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November 2023

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...

September 2023

September 26, 2023

Consider the Salmon: Like Souls Approaching God

Jeanne and I spent a couple of lovely days last week with friends in Port...

September 13, 2023

The “Let’s Totally Screw Things Up” Committee

I learned many things from my good friend Marsue, who was the rector of the...

August 2023

August 05, 2023

When What I Want to Believe Isn’t True: Reflections on the latest indictment of Donald Trump

What do you do when virtually all of the evidence relevant to an important matter...

July 2023

July 23, 2023

You Say You Want a Revolution?

There is a saying, particularly popular among conservatives, that “A conservative is a liberal who...

June 2023

June 04, 2023

Good Times with the Trinity

It’s Trinity Sunday. Don’t worry, I’m not going to try to explain that very strange...

May 2023

May 29, 2023

What Does Christian Patriotism Look Like?

Memorial Day is a day for solemn remembrance. Memorial Day is also a day when...

April 2023

April 02, 2023

Blessed is He Who Comes: A Palm Sunday Meditation

Today is Palm Sunday, one of the most dramatic days on the liturgical calendar. But...

March 2023

March 21, 2023

When Stupidity Runs Amok . . .

In December of 1942, Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote a Christmas letter to a number of his...

March 09, 2023

Whose Life Is it Anyway?

Albert Camus' classic extended essay "The Myth of Sisyphus" begins as follows: There is but...

February 2023

February 26, 2023

To Whom Shall I Bow Down?

Today is the first Sunday of Lent; the gospel reading is Matthew's account of Jesus’...

February 12, 2023

What Are We Fighting For?

During my sabbatical semester over a decade ago at an ecumenial institute on the campus...

January 2023

January 28, 2023

An Epiphany Worthy of the Season

I have heard of you with my ears, but now my eyes have seen you. The...

January 24, 2023

We are to be God in the World

This coming Sunday's gospel reading is the Beatitudes from Matthew, the opening lines from the...

January 19, 2023

Be Like a Tree

There are two kinds of living things. They are distinguished by the strategies they have...

January 15, 2023

Mansplaining in the Bible

At a department meeting not long ago, our department chair wondered whether it might be...

December 2022

December 10, 2022

Things are Getting Real: A Conversation Between Jesus and John the Baptist

In a second season episode of “The Chosen,” a multi-year cinematic treatment of the life...

December 04, 2022

“Truthiness” and the Incarnation

In 2016, the Oxford Dictionary named “post-truth” as its word of the year, an adjective...

November 2022

November 10, 2022

The Lady Macbeth School of Leadership

Last weekend I attended a student production of Macbeth on campus, the first such production...

October 2022

October 16, 2022

Mapping Ghosts and Believing Things that Aren’t True

Over the years that I have been writing this blog, those who describe themselves as...

September 2022

September 04, 2022

Exploring the Studio Space with God

Guess what? I got a fever, and the only prescription is more cowbell. Bruce Dickinson Regular...

August 2022

August 11, 2022

Jesus Taught Us How To Be Human

Jeanne asked me a question about my blog the other day that, after I stopped...

July 2022

July 26, 2022

This Book Changed My Life: Annie Dillard’s “Pilgrim at Tinker Creek”

We wake, if we ever wake at all, to mystery, rumors of death, beauty, violence....

July 02, 2022

On Independence Day, Be Glad that the United States is Not a Christian Nation

Christianity, or any branch of it, loses its Christian character when its self-proclaimed supporters outnumber...

June 2022

June 30, 2022

Cassidy Hutchinson and a Story from Ancient Syria

Cassidy Hutchinson's testimony before the January 6th Select Committee last Tuesday was both powerful and...

June 21, 2022

So You Want to be Free? Face your Demons

Iris Murdoch is one of my favorite philosophers and novelists, a writer whose work is...

May 2022

May 30, 2022

Loving My Country and Loving God are Not the Same Thing

The June edition of The Atlantic contains an excellent and sobering article by Tim Alberta. Titled...

May 04, 2022

Glad that Roe v. Wade is going to be overturned? You have sown the wind, and you will reap the whirlwind

I seldom jump into current events in this blog, simply because I don't want to...

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