The UmBlog

There is a lovely chap on Twitter, Blake Chastain , who I first heard use the appellation "exvangelical." He even has a podcast about it. I find it a helpful term and want to explore it in my own experience. This has been a long evolution and I will use my blog to look back on my spiritual journey out of white american evangelicalism. I have written 359 book reports. I have read more books than I have written about, but I read a great deal on genocide, inspired by the atrocities recorded in the bibilical story of Joshua, conqueror of Canaan. In his story, his god tells him to have no mercy and kill men, women and children. This was explained to me by my evangelical leaders that it was more merciful to kill the kids then raise them as their own. via GIPHY Lesson learned, evangelical cognitive dissonance is real. To be widely read is dangerous in a small minded theological construct. Studying genocide makes such absurd explanations even harder to swallow. Even then I found...

The gospel of Matthew has this well known tirade of exasperation against the religious leaders who opposed Jesus. It's sometimes referred to as the "seven woes." He's furious with their religious duplicity. We get famous metaphors from this like "straining a gnat and swallowing a camel," and "you all are like white-washed tombs, pretty on the outside, full of rot on the inside." One of the outstanding admonishments is, v.23 "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for you tithe mint and dill and cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law, justice and mercy and faith; these you ought to have done, without neglecting the others." In other words, the religious leaders were too busy with weighing out their spices for the church to be bothered with justice, mercy, and faith. Their priority was retaining the power they enjoyed over serving others, as God's representatives. Jesus calls them actors (the translation of ...

On Thursday, press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders endorsed this interpretation of Trump’s remarks, saying that “I don’t think the term the president used was strong enough...it took an animal to stab a man 100 times and decapitate him and cut his heart out,” referring to a particularly gruesome murder committed by MS-13 gang members. - Vox We once kept runner ducks in our backyard. I woke one morning to let the ducks out of their overnight shelter and found the plywood and cinder blocks shoved aside. The ducks had been killed but not eaten. It was possible a fox, a fisher cat, or a bobcat. It's as if the ducks were killed for fun by the predator. What the predator did not do was arrange a display of the victimized ducks. Unlike MS-13, their hearts were not cut out. Unlike some Mexican cartels, the victims were not hung on an overpass as a warning to others. Animals are not intelligent enough to "send a message" to rivals or snitches.Animals do not keep body parts o...

Jesus said. “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, 19 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” Luke 4:18 The United States is known as a Christian nation. The united States has the highest incarceration rate in the world . Both of these statements cannot be true at the same time. Cuba and Russia and China have lower incarceration rates than the US. Post genocide Rwanda has a lower incarceration rate than the US. Racially-divided South Africa has 1/2 the incarceration rate of the US. Post-Christian Europe, the bogeyman of fundamentalist preachers has 1/6 the incarceration rate of the US. Muslim Egypt has 1/6 the incarceration rate of the US. Muslim Indonesia has 1/6 the incarceration rate of the US. Non-religious Japan has 1/10th the incarceration rate of the US. Muslim Pakistan...

Three of the things I'm really grateful for from my experience in the Vineyard churches was the emphasis on the unconditional love of God, the grace of God, and the loving, fatherly heart of God. These principles undid a lot of the spiritual damage I had acquired in my upbringing. However, one of the things I had to hold with cognitive dissonance was the condition placed on God's unconditional love. Here are a few analogies I was told to explain this. It's a free gift, you just need to unwrap it. It's a blank check, you just need to sign it. Will you consent to be loved? I turned to Calvinism for a while to break this log jam in my brain. Today's Calvinists will say something along the lines of, God knew I would unwrap/sign/consent from eternity past so I really had no choice it was all God's work. But Calvinism creates so many more problems than it solves and I eventually dropped it. One of the pushbacks from non-Calvinists is the analogy of divine ...

Today is April 2nd and 5 inches of snow fell in my yard today. At least half of it has melted away this afternoon. An April snow storm does not mean that global warming is a hoax, played by mean scientists on poor Americans. But I think an analogy would be helpful for dubious Americans. The Dow Jones Industrial Average is used as a representative gauge of the economy over many decades. Today the DJIA fell 458 points. However, that is only a 2% drop. In ten years the stock market index has grown over 300%. The impact of 2% on one day is massive for someone just starting out, but for someone who has been invested over 10 years, it's merely a hiccup. Today's spring snowfall is like today's drop in the stock market. The temperature of both fell, but the upward trend is undeniable. A heated up stock market can be a good thing for most people. A heated up planet can be a good thing for a few people. But for most people a hotter planet will be a bad thing. And it's n...

farewell discourse John 15:9 “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love . 10 If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love . 11 I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. 12 My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you . 13 Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. 14 You are my friends if you do what I command. 15 I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. 16 You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit—fruit that will last—and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you. 17 This is my command: Love each other . Unique to John's gospel is the upper room discourse. As I prayed t...