Safe Haven

"[X] is very damaging to the witness of the church." Put anything in there you like. It could either be true, or it might be false. I know what's even more damaging: not being in the Church. This is the thing that drives me crazy about a statement like this from an evangelical: the referent "church" is empty; the speaker knows what she means. Perhaps some of the hearers think they know. The reality, however, is that there is nothing visible to which "church" actually refers. At a practical level, imagine your exhaustion at having to answer for every single person who claims the name of Christ. Imagine believing that major questions of ethics--even dogma--were matters of liberty! And then, gentle reader, do you dare wonder why religious non-affiliation is on the rise? When people get tired of searching for truth, sometimes they give up. Frankly, without a way to know that any one thing is supernaturally revealed,--or a matter of morals connected to ...

I think that one of the things that happens when things are going well is that we become overconfident. No wonder there are so many "influencers" about! If you've got money, and something to say, a platform is nearly inevitable. In the end, it won't matter if what you say is true; someone will give you money and affirmation, even if you should be washing your own face, instead of telling people to wash theirs. I lost a certain clarity to my life, or at least the shape of what I thought it would be. I wasn't prepared for how invested I was in the certain shape of a dream. Maybe I'm trying to say that I've been an idolater, though it didn't seem that way at the time. It's easy to take joy in the pleasures of life when the blessings seem to rain down. You can talk a great game about understanding how fleeting it all is, too. How easy it is to even extol my alleged single-minded devotion to God! Then a true cross comes. True suffering that can...