I’m thoroughly biased but I think everyone should read Sara Miles new book Jesus Freak: Feeding Healing Raising the Dead.  My bias is not just grounded in our shared love for the theology of  James Alison and William Cavanaugh. It’s less cerebral and more intuitive. My bias has something to do with the tears that have rolled [...]

Now after all of the fancy words were spoken and the lofty ideas were batted around, came the actual work of doing these things.

“I knew my actions were wrong, but I convinced myself that normal rules didn’t apply. I never thought about who I was hurting. Instead, I thought only about myself. I ran straight through the boundaries that a married couple should live by. I thought I could get away with whatever I wanted to. I felt [...]

Greetings to everyone who shall read:
I write this as something that I have read and meditated about over the last year or so. The issue of war and the attitude that the follower of Christ should have towards it.
The more I thought about this issue and the more I thought about what God’s Word has [...]

Living on Hope While Living in Babylon: The Christian Anarchists of the 20th Century
by Tripp York
Wipf and Stock / $17.00 US (list)
[Amazon] [Wipf and Stock]
The publication of Tripp York’s Living on Hope While Living in Babylon marks a significant contribution to the recently re-emerging interest in the connection between Christianity and anarchism and for that [...]

“They grow no food, raise no livestock, and live without rules or calendars… What do they know that we’ve forgotten?”
This is an excerpt from the beginning of a National Geographic article on the Hadza, a small hunter-gatherer tribe in northern Tanzania.  Reading this challenged the usual assumptions I’ve had celebrating civilization.  As I read about [...]

This boy is a little embryo who is destined to offer the world a fresh alternative to suicidal systems and seductive power structures.

When you tell people you believe (or hope for) universal reconciliation the knee jerk reaction is that you don’t believe in hell.
Well, I believe in hell. I believe in hell for two reasons.
First, humans have committed horrific evils and the notion that God’s wrath isn’t kindled in the face of these atrocities is ludicrous. Universalism [...]

This is called MY introduction rather than AN introduction due to the fact that everyone is unique and has their own take on these ideas. It would be misleading to assume that I could posit an introduction to these ideas that would be collective, embodying the thoughts of all people dealing with these issues, and [...]

In the event of Advent, God has spoken and still speaks. As Barth puts it, “All abstract thought and metaphysics, everything one might know and say of God as Thought, Power and Deed is summed up and completed by the fact that God has spoken and still speaks. Yes, God!”

The gist of the story goes like this: God told Abraham to go kill his son, his only son, the son of promise and offer him as a sacrifice. Abraham goes. (Geneses 22)
God ultimately stopped Abraham before he sliced the knife across Isaac’s throat, but that hasn’t kept that knife from stabbing away at me. [...]

We must practice our conversion if we are ever to become converted.

I attend a pathological church. In fact, to my knowledge I have only ever attended pathological churches. Their organizational structures have mimicked to a frightening degree Hugh McLeod’s corporate hierarchy, and they religiously conformed to the Gervais Principle The Gervais Principle? It’s an only-slightly-tongue-in-cheek business truism written by Venkatesh Rao over at his blog, [...]

i’d love to thank William Lobdell and his book, ‘Losing My Religion: How I Lost My Faith Reporting on Religion in America – and Found Unexpected Peace’ for inspiring this post. While in Indonesia diving, we met a lovely couple from the Bay Area who are currently living in Shanghai, China. She was reading Lobdell’s [...]

In October 2009, I was invited by my friend Luke to an exchange of letters about the reasons for our belief. Here is an index to our letters:

Luke’s 1st letter
My 1st letter
Luke’s 2nd letter
My 2nd letter
Luke’s 3rd letter
My 3rd letter

Here’s Luke’s 4th Letter:

Mark,
In my third letter to you, I asked you to clarify (1) what [...]

It could be argued that hospitality–the welcoming of strangers–is the quintessential Christian practice. Welcoming sinners to table fellowship was the central, distinctive and inflammatory aspect of Jesus’ ministry and teaching. Further, the gospel writers create an identity relationship between Jesus and strangers. Jesus is the stranger. Strangers are Jesus. This notion–God is the [...]

As he taught he said, “Beware of the scribes … they devour widows houses … ” He sat down opposite the treasury, and watched the crowd putting money into the treasury. Many rich people put in large sums. A poor widow came and put in two copper coins, which are worth a penny. Then he [...]

Editor’s Note: Here’s the latest in the correspondence between “Common Sense Atheist” and me (Mark Van Steenwyk). Go HERE to read Luke’s (he’s the atheist) initial letter. My response was posted here. His second letter is here, followed by my second letter. To mix things up, all future letters in this series written by [...]