How Guilt and Shame Can Bring Us Closer to God
Instead of running and hiding and creating masks with which to cover their nakedness, the Bible’s most exemplary saints shed their masks in favor of transparency and self-disclosure.
Jesus, the Nietzschean Superman, and the Christmas Miracle
What are we to make of the fact that a little child, versus some Nietzschean “Superman” (Ubermensch), is the one who will come to make his blessings flow far as the curse is found?
There is a Crack in Everything (Including Us)
And even our flaws and frailties and the acknowledgment thereof is a grace, a sign of God’s kingdom at work in us. As Leonard Cohen has said, “There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.”
Surgeons of the Soul
I suppose what I’m trying to say here is that the “faithful wounds” God sometimes calls us to inflict on one another as mutual “surgeons of the soul”—always as with a healing scalpel and never as with an injurious sword—can sometimes create further relational strain.
Sometimes I Struggle With the Bible
As much as we can rejoice in, get inspired by, and find comfort in certain parts of the Bible, other parts will disturb us—namely, the parts that contradict our feelings, instincts, hopes, dreams, traditions, and cultural values.
Confessions of a Sometimes Restless Insomniac
Because the world is quiet in the middle of the night without the usual distractions of checklists, schedules, deadlines, meetings, interruptions, screens, and iThings, I also find myself wrestling with an inner dis-equilibrium in relation to God.
Sticks, Stones, and Words…Can Cut Me Deeply
Words transform. They heal. And they can…and sometimes do…“hurt me.”
Many Pastors Are Lonely…Must They Be?
Considering the collapse of my seven, famously isolated friends, I would rather risk transparency than risk the alternative. For the alternative, at least to me, seems like a much greater burden to bear.
The “Bad Math” of Derailing Spiritually
C.S. Lewis famously said that when we read history, we find that those who did the most for the present world are also the ones who thought the most of the next. In other words, the more heavenly minded we are—the more our heads and hearts are fixed on Jesus, his kingdom, and his purposes—the […]
The Love of God…More Than A Second-Hand Emotion
Being in covenant with God means that once we become his children, we cannot un-become his children.