I sometimes struggle with parenting my son Justin. Many of his behaviors anger, perplex, and exhaust me. He has a number of good qualities, about which I will say more later. However, let me start by cataloguing some of his more difficult ones. I will also detail why they distress me so much and some of what we’ve done to attempt to correct them. Just to give you a little context, our son Justin is a three-year-old toddler. We also recently had another baby (Jarred). Many of Justin’s negative behaviors had been present before his baby brother was born. However, Justin’s jealousy for attention ..read more

In my last post I surveyed some Biblical examples of failed apocalyptic predictions of imminent judgment in the end times. In today’s post, I turn to some further examples from throughout church history. In my next post I will look at a few examples in other religions. Montanist Millenarians Many believers in Christianity’s first few centuries held imminent apocalyptic beliefs. One well known group was the Montanists. Montanus and two charismatic female prophets, Maximilla and Prisca, claimed to receive new revelation from God (“New Prophesy ..read more

Introduction A few years ago I wrote two blog posts articulating what I see as a grander, more wholistic understanding of the gospel. In today’s post I will update these and synthesize them together into one post. Doing that will also give me a chance to weave together the five core commitments I have been writing about into an integrated narrative. I will give three versions of this story: a brief summary, a more intermediate one, and finally a longer summary. I do this because I want to not only illustrate my wholistic approach to the gospel, but also give fellow progressives a variety of w ..read more

I have five core commitments that inform all of my other beliefs and the way I aspire to live. I see these beliefs as interconnected and mutually reinforcing. But they are also separable and I hold inner commitments more firmly than outer ones. In that sense, they are like castle walls within castle walls that ripple out from a sacred center. These commitments are as follows: 1) First, I am committed to truth, and to following evidence and experience as the best way to get at truth. 2) Secondly, I’m committed to this world and embodied well-being. 3) Third, I’m committed to an ethic centered ..read more

Introduction Per my fifth commitment, I believe in a form of Christianity that is informed by my four prior commitments and, in that context, centered on Jesus. Readers will recall that my four prior commitments included commitments to evidence and experience (and truth), embodied well-being, love and justice, and a God who is primarily loving. Informed By… I believe in a Christianity that is informed by these first four commitments because, on the one hand, they are just very well evidenced, as I have briefly contended. They are much better evidenced than the more specific and controversial ..read more

Prodigal Son Parable, by Thomas Bertram Poole Introduction  Per my fourth commitment, I believe in a God who is primarily loving, gracious, and inclusive and only secondarily wrathful. I believe that God is just and will punish persistent, unrepentant evil. But I believe his judgment is finite, fair, and ideally meant to lead to restoration. I believe that love and forgiveness reflect God’s dominate nature and first impulse. I believe that God seeks out relationships with people and to transform them into his way of love. I believe he has a plan to make right all that is wrong in the wo ..read more

Jesus Healing Peter’s Mother, by Rembrandt One of my most fundamental commitments is to an ethic centered on love and justice. I’ve been thinking a lot recently about what that means and why it is so important to me. There are many reasons, including personal, evidential, rational, and pragmatic ones. I would hold such convictions whether I was a Christian or not. However, I am partly drawn to such values precisely because of the Bible’s own teachings concerning justice, and particularly the teachings and example of Jesus. There are many texts that could be referenced here and many ways ..read more

Per my third commitment, I am committed to an ethic centered on love and justice. Love As I see it, love ascribes worth to others and acts to promote their well-being. I see justice as largely an informed, practical outworking of love on a broader societal scale. I am committed to an ethic of love because such a norm fits with my own conscience, personality, and survival strategies. But such an ethic is not merely my own. Love reflects the ethical norms of most societies and all world religions. For example, virtually all societies prohibit lying, stealing, murder, and the breaking of solemn ..read more

Introduction Per my second commitment, I am committed to this (physical) world. I believe this world is real and valuable, that our empirical experience generally leads to truth, and that embodied well-being matters. I believe these things for a number of reasons. Physical Experience is Consistent and Trustworthy Everyone experiences the physical world. These experiences are vivid and continuous. We are virtually always aware of our physical surroundings and sensations. These come to us unprompted and are difficult to ignore. Not only does everyone experience a physical world, our experiences ..read more

Introduction Per my first commitment, I am committed to truth, and to evidence and experience as the best way to get at truth. I’m going to attempt to unpack this some. But first, I need to acknowledge my own contextual situatedness, possible biases, and limitations. I write as a white, male, cisgender, heterosexual, able-bodied, and middle-class American. That is to say, I recognize that I come at this from a place of relative privilege. I also write as a former Evangelical who has now embraced a more progressive outlook.  I have been intentional about taking in other perspectives. I ha ..read more