The “Problematic” God of the Old Testament
I’ve been wanting to do a Q & A podcast episode for a while, and my plan was to walk through a bunch of your questions all at once. But (of course), as I was working on it, this one particular question–about the seemingly problematic God of the Old Testament–kind of arrested my attention…and in […]
On Mystery, Monkeys, & The Multiverse
And when it comes, it finds the house empty, swept, and put in order. Then it goes and brings with it seven other spirits more evil than itself, and they enter and dwell there, and the last state of that person is worse than the first. — Matthew 12:44-45 A friend of mine, who knows […]
The Light Princess: A Fairy Tale
by George MacDonald, adapted by Ross Byrd Long ago, in a land far away, there lived a king and a queen who were very sad because they had no children. But after years of waiting and hoping, the queen gave birth to a girl. The king was so delighted that he called for a great […]
Anxiety & The Problem of Many-ness
Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall […]
Reminder How To Protest
Martin Luther King’s “Letter to Birmingham Jail” is a masterpiece of Christian protest in a world that could use a few lessons, especially in 2021. Where are the communicators like him in our generation? (Honest question.) I am not always proud to be an American. But I am proud of this moment in our history, […]
Wait Without Hope
from The Four Quartets, East Coker, by T.S. Eliot I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love, For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith But the faith and the love and the hope are […]
Who Stormed the Capitol?
“Man’s conquest of nature turns out, in the moment of its consummation, to be nature’s conquest of man.” — C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man (1943) A lot of us have been trying to figure out how to make sense of the protests that turned into riots that turned into the storming of the […]
Recommended Resources
This is a list of recommended resources I prepared for our Virginia Beach Fellows program. VB Fellows is a leadership development program for recent college grads, which I co-direct. Happy browsing! Feel free to leave your thoughts and questions in the comment section. Short Reads, Watches, & Listens: On Justice: “Justice” by George MacDonald (a […]
Q/A: How (Not) To Love The World
I have a question from 1 John 2. It comes from this passage: Do not love this world nor the things it offers you, for when you love the world, you do not have the love of the Father in you.16 For the world offers only a craving for physical pleasure, a craving for everything […]
Reflections on the Ten Commandments
Thou shalt have no other gods before me What gods might we have? Not literally “money” or “sex” or “power” or “success” or “fame.” No one worships these things directly. It is the “gods” hiding behind such things. The subtle deals we make with those unseen forces which we barely understand and to which we […]