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July 2024

July 07, 2024

The Wonder of a Child

I'm back! After a two week break it's good to be blogging again. As I continue...

June 2024

June 16, 2024

The Good Samaritan

Today is the Fifth Sunday after Easter in the lectionary, including a number of familiar...

June 08, 2024

Sixty-Nine on 6/9: It’s Jeanne’s birthday!

Tomorrow is Jeanne's birthday, and it's a big one! As she's been telling everyone, she...

June 06, 2024

Speaking the Truth in a Culture of Lies

As I continue to put my new book, A Year of Faith and Philosophy: Exploring Spiritual...

May 2024

May 06, 2024

When Life Feels Like an Afterthought . . .

Today's "golden oldie" was first posted here in early 2013, just a few months after...

April 2024

April 14, 2024

Designing God

Voltaire once wrote that if God did not exist, we would have to invent him....

April 09, 2024

Fast and Slow in the Life of Faith

I learned a couple of days ago on "Hidden Brain," one of my favorite podcasts,...

February 2024

February 27, 2024

God, Your Boss at Applebee’s, and Larry

An alternative title for this essay might be “A Comedian Interprets the Parable of the...

February 13, 2024

Lent and Valentine’s Day

Tomorrow is Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent (my least favorite liturgical season). As the...

January 2024

January 23, 2024

What Exactly is a Freelance Christian?

I have been told on occasion by readers of this blog that "Freelance Christianity" is...

January 14, 2024

How Solitude Can Lead to God

The building looked like the love child of a logic problem and a crossword puzzle....

December 2023

December 24, 2023

God Made Into Flesh

Grace means suddenly you’re in a different universe from the one where you were stuck,...

December 18, 2023

The Dog with a Bullet In Him

Regular readers of this blog know how obsessed Jeanne and I are with our corgi...

December 17, 2023

Light is Born of Darkness

During Advent season, John the Baptist gets a lot of play. This makes sense, since...

November 2023

November 22, 2023

I Don’t Think That Parable Means What You Think It Means

Simone Weil once observed in a notebook entry that “the stories of miracles complicate everything.”...

November 14, 2023

What to Do When Your Conception of God Does Not Line Up with Reality

Last Thursday I posted my second recent essay revisiting the problem of evil, arguing that...

November 09, 2023

Why Traditional “Solutions” to the Problem of Evil Don’t Work

In the most recent episode of their podcast “The Bible for Normal People,” Pete Enns...

October 2023

October 31, 2023

What Atheists and Theists Can Agree On

If God is both all-good and all-powerful, why is there so much evil in the...

October 22, 2023

Pragmatic Love

Last weekend Jeanne and I made a quick trip to Minneapolis to attend the annual...

September 2023

September 28, 2023

What Would Dorothea Do?

I saw a bumper sticker once that said “So many books, so little time.” I...

August 2023

August 27, 2023

The Great Homesickness We Could Never Shake Off

The first draft of my first sabbatical book project is completed, minus the introduction and...

August 22, 2023

The Big Sister I Always Wanted: Remembering Marsue three years later

It doesn't seem possible that it has been exactly three years since Marsue Harris, one...

July 2023

July 29, 2023

Jesus Would Have Driven Socrates Crazy

When we first moved to Rhode Island in the middle 1990s for my new teaching...

July 25, 2023

God is Not a Helicopter Parent

Every teacher knows about helicopter parents. Most of us, teacher or not, intuitively know what...

July 20, 2023

Achieiving the Peaceable Kingdom

One Sunday morning a number of years ago, I noticed that a reproduction of a...

July 11, 2023

Complete Sentences in One Word

All of us live in a world filled with words. For academics, words are the...

July 08, 2023

What We Can Learn about Trust from a Corgi

It's hard to believe that our corgi Bovina, the love and center of Jeanne's and...

July 05, 2023

Is There Life Before Death?

A few years ago I had the opportunity to hear one of my heroes give...

June 2023

June 24, 2023

How to Be the Resurrection

Lead on King Eternal, the day of march has come Henceforth in fields of conquest Thy...

June 20, 2023

Loving Your Life

I have a good friend and teaching colleague who told me the other day that...

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