This year, I refuse to adapt and conform. In so many little ways I am tempted to compromise. I get scared, and I’m tempted to sell out the truth for a more comfortable lie. Sometimes I give into fear. But that was last year. This year, I will live boldly and passionately. I will keep my …
One of the central mottos of the radical movements of the 1960s was: Question authority. The Baby Boomer generation was coming of age, caught up in the culminating battles of the civil rights movement. They faced conscription into an unjust war in Vietnam, where reports of atrocities resounded louder every day. Increasingly, America’s young people were …
Presidential candidate Donald Trump has removed all ambiguity. He is running his campaign on a platform of xenophobia and unambiguous fascism that, if enacted, would change the character of the United States just as surely as if the Third Reich had won the second world war. The enduring popularity of Trump’s campaign represents more than …
When there are armed killers in the street and you’re running for your life, where can you hide? When the country you grew up in is no longer safe, when masked men with militant ideologies are massacring the people you love, how will you react? When your children don’t have enough to eat and the bombs are …
Despite what you may have picked up about Christianity from some of our more loud-mouthed brethren, Jesus did not spend his time denouncing gay people, foreigners, or people of other religions. And, believe it or not, he rarely talked about hell. But when he did… Buckle your safety belts, America. In the Book of Matthew, Jesus …
When I was about twelve years old, I went through a phase when I was terribly afraid of hell. Like, wake-up-screaming scared of hell. Shouting-at-the-ceiling-because-God-won’t-answer afraid of damnation. My parents probably thought I was mentally ill, but that wasn’t quite right. I was living in a persistent state of spiritual terror. Somewhere along the way (maybe at …
Read more “I Want to Follow Jesus. Do I Need to Be Baptized?”
I believe that climate change is real, and that it’s caused by humans burning fossil fuels and releasing carbon into the atmosphere. I believe, not because I am personally competent to prove it, but because I rely on the analysis of climate scientists who, by a 97% margin, agree that this is the case. I have faith …
Read more “What is Real Faith? Actually Doing What You Believe”