Every Wednesday morning, I give away donut holes and, more recently, cups of yerba mate in a breezeway at Tulane University that forms a natural wind tunnel. I usually a hang a banner on the front of the table that advertises our NOLA Wesley Methodist campus ministry with a big rainbow flag painted on it. But this winter, the wind has been too rough for the banner. Today, the wind attacked me ferociously. It threw my signup clipboards, my ministry... Read more
“Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.” Is there any verse in the Bible that more plainly contradicts the ethos of our age than this verse? Blessed are the opportunists, the platform-builders, the meme-crafters, the virally-tweeted shade-throwers… but the meek? How are the meek supposed to inherit the earth? There’s nothing to monetize about meekness! The meek don’t get invited to speak at all the important conferences. The meek don’t get profiled in the top forty people under... Read more
I remember when I thought Barack Obama was going to save our country. Back in 2008, I was running around Duke Divinity School trying to register everyone to vote. I remember being confronted by a hipster snob who said that voting was stupid and we should focus on organizing in our local communities. I guess I’m that hipster snob now. Mostly I’m just weary of messiahs. I’ll probably vote for Bernie Sanders whenever Louisiana gets its turn to weigh in,... Read more
It’s Mardi Gras season in New Orleans, which can be an awkward time for a campus minister. Many of the students I know will be drinking a lot during the next week. I will be having a few drinks myself. I’m also going to go to parades with students where I will abstain from drinking. Some Christian students I know see it as necessary to their Christian discipleship to give up alcohol. I deeply respect that, but I’m not going... Read more
I’ve started a series looking at Christian salvation through the lens of the Beatitudes, the blessings that open Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5. Previously, I covered the first beatitude, “Blessed are the poor in spirit.” Today we will look at the second one: “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.” For centuries, Biblical interpreters have debated the meaning of the Beatitudes. There are two basic ways to interpret them. One way is to see... Read more
It’s going to be hard to write this without it coming across as trolling, but I’m really trying. People on my side of the debate within evangelical Christianity are far too gleeful about the way that Donald Trump and Ted Cruz are capturing the conservative evangelical vote. They’re such monstrous caricatures of everything we want to believe our opponents are: rude, self-righteous, narcissistic, greedy, pretty much every fruit of the flesh in Galatians 5:19-20. Many thoughtful conservative evangelicals are horrified... Read more
I’ve been wrestling with the concept of Christian salvation for decades. I used to think I was a rebel heretic unable to swallow the hard pill of God’s truth. But as time has gone on, I’ve grown more and more convinced that the popular evangelical Christian account of salvation as afterlife insurance is a worldly consumerist perversion of the gospel validated by the same middle-class anxiety that has created the insurance industrial complex. When I read the teachings of Jesus... Read more
[Our guest contributor Steve Austin is a writer, blogger, and family man from Birmingham, Alabama. He is a mental health advocate who loves capturing stories that point to God’s purpose and the power of second chances. Check out more of Steve’s story at www.iamsteveaustin.com.] My wife spent a week on a psych ward following the birth of our first son. She had a miserable fight with postpartum depression and sleep deprivation. One year later, nearly to the day, I landed... Read more
For Christmas this year, I got Andrei Rublev’s Trinity icon. It is the most beautiful picture of God that I’ve ever seen. Each member of the Trinity is enraptured with the other two in a gaze of sweet, gentle love. The figures are much too genderqueer and homoerotic for conservative evangelical sensibilities. But there’s nothing unorthodox about it. This is what a Trinity of love looks like (at least with Russian skin). Looking at this icon, it’s hard to understand... Read more
Everyone is making fun of Donald Trump for saying “Two” instead of “Second Corinthians” in his recent convocation address at Liberty University. I honestly don’t think it’s that big a deal. What Trump said about 2 Corinthians 3:17 being “the whole ball game” is much more deeply true than he realizes. The apostle Paul writes, “Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.” But the spiritual freedom Paul is talking about is very different than the religious liberty... Read more
Mercy Not Sacrifice
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