Spirituality
We Had Hoped
Silence. Then suddenly, a breath. Cold air rushing into empty lungs. Grave clothes abandoned on a stone slab. An explosion of earth-shaking light. Hardened soldiers’ knees buckling. Trumpet blasts and angels singing and sunrise. Silence. Then the creaking of a boulder shifting. A cave opening. A dead man walking out of his grave more alive…
Read MoreGod is Dead
God is dead, and we killed Him. With politics and religion, with rage and fear, with wood and nails and fists we tore apart the body of the God and left Him to hang alone covered in blood and spit and shame.
Read MoreWhat Nobody Ever Told Me About Jesus
I’ve been wearing my heart on my sleeve around here, all torn up. It’s no secret that there’s been a lot of anger, swirling confusion, throbbing frustration. I’ve metaphorically stomped around the house slamming doors, yelling till my throat was raw. Mostly yelling about the Church. I want to talk about this again a bit…
Read MoreIn Search of a Better Gospel
“I don’t know whether or not I’m an evangelical anymore. Is there a BuzzFeed quiz for that?” I tweeted that a month ago, half-joking. As it turns out, there is no simple quiz. Instead, there’s this bleeding disaster that has been throbbing for almost two weeks now — lines in the sand, farewells, angry words,…
Read MoreThe Correct Theology Didn’t Help These Guys
Ed Cyzewski is one of those people who writes the words I wish I could. He has some really important things to say to people who want to follow Jesus, through all the doubt and confusion anyway. I can hardly wait to read his new book, but in the meantime he’s written a few words…
Read MoreI Don't Know If I'm a Christian Anymore
I thought I had writer’s block. I thought the words had left me a week or two ago. Every time I tried to write, my mind seemed like an empty room. I was wrong. I wasn’t out of words. Only out of comfortable words, neat words that flow from one cleanly-formatted paragraph to the next…
Read MoreSomewhere On This Coast or the Other
The words that you are about to read were penned seven years ago, during a pilgrimage to Portland. I was gratuitously plagiarizing Donald Miller’s search for God; God was kind enough to meet me on the West Coast despite my lack of originality. Today I am back in Portland for the first time since that pilgrimage.…
Read MoreI Don't Have My Shit Together
I don’t want to be a Christian writer, if it means writing from the heart and then hitting backspace until it feels safe again. I don’t want to be a Christian writer, if it means pretending that faith is something other than what it is – brutal, clumsy, fragile, ugly. I don’t want to be…
Read MoreThe First Day Toward Freedom
In now-abandoned corners of the internet I recently found some words from eight years ago. I was nineteen years old when I wrote them, living and working at a homeschool cult center, attending a fundamentalist baptist church. Reading these words now, it’s like peering inside the mind of a boy I hardly recognize –…
Read More7 Things I Wish the Church Knew About Me
I didn’t write these words, but they speak what I’ve often felt. They come from Meghan Ableson – a friend who has left the “church”, but hasn’t left the faith. What she says here matters. Listen. Dear Church, It’s coming up on one year since I left you. I grew up with you. I memorized…
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