Rich Mullins had such a low tolerance for B.S. I’m convinced that, had he lived longer into the digital age, Rich would still never have become a blogger. He wouldn’t be on snapchat or instagram, and there’s no way he would’ve been on Facebook. But twitter? I could see that. Rich was a master of the one-liner. Good songwriters work with an incredible economy of words. Rich knew how to craft great one-liners and how to set them up. He was also not short on opinions. Every... Read more
For the Christian there is an inherent danger to involving ourselves in any kind of political discussion. We are supposed to love both our political neighbor and our political enemy. Politics and love… how can those things go together? I have a few ideas. First, Christians must check our citizenship. We are first and foremost citizens of the kingdom of God, then of our particular country, and those two can never become the same thing. Second, Christians must ask whether our primary identification is with... Read more
The source of nearly all human misery can be traced back to an often unconscious disconnection between the ends and the means. When humans treat other people, or the planet, or our own bodies as if they are nothing more than a means to an end, then we invite suffering into our lives. If we are ever to have an impact for the better on the plight of this world, surely this will involve the ability to treasure the doing, more than... Read more
In the closing credits of a long-form video release (I think it was called Pursuit of a Legacy), Rich Mullins and his band of brothers credited someone named Owen Meany as “best boy.” In the film world, best boy refers to a kind of foreman position among lighting and rigging technicians. The name rang a bell, but it took me awhile to remember. Owen Meany, you may know, was not a real person, but the main character in a book by John... Read more
My friend Isaac Anderson has an article in The Atlantic called “A Less Lonely Way to Lose Your Faith,” and it’s well worth your time to read. Isaac profiles a community of un-faith in the Kansas City area called Oasis. They gather on Sunday mornings, sing songs, listen to talks, hold children’s programs, and to find friendship and belonging. Sounds like a church, right? That’s the idea. This is a fascinating phenomenon to me: religious-like weekly gatherings for people who don’t (or... Read more
You can always tell what the sacred cow is… Colin Kaepernick is getting crushed for his (rather tame) symbolic act of civil disobedience. The timing is interesting for me because an article I’ve written for The Other Journal, in which I write about my own experience of the national anthem at a football game, went live this morning. It’s called “We’re Number One: Sport as the Liturgy of Empire.” In it I talk about the way sport habituates us into the myth... Read more
“The grace of God means something like: Here is your life. You might never have been, but you are because the party wouldn’t have been complete without you. Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don’t be afraid. I am with you. Nothing can ever separate us. It’s for you I created the universe. I love you. There’s only one catch. Like any other gift, the gift of grace can be yours only if you’ll reach out... Read more
The big lie of every government is this: we can make you safe and happy. Governments should stop promising this, because they can’t deliver. America, powerful as it is, cannot keep its promises to make us safe and happy. Only God can do that. The primary means through which God has chosen to do that is through each other. You want to know how to secure the future? Try this: Love with sincerity. Hate what is evil and cling to what is good. Be... Read more
Some in our society, wish to deny that economic injustice exists. It’s a level playing field, they say. This is ridiculous. It’s not level for minorities. The top 400 billionaires in the U.S. hold as much wealth as all African-American households, plus one-third of Latino households combined (inequality.org) It’s not level for the middle class. The middle class is dying. A recent Fortune article noted, “as much as 70% of the households in 25 advanced economies saw their earnings drop in the... Read more
“Nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral questions of our time: the need for man to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to oppression and violence. Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.” (Martin Luther King, Jr., Nobel Prize acceptance speech, Stockholm, Sweden, 1964.) “You have heard that it was said,” Jesus once remarked, “Love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I... Read more
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