What Happens When a Christian Extremist Assasinates the President?

Perhaps, you are like me and the mere thought of this makes you shudder. However, we need to wake up to this reality and danger. In the past couple of months, one man went to the pentagon with a gun because of his hate for the government; another man flew his plane into the federal [...]

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Does Condeming the Lives of Others Make People More Likely to Be Immoral?: Mark Souder, Ted Haggard, and Rent Boys

This past week, conservative Republican, Mark Souder resigned when the affair with his staff member became public. He becomes the most recent tragedy in the story of the Religious Right and the crusade for family values. The situation is ironic, because Souder was someone who fought against sex education in favor of abstinence only education, [...]

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Practices of Prayer Through Yoga

When someone begins to speak of the spiritual elements of Yoga or meditation, some automatically label them a hippy or perhaps “out there”. However, it is so important to realize the practical implications of how yoga and meditation can be used for spiritual strength and growth. I am recent to the practice of yoga and meditation in my own life. I grew up in a tradition where it wasn’t really talked about much. Much more was made of the mind and belief, than the spirit and essence. Neither emphasis is wrong; however, both are needed to have a vibrant spiritual life.

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When Our Greatest Strength Becomes Our Greatest Weakness

In our Ancient Civilizations Class, we just finished studying about Julius Caesar. It was stated that his greatest strength, his courage and independence, was also his greatest weakness-which ultimately led to his demise. Somehow, this seems to be the case with most of us in our lives. We have certain individual strengths which allow us [...]

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Why We Need To Be Vigilant Yet Careful to Speak of Persecution: Franklin Graham Dropped as Speaker from Pentagon Prayer Event

Today, I was researching some about the religiously persecuted around the world. Some of the stories shock us, sadden us, and give us a great desire to do something to change it. For example, in places like Iran where people can still be killed for converting to a different faith. To places like North Korea [...]

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How the Resurrection Makes Us One With God, the World, and All Humanity

2000 years ago, the resurrection changed everything about the way Christians see God, death, life, and redemption. It also changed the world; it changed the course and direction of the world-from death to life. Somehow, it also changed the way that we interact with humanity and the world-through the lens of the kingdom of God. [...]

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Why We Celebrate Palm Sunday

I have never quite understood the celebration of Palm Sunday. After all, weren’t many of the people worshipping Jesus on Palm Sunday the same ones calling for his death a week later? Wasn’t the whole premise of their worship based on a distorted view of the message of Jesus? In my Ancient Civilizations class, we [...]

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When We Become the Eucharist

Anyone who has spent any time in the church is familiar with the Eucharist or communion. In Christianity, we take the bread and wine because of the deep, powerful significance Christ put on it right before his death and resurrection. As we take in the bread and body of the Lord, we become one with [...]

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Emerging Ourselves in the Death of Jesus This Season

We love focusing on life and resurrection, but it is naturally painful for us to focus on death, agony, and seeming defeat. This time of year, whatever term you may call it by, was made for that purpose though. It is a time for us to go into the deep places, the sorrowful places, and [...]

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Our New Jim Crow Laws: Immigrants and Health Insurance

When the congressman from my home state shouted out “You Lie” to Obama, he wasn’t doing so to defend veterans, help out the needy in the community, or protect the religious or political liberties of his constituents. No, he was yelling out in his childish rant to protest the mere thought that a certain group [...]

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The Art of Praying For Our Enemies: A Practice of Personal Transformation

Liberty University recently released a campaign to “adopt a liberal” in order to pray for them. While they may have had a good intention through the way of viewing the world, it came across to the rest of the society as very paternalistic and judgmental. The question is: what did Jesus mean when he said [...]

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Do You Have a Quiet Place to go in Your Mind?

Our minds never seem to stop moving. Perhaps, in the times of the hunters and gatherers much more was done from simple instinct. But in 21st century western society, our minds seem to be in constant chaos and in constant traffic. Perhaps, I am speaking from personal experience on this. But, I can’t help believing [...]

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Does Christ Change Our Personalities?

It seems at times that the focus of modern day Christianity is to simply take these character traits and use them for a positive purpose. You now need to be aggressive and forceful about the cause of Christianity. Your anxious tendencies can now be used to be worried about the problems of the world and in the church. Your roughness can make you a “warrior” for Christ.

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-My Heroes

The people who accomplished the most in history were not the ones who lived lives of ease, comfort, and luxury. They were the people who were willing to sacrifice everything for the sake of a cause. Perhaps, we are not all called to live this type of existence. However, I can’t help believing we all need to take a step further in that direction. Living a life of sacrifice for the sake of justice and peace does not sound appealing at first. But out of the darkness comes a light too wonderful and great to even begin to imagine.

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-The Progressive and Subversive Voice of Jesus (The Rich Man and Lazarus)

In the midst of Christian leaders lining up with the elite and making themselves the allies of the rich and powerful, we lose the sense of the very subversive voice of Jesus, a voice that spoke out for the poor, A voice that spoke out for the oppressed, outcast, and downtrodden. One of the most [...]

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-Blessed Are the Deceptive?

My Ancient Civilization students are making plays based on one of Aesop’s fables. The students are supposed to take the moral of the fable and create a modern day example of the fable. One of the groups created a play which really got me thinking. It went like this: “ There once was a rich [...]

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-Standing for the Pro-Life Position to a Dark and Cruel Fault

Recently, a call was made to the Vatican to excommunicate doctors in Brazil who approved an abortion of two fetuses carried by a 9 year old girl who was raped by her stepfather. The head of bioethics at the Vatican refused to condemn the doctors and said their position was justified. Many deeply conservative pro-life [...]

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Creative Justice: Avatars and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

This past week, I saw something very interesting in the news. A group of Palestinians were dressed up as Avatars to non-violently protest a wall the Israeli government is planning to put up in their territory. Ironically, it worked and Israel adapted their plans and changed the location of the wall. This creativity is something [...]

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Obama Has It Backwards: We Need to Reduce Military Spending

“A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war: “This way of settling differences is not just.” This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation’s homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into veins of people normally humane, of sending [...]

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My First Quaker Experience: Preserving the Essence of the Christian Faith

I went to a small town about 4 ½ hours away this past weekend called Monteverde. It was started by a group of American Quakers who fled from the United States in the 1950’s to escape persecution for their pacifist views. Raquel and I decided to go to their small meeting, and we experienced a [...]

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Lessons on Prayer From an Agnostic Meth Addict

When you pray do you really feel like it is going to be answered? When you want something in life do you really think it is going to happen? Sometimes, it seems we fall onto either extreme of the whole issue of prayer and belief. We over-emphasize the sovereignty of God and so prayer essentially [...]

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Why the Christian Community Should Support the Repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell

There comes a time when we have to realize that many of our old ways of doing things are archaic and actually, unjust. This is the case of the current, don’t ask don’t tell policy. We live in a nation which is supposed to stand up for the rights of the individual and minorities. We [...]

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Why the Christian Community Should Support the Repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell

There comes a time when we have to realize that many of our old ways of doing things are archaic and actually, unjust. This is the case of the current, don’t ask don’t tell policy. We live in a nation which is supposed to stand up for the rights of the individual and minorities. We [...]

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Why the Christian Community Should Support the Repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell

There comes a time when we have to realize that many of our old ways of doing things are archaic and actually, unjust. This is the case of the current, don’t ask don’t tell policy. We live in a nation which is supposed to stand up for the rights of the individual and minorities. We [...]

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What Christians Can Learn From Freud

This past week, I was teaching my students in my Psychology class the basics of Freudian thought-related to the Id, Ego, and Superego. For those not familiar with Freud, his belief that most of neurosis, mental anguish, and anxiety come down to a basic struggle between the three areas of our mind, the id which [...]

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-The Times We Need to Stop Singing Praise Songs

I am a musician at a church, and I love singing the worship songs. However, I am sure I am not the only one who feels that sometimes the words do not seem to be congruent or honest to my actual feelings or the reality of the way my life is going. “I will follow [...]

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-Why Meditating 15 Minutes a Day Can Change Your Life

In my personal life, I often find it very hard to stay still. My mind is always moving, thinking. In many ways, society programs us for this. However, with all the focus away from stillness, our society seems to be less and less at peace. Perhaps, if we can learn to slow down we could [...]

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-Will We Follow Beck and Rush or Jesus Christ?

If there was any doubt that the beliefs of Christianity are irreconcilable with the beliefs of the ultra right in the nation, Limbaugh helped make it nice and clear for us this past week with his horrific comments about the situation in Haiti. For many reasons Christianity in the U.S. has become identified with the [...]

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Will We Follow Beck and Rush or Jesus Christ?

If there was any doubt that the beliefs of Christianity are irreconcilable with the beliefs of the ultra right in the nation, Limbaugh helped make it nice and clear for us this past week with his horrific comments about the situation in Haiti. For many reasons Christianity in the U.S. has become identified with the [...]

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-Why You Still Give When It Doesn’t Feel Promising

About 2 ½ years ago, I went down to Haiti to work in an orphanage. It was quite an eye opening experience for me. The kids were amazing and beautiful and filled with more love than I’ve ever seen. However, looking back, I feel there was also at least a little bit of an overwhelming [...]

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