I went to film school before I went to seminary. In film school, I learned about the “Hero’s Journey,” a framework for talking about stories, popularized by Joseph Campbell. The “Journey” starts with the call to adventure, followed by the rejection of the call, and so on. While I was watching a movie last week,…

Last month was Pride month. Rainbow flags sprouted up everywhere, as did Christians who bemoaned the selection of the rainbow as a symbol. Many complain, “They stole the rainbow from God!” and try to “reclaim” the rainbow to make it symbolize what the Bible says. That becomes more difficult on a closer reading of the…

The parable of the talents has always bothered me. If you’re not familiar with it, in Luke 19 Jesus tells the story of a nobleman who goes on a trip and gives ten of his servants, by my math, almost $500,000 each and tells them to do business with it until he gets back. One…

If you happen to turn on your television or computer (or even open your newspaper or advertising mailer), you’re likely to see advertisements of people who are happy because they purchased the latest Thing – a new car, a new truck, new prescription medicine, a new streaming service, a dating app, even a hamburger and…

I recently had a meeting that I was very anxious about. I worried I had done something wrong and was going to be in trouble. I played and replayed different things I wanted to say in my head. As I headed for the meeting, I could feel the adrenaline making my heart pump faster and…

I was writhing in fury in the balcony of a Colorado Springs megachurch one Saturday night in 2013. I gripped my wife’s hand tightly. It was probably good that we were sitting in the balcony because I have never wanted to punch a preacher more than I did that night. I had spent the past…

A few weeks ago, Hemant Mehta, aka the Friendly Atheist, posted a story on Twitter about Christians behaving badly. He posted it with the comment: “Jesus has very bad taste in humans.” Many Christians would probably agree that Jesus has bad taste, including the apostle Paul, who described himself as the chief of sinners; and…

Because of Psalm 14:1 (“Fools say in their hearts, ‘There is no God’”) there are jokes about April Fools’ Day being “Atheist Day.” The problem is, the psalmist likely had no concept of the modern idea of atheism. Ironically, the earliest Christians were called atheists because they didn’t worship the gods of the nations around…

I used to not care much for God’s justice. That’s because I thought of justice like Tom Sawyer’s Aunt Polly. In “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer,” Tom’s cousin Sid accidentally breaks a sugar bowl while Aunt Polly is out of the room. When she returns, she assumes Tom broke the sugar bowl and wallops him…

At my church, we pray the Lord’s Prayer every single Sunday. It is the same words every week. The Lord’s Prayer is part of both my morning and evening prayers, when I pray them. To some, this repetition may seem to fly in the face of Jesus’ teaching in Matthew 6:7 against using “vain repetitions”…