Posts Tagged ‘faith’
I 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 MoreWhy I Haven't Left the Church
We keep talking about Church. What it is, and what it should be. Why we stay, and why we leave. I’ve shared with you the stories of many who have left, but today I want to share the story of somebody who stayed. I’m so grateful to Abbi for sharing her perspective. Make sure you…
Read MoreA Hundred Small Perfect Steps
“He watched with rapt attention while some teacher in Texas stood in front of a podium and broke faith into a hundred little steps. Kneel on your floor at the beginning of the day and pray. Do not move until you receive a word from God. Read your Bible three times every day. Memorize at…
Read More18 Things I'd Tell My 18-Year-Old Self
1. You want so badly to be cool. And that’s ok. But in a few years, you’ll realize that the people you admire are the humble ones. 2. Stop trying so damn hard to make God like you. He already does. 3. You’ll never be a perfect Christian, and all your frantic efforts are only…
Read MoreWhy We Left the Church (Our Stories)
We are an entire generation with the broken pieces of our religion scattered on the floor around us. We are the children who learned fake smiles too early, who found all the right answers dissatisfying, who know what it’s like to sit in a pew with our hearts a thousand miles away. For us, Sunday…
Read MoreSafely To Arrive At Home
“Here I raise my Ebenezer, Here by Thy great help I come And I hope by Thy good pleasure safely to arrive at home.” I can’t think of any better words to begin this story. This morning I was thinking about that old hymn while I was getting ready for work, about raising an Ebenezer to remember the work of…
Read MoreThe Day I Stopped Believing in God
By then, I was already having doubts. Sitting across the table from new friends who didn’t see any reason to believe in God, I had tried to explain to them why I did and why it mattered. But this was the real world, and in the real world “because the Bible says so” doesn’t always…
Read MoreWhy I Love Barack Obama
I keep having this dream. I’m at a park, or a convention, or at the White House, and he’s there too. I wait around for the chance to talk to him for a moment. When he sees me, I hug him. I tell him that even though I don’t like all his policies and stuff,…
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