respond to the tragedy. 1. Don’t be defensive There are a lot of hurt people on the Internet right now and some of them are probably saying things that feel very unfair to... Read more
My campus ministry has been tabling at the parent resource fair that’s part of Tulane’s summer orientation process, since we’re not allowed to participate in the student orientation directly. So far out of several hundred sets of parents that have passed through, only one couple stopped at our table. This experience made me want to write an open letter to all you mainline Christian parents of rising college freshmen out there (in case there are any who actually read my... Read more
There’s a tendency in our world today to live as though the only events that count are those that get their own twitter hashtag. On a macrocosmic level, so many things are failing. We have two presidential candidates that nobody really likes or trusts. Poor black kids get shot when they seem suspicious while rich white kids get out of long prison sentences when they’re caught in the act of rape. The financial “industry” continues to absorb more and more... Read more
I feel like I’m stumbling backwards into my east coast book tour. Since I had a few people show up to book events on the west coast due to my blog posts, I figured I’d let you know where I’ll be on the east coast as well. June 10 1:30 pm Shreveport, LA Book signing at Centenary College for the Louisiana Annual Conference June 12 10:30 am Nashville, TN Guest sermon at Blakemore United Methodist Church June 13 7:00 pm ... Read more
My title is intended to troll my Calvinist friend Derek and distract him from working on his German homework. In case you haven’t been privy to the latest evangelical drama that people like me think is the only thing happening in the universe, the Gospel Coalition last week released a video with John Piper, Matt Chandler, and David Platt talking about how God ordains suffering, and the Internet went wild. Our podcast Crackers and Grape Juice just did an episode... Read more
Mercy Not Sacrifice
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