I like to share my thoughts on theological and philosophical topics. I am also a student working through an MDiv and occasionally share papers on the blog. If you have any questions on a paper or blog post, send me a message! I’d love to talk with you about it.
Pentecost and the Color Line
Pentecost was never just about speaking in tongues. In this thought-provoking exploration of William J. Seymour and the Azusa Street Revival, discover how the Holy Spirit was poured out to heal racial division, unite the nations, and form one family in Christ. A compelling call for the church to recover the true purpose of Pentecost: reconciliation, justice, and Spirit-filled unity.
Why It’s Okay to Practice the Way
John Mark Comer’s latest work Practicing the Way is a prophetic call to the Western Protestant traditions of faith that we can no longer ignore the aching need to have an embodied faith that turns professing Christians into practicing disciples. However, many within Reformed Evangelical circles have taken issue with Comer’s book, especially concerning his language on mysticism, his emphasis on spiritual formation, and his hermeneutic on the life of Jesus. As a supporter of Comer’s work, this article is my attempt to evaluate Practicing the way against Reformed Author and Scholar Kevin DeYoung, who published a critique of the book.
Suffering is a Gift
What would it look like if the driving factor in our choices was not to avoid suffering?
Being betrayed by the emotionally immature? That would be an opportunity to display grace and loyalty, not an offense to recover from.
Turning the other cheek when someone slaps you in the face? That would be a chance to pronounce a blessing on them, not hit them back.
Why? Because we’re delighted to suffer—if our suffering has even the slightest potential of drawing someone else into closer orbit with the ways of Jesus.
On Sex and Marriage: Don’t Promise What the Bible Does Not.
The increasingly liberal message in the 80s and 90s was that men and women are freer and fulfilled by having numerous, diverse sexual encounters. Instead of correcting this false assumption and dismantling it, purity culture tried to offer the same fulfillment using sex but giving a different formula: “You will be freer and fulfilled by sex if you abstain until marriage.” This never works in any context with any cultural or moral issue. You cannot try to promise the same things secular culture promises but offer a different formula, because the truth of Christianity is that everything the secular world promises is often meaningless and finite. Christianity reveals a greater, fulfilling, and eternal promise that in relationship with our Creator, God, we have everything we want and need. Secular culture will never understand this, so it will never offer it. That’s why people who don’t understand what it means to have a relationship with Jesus are always trying to find fulfillment in something else. Disguising secular fulfillment by clothing it in Christian moral terms and boundaries does not help: If anything, it damages the idea of true Christian faith in the long run.
