A friend of mine recently found out that her husband has been doing drugs behind her back for four years. The drugs have opened the door to all kinds of betrayal and hurt: lying, adultery, personality change, and absence. As she and I talked together on the beach in the perfect California...

Aristotle wrote, “it is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.” When I think about this quote I imagine a soldier in war, walking through enemy territory naively smelling the flowers. Ideas are dangerous things and to entertain and constantly...

In August of 2011 I wrote a post entitled, “Sex and Eschatology.” In that post I essentially tried to articulate that sex is a biblical type. It functions typologically as a pointer to the eschatological joy of believers. If you are interested in how I articulated this check out...

Like a raging fire within me, I despised my past with a vitriolic hatred. Sinful pleasures had betrayed me and I stood in my vineyard surveying its rotten crop. Mistakes proved plenteous and my past could never be revised. What is to be done with the remains of my now-barren life? I’m not...

As a good Protestant I was always taught to be grateful for, but suspicious of the first, fiercely devoted to the second, and un-threatened by the third. When Tradition is found wanting it can be remolded; it is malleable where the other two are not. Scripture is cast in stone. It does not...

My friend Adria Murphy writes for me this week, with thoughts on materialism, treasure, and the wisdom of Wendell Berry: The jewelry store in my mother’s neighborhood was going out of business. Sale prices intended to empty the shop of its shining inventory, handwritten on construction...

Part of the postmodern (or post-postmodern if you’re so inclined) predicament is the amount of time we have to be neurotic and even narcissistic. I firmly believe that if I were not living in a society where I have ample time to let my thoughts wander, if I were so focused on the tasks...

Note: This review was written before professional basketball player Jason Collins came out as gay today in Sports Illustrated. I saw the movie 42 tonight, and I have to say, I kind of enjoyed it. Yes, I know it was extremely sentimental at some points. During certain scenes I could have sworn...

I’m nearly halfway through the first college course I’ve ever taught at Lincoln Christian University (the Las Vegas extension). Since the course is on Galatians, which is what my PhD research at the University of St Andrews under Prof. N. T. Wright focuses on, I thought it might be...

“At this point the reader who desires to follow us is expressly begged to discard, as far as he possibly can, any conceptions he may have formed of Pauline doctrine. Among all the innumerable Christians of the various churches, who believe that they share Paul’s views, there is to-day no...

Sometimes I like to read a popular book, a book that everyone is reading—so that I can know what everybody is talking about and, maybe, join in the conversation. So a couple weeks ago I read The Fault in Our Stars—the latest young adult novel from author John Green. The book—about two...