Posts Tagged ‘religion’
Confessions of a Religious Asshole
Yesterday I got one of those comments on my blog. You know, one of the ones where horror turns to unintentional hilarity and then disbelief. One of those comments so bizarrely WRONG that you don’t know quite how to respond to it. I cringed, then I laughed, then I tore it up into a dozen…
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 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…
Read MoreBut Here I Am
When I was a kid, I loved hearing testimonies at church. Testimonies were the stories folks told of how they got saved, the tales of a life from before they were born again. In my sheltered world, these testimonies were some of the most exciting and scandalous things I’d ever heard. The best ones involved…
Read MorePerhaps Love Bakes a Cake
It is a culture war that has raged in churches and courtrooms, in parades and fast food places. Now in the most bizarre turn of all, the “gay marriage” battle is being fought in bakeries and restaurants across the country. While many Christians see this as a disturbing indicator of mounting persecution, I see it…
Read MoreThe Problem with 'Church'
We have a problem. “Church.” I hear this word a lot, but lately it seems that we’re mostly talking past each other. Words only work as long as we can agree on a shared definition. The problem with “church” is that it means so many different things: The global body of believers in Jesus through all…
Read MoreCenterfold Church
Sometimes you forget you are a Bride. On Sunday mornings you trade your wedding gown for the perfect skin of a magazine model. Produced, choreographed, airbrushed, packaged, sold for consumption. The countdown timer signals the bass drop and with a practiced smile you self-consciously raise your hands (for maximum visual impact). Sometimes you forget you are…
Read MoreYou Can Be Free
“Brothers and sisters, you can be free!” The words came fast and rushed up from inside my heart. I hurried to write them down, driving on the freeway scrawling nearly-unintelligible phrases on the nearest scraps of paper I could find. That was a month ago. Now I’m sitting here on this cold Wednesday morning when…
Read MoreThe Lily and the Storm
It seems that every new season brings another round of fisticuffs in our nation’s debate about marriage. Inevitably there are strong voices on all sides of the conversation, and I find myself sitting here overwhelmed with the noise of it all. But last week, as the voices escalated once again, a friend sent me these…
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