I was an athlete growing up, extremely competitive both then and now, and never gave up during any sort of competitive setting no matter how dire the situation was. For whatever reason, this attitude stayed on the field and was entirely vacant for most of my life outside of sports. On the field, I was confident and dedicated. Off the field, I was fatalistic and lazy. Through much reflection over the years I’ve come to […]
This week’s lectionary readings began with Jonah; to be specific, the end of his story. Taken all together, the four readings weave a portrait of the encounter of an angry man with a generous God. This fall, God has been generous, and I have been angry. So this was a helpful week. Here’s what I’ve learned, beginning with Jonah. Jonah 3.10-4.11 Jonah is the “minor-est” of the minor prophets. He only has one line of prophecy: […]
Photo Credit: https://www.emmys.com/events/fyc/2017/the-handmaids-tale The Handmaid’s Tale, a popular Hulu drama series, just won eight Emmy Awards, including the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Drama Series. The series, which is based on the book by Margaret Atwood, follows the story of Offred, a handmaid, during a time where America falls under an extreme fundamentalist “Christian” totalitarian state of Gilead. In this dystopian society, women are enslaved and some are assigned roles of “handmaids,” where they are […]
I left my Church this week, and it was the most painful and beautiful thing I have ever done. For many people, Church can be a great source of pain, for others, it is a building or a place to gather. For some, Church can be a crutch, a community that supports them. As for me, my Church has become my family. I don’t even know where to begin my story, as I feel like […]
The Book of Haggai tells a story of expectation, confusion, and reorientation. In this book, written by one of the 12 Old Testament minor prophets, the people of Israel, just recently returned from their Babylonian enforced exile, are admonished by Yahweh (the personal name of the God of the OT) for their complacency and misplaced priorities. Rather than finishing the work they had previously begun on the Jerusalem Temple (see Ezra 3), they understood previous […]
As a student devoted to the intersection of theology and literature I’m always assessing ways in which literature accomplishes theological work and how theological thought appears in literary form. Most often these points of conversion occur by means of metaphor. To refresh your memory, metaphor is a kind of comparison in which one thing is described as another. Metaphor can be as colloquial as “love is war” or lengthy and complex underpinning an entire narrative. […]
One of my latest antics in life happens to be pursuing another degree in biomedical diagnostics. Now, as a pastor, it’s obvious that there’s really no purpose for me to do so, but I’ve been finding this program quite unique and challenging, maybe not necessarily in content but in my personal walk with the Lord. To give a little bit more context, my undergraduate studies were in biomedical engineering. Then after some industry experience, […]
John M.G. Barclay, ‘Food, Christian Identity and Global Warming: A Pauline Call for a Christian Food Taboo’, The Expository Times 121 (2010): 585-93. Over the past couple years I have repeatedly returned to the article listed above. Not because I forget about the main point, but because I find it incredibly compelling. I just keep coming back to it. I pour over the arguments; they keep haunting me. And so, naturally, I tell everyone about […]
Recently Harry Potter fans celebrated the arrival of the “nineteen years later” day from the epilogue on September 1st, 2017. Here’s an interesting write-up about this momentous occasion. In case you don’t know, this is the day that Harry and Ginny sent their son Albus Severus off to Hogwarts, which can be found in the epilogue from Deathly Hallows. For some fans, the epilogue stands as an important ending to the seven-part narrative, which provides […]
Where to begin… Charlottesville The world knows of the American embarrassment that is the recent happenings in Charlottesville, Virginia. Neo-Nazis and white supremacists incited violence surrounding the profanely displayed statue of Confederate General and beater of freed slaves, Robert E. Lee. Gen. Lee’s brutality should be condemned along with the then-institution of chattel slavery. However, certain southerners (and unfortunately, many southern Christians) have insisted on the statue remaining and continue to venerate Gen. Lee as a […]
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