A Preacher of Love

Friday, September 18, 2026

Father Richard reminds us that above all, the apostle Paul preached God’s inclusive love:   

Paul gives us a basis for loving all others as Christ has loved us. Paul offers a theological and solid foundation for human dignity and human flourishing that is inherent, universal, and indestructible by any evaluation, whether it be race, religion, gender, nationality, class, education, or social position. We now believe the reason this one man enjoyed such immense success in such a short time is that he gave human dignity back to a world that had largely lost it. One more god in Greece and Asia Minor would have meant little, but when Paul told shamed populations they were temples of the divine, this made hearts burn with desire and hope.   

The account of Pentecost in Acts 2:1–11 emphasizes that people from all over the world heard the Galileans speaking in the pilgrims’ individual languages after the descent of heavenly fire and wind. The theological message is clear: God loves everyone! God’s love and favor are both totally democratic and unmerited. This was meant to be the end of all exclusive and elitist religion. Sadly, it did not last long.    

One of the reasons Paul’s teachings had so much influence in Asia Minor was that he restored human dignity at a time when the region was a key source of enslaved people, women were considered the property of men, temple prostitution was a form of worship, and oppression and injustice toward poor and marginalized people were universal norms. Most of the world was not yet aware that human rights even existed. Paul shouts into this corrupt and corrupting empire, “One and the same Spirit was given to us all to drink!” (1 Corinthians 12:13). He utterly levels the playing field: “You, all of you, are sons and daughters of God in Christ Jesus … where there is no distinction between male or female, Greek or Jew, slave or free, but all of you are one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:26–28).   

This is quite amazing, considering the divided world at the time! In Paul’s estimation, the old world was forever gone, and a new world was born. This was surely impossible and frightening to some people, but utterly attractive and hopeful to the majority who had been given no dignity whatsoever. Who does not want to be told they are worthy and good? Who does not want their social shame taken away? No longer was the human body a cheap thing, degraded by slavery, or sexual, verbal, and physical abuse. Paul is saying, “You are the very temple of God.” Scholars now believe this is Paul’s supreme and organizing idea. Such an unexpected affirmation of human dignity began to turn the whole Roman Empire around. 

References: 
Adapted from Richard Rohr, Essential Teachings on Love, selected by Joelle Chase and Judy Traeger (Orbis Books, 2018), 90–92.  

Image credit and inspiration: Chris Chow, untitled (detail), 2020, photo, Roscoe Village, Coshocton, OH. Click here to enlarge image. Like threads pulled taut on a loom, we weave a bigger story only when we’re willing to let go of the pattern we thought we knew.

John Chaffee – Five on Friday, 9-18-2026

1.

“To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work.”

– Mary Oliver, American Poet

Isn’t this lovely!

How often do we go through the day without giving any attention to the people or things we claim matter most to us?

It is so very easy to start going through life on autopilot, especially the older we become.  This then living on autopilot becomes a substitute for actually paying attention, so it makes sense that it takes conscious and deliberate work.

I am curious what life events led Mary Oliver to write the quote above.

2.

“I hate, I despise your religious festivals;
    your assemblies are a stench to me.
Even though you bring me burnt offerings and grain offerings,
    I will not accept them.
Though you bring choice fellowship offerings,
    I will have no regard for them.
Away with the noise of your songs!
    I will not listen to the music of your harps.
But let justice roll on like a river,
    righteousness like a never-failing stream!“

– Amos 5:21-24, Minor Prophet of Israel

This is one of my favorite passages from the Hebrew Prophets.

It is not known by many, but I can remember the summer afternoon when I read it for the first time.

My jaw dropped.

It is utterly remarkable to remember that this passage from Amos is close to 2600 years old.  Amos, who was a farmer and not a “prophet” nor the “student of a prophet”, came to be known as one of Twelve Minor Hebrew Prophets.

What strikes me is how the Hebrew Prophets all beat us to the punch about what we need to fix.  We might believe that we see the hypocrisy and call it out first, but actually Amos did that already.

God is not in favor of boistrous, celebratory church services all the while we forego or excuse ourselves from the task of making justice happen in the world.  Amos 5 is a profound passage because it tells us that we cannot fool God.  God sees through our loud expressions of piety and calls us back to meaningful change in the world as the thing that most gives God praise.

3.

“Above all, do not lie to yourself. A man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point where he does not discern any truth either in himself or anywhere around him, and thus falls into disrespect towards himself and others.”

– Fyodor Dostoevsky, Russian Author

It is vitally important that we always tell ourselves the stark truth.  If we give into deceptions and lying to ourselves, it is directly connected to our own downfall.

4.

“Few are guilty, but all are responsible.”

– Abraham Joshua Heschel, Jewish Philosopher

This actually echoes a statement made by Dostoevsky in The Brothers Karamazovthat we are “responsible to all, for all.”

This past week I was teaching a college level philosophy class, and the topic of the day was Ethics/Sin/Shalom.  We chatted through various aspects of Jewish Ethics and the students found it rather interesting.

So can I share some of it with you?

Mitzvah are good deeds that help the world to heal or grow.  Included in this category is also what we might call, “good try.”  Building an orphanage is certainly a Mitzvah, but so is trying to build an orphanage (even if it didn’t come to fruition) since you gave it a “good try” to help the world to heal or grow.

Averah are evil deeds that harm the world or tear it down.  Fascinatingly enough, this is also where “useless or pointless deeds” are categorized.  It is not a good deed to be neutral, it is considered an evil deed!  Playing video games all day or getting stoned are not “neutral” actions that “don’t hurt anyone.”  They are actions that do nothing to help the world to heal or grow, and for that reason “neutral” deeds are evil deeds.

Just think about the parable of the talents, when the servant takes his money and buries it in the ground.  When the master comes back and asks for the money again, and sees that he did nothing with it, he is called “wicked, lazy, and worthless.”

It is no virtue to stand by and do nothing.  To do nothing is tantamount to doing evil.  Sure, not all are guilty for the evil that happens in the world, but we are all responsible to help the world to heal and grow from tragedy, sin, and destruction.

5.

“When we take ourselves too seriously, we are at the risk of taking other things, including God, too lightly.”

– Father James Martin, Jesuit Priest

Yep, I’m guilty of this.  I am certainly guilty of taking myself too seriously.  Hopefully, as I have grown older, my ego has less control and I am more quick to laugh at myself for my own idiocy.

The other day our daughter asked, “What should we watch tonight on the couch?”

My reply was, “Is It Lava?”

For those who don’t watch fun, family oriented TV shows, that was my brain accidentally combining the Netflix shows of “Is It Cake?” with “The Floor is Lava.”

In response, the right thing to do is to laugh, and not take myself so seriously.

Changing the Paradigm of Power-Over

Thursday, September 17, 2026

Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you. 
—Ephesians 4:32 

The theologian Kat Armas describes how Paul’s belief in Christ’s presence in each person upended cultural hierarchies that strictly defined power and authority: 

When we encounter the household codes in the New Testament, we see a [patriarchal] framework that’s already deeply embedded in the culture. Those writing and receiving these letters [from Paul] were grappling with how followers of Jesus should engage with and respond to this cultural structure. 

Take Ephesians 5, which says that wives must submit to their husbands [5:22]. But just before that, it says that all believers, men and women, are to submit to one another out of reverence for Christ [5:21]. Mutual submission was a radical shift from the Roman household codes that demanded strict hierarchy, with only one—the father—having ultimate authority. Ephesians 5 disrupts this by speaking to every member of the household. Instead of granting authority to one man who speaks and acts for his household, the Christian household codes grant each member agency and “the right to hear and act for themselves.” [1]  

[Paul] was a complicated figure, toggling between supporting empire and resisting it. He wasn’t fully aligned with the imperial structures, but he also wasn’t entirely outside them. His writings reveal both a longing for liberation and dutiful adherence to the constraints of his world. To engage Paul’s work with honesty and care is to resist the urge to reduce him to either a revolutionary or a mere enforcer of empire, recognizing instead a man shaped by both revelation and limitation. 

Paul’s teachings about the role of women in the early churches reflect this tension: 

In 1 Corinthians 7:4, Paul writes that a husband’s body belongs to his wife, a shocking statement for his time. In a world where a husband had nearly unchecked control over his wife’s body, Paul is saying no, this power is shared. This reveals the egalitarian nature of the kingdom of God, where authority is redefined. And yet, in 1 Corinthians 11:5–10, it seems Paul is upholding gendered practices by instructing women to cover their heads while praying, grounding his reasoning in creation order. 

Perhaps the most powerful challenge to the imperial order comes in Galatians 3:28, where Paul declares that in Christ there is no male or female, no slave or free—a radical vision that upends the social hierarchies of his time. If the household is a microcosm of the state, what kind of world might take shape if families lived as if this were true? It would be something unrecognizable to Rome, something that threatened the very foundations of its rule….  

[Paul’s] teachings suggest a kind of shared power within the family—a power-with not a power-over.  

Power-with is mutual. It requires listening, respecting, and honoring the dignity of each person, no matter their age or status…. Power-with creates a culture of empathy and co-operation, not domination through fear or force. 

References: 
[1] Beth Allison Barr, The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth (Brazos Press, 2021), 34. 

Kat Armas, Liturgies for Resisting Empire: Seeking Community, Belonging, and Peace in a Dehumanizing World (Brazos Press, 2025), 75–76, 77. Watch Kat Armas in the Daily Meditations author interview.  

Image credit and inspiration: Chris Chow, untitled (detail), 2020, photo, Roscoe Village, Coshocton, OH. Click here to enlarge image. Like threads pulled taut on a loom, we weave a bigger story only when we’re willing to let go of the pattern we thought we knew.

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Our Final Authority: The Bible or Jesus?

BRADLEY JERSAKSEP 16

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Our final authority

It was one of my classic last-minute cancellations. A church whose pastor and elders had invited me to speak on prayer found themselves awkwardly withdrawing their invitation. The pastor had moved on and the interim minister had done some digging. He was offended that my church had nothing in our statement(s) of faith about the Bible. That was because our doctrinal statements were the Nicene Creed and the Apostles’ Creed. I told him that I was not comfortable with creating statements of faith or redacting the great creeds. In the end, what he explicitly demanded was this confession, similar to many confessions across modern Evangelicalism:

“We believe that the Bible is the inspired Word of God, 
infallible and inerrant in all it affirms 
and our final authority for faith and practice.”

My inability to make that confession was the deal-killer … and just as well, I suppose. But so unnecessary.

Our final authority… there’s the rub. Debates and definitions of inspiration aside, what I found myself balking at was sola scripture … i.e. the “final authority” of Scripture alone. The Bible itself makes no such claim and in fact, within its pages, we see quite contrary claims. I’ll dispense with my long-form arguments for now. 

In the end, my confession is that:

Jesus Christ alone is my final authority, 
whose will is discerned through the interdependent witness 
of the Body of Christ, the testimony of the Scriptures 
and the illumination of the Holy Spirit.

At some point in my journey, final authority was transferred from the Bible to the Christ in my faith and practice, my theology and my ethics (though I still struggle daily to surrender to Jesus’ authority).

Toppling dominos

What I didn’t expect was how that shift would inevitably and dramatically topple other dominos. When your faith is led by who Jesus is rather than what the Bible says, you’re in for a wild ride. Lest my dear Baptist mother becomes worried, I’m not advocating for the careening bumper cars of “anything goes” post-Christian faithlessness. Note that my “Christ alone” proposal doesn’t ditch the Bible. It merely subordinates the Scriptures to the eternal Word-made-flesh and then welcomes both the Spirit of God and people of God to explore how the Bible points to Christ.

What theological shifts follow when Jesus is our final authority?

The WHY may come first. When Christ is our final authority, we must interpret the character of God through the Incarnation. When Christ is our final authority, we must read the human words of Scripture through the divine revelation of Christ’s life. When Christ is our final authority, Scripture passages can no longer be read in isolation to describe God’s nature or works in ways that don’t align with the nature and works of Christ or his unique and infallible unveiling of Abba. As long I took the Bible as my final authority, I could and did make that error all the time. Having stepped back, I still see it regularly and probably continue to stumble on it more than I imagine.

All of the above leads me to think about what changed following my shift to Christ as the Alpha and Omega of revelation. Among these were my convictions about God’s nature, atonement theology and Sermon on the Mount living (including active nonviolence).

From the Bible to Jesus, from eternal hell to eternal life

But there’s one specific example I’m observing a lot as the decade winds up. I won’t posit this observation in absolute terms but … is it just me or does the shift from Scripture alone (biblicism) to Jesus alone also inevitably lead from “I believe in eternal conscious torment because the Bible says______” to “I believe in ultimate redemption because Jesus is_____”?

Isn’t the notion of eternal conscious torment utterly dependent on a particular set of Scriptures, isolated from the grand narrative and interpreted apart from the Christ-revealed character and intentions of God as ultimate Good and perfect Love? And isn’t the hope of ultimate redemption the inevitable telos of the (biblical) saga of the Christ, by whom, through whom and for whom all things were created, whose every enemy will be vanquished and whose kingdom shall reign without limits? Thus, with Christ as our supreme authority, our final end and our ultimate destiny, this beautiful hymn of ultimate redemption makes perfect sense (from Colossians 1)?

¹⁵ The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.¹⁶ For in him allthings were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; allthings have been created through him and for him.¹⁷ He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.¹⁸ And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy.¹⁹ For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him,²⁰ and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross. [my emphasis on all]

When Christ is recognized as our final authority, as the One who will deliver his kingdom over to the Father of all-in-all (1 Cor. 15), then the whole of Scripture will find its rightful place in humble service of its King and his kingdom. Hopefully, its interpreters will do likewise.

Wednesday, September 16, 2026

Theologian Richard Beck considers how the apostle Paul challenged the ancient world’s understanding of gift and grace as something one had to earn and repay:

Over the last two thousand years our definition of grace has flip-flopped and under­gone a 180-­degree reversal. Grace was once merited; today it is unmerited. Back then, grace was deserved, now it is undeserved.

So what happened? How did grace get flipped inside out? Answer: The apostle Paul…. Paul’s­ great accomplishment was starting the revolution of grace….

This was Paul’s ferocious contention that grace was given to ­those who did not deserve or merit the gift…. This view of grace flew in the face of all that was reasonable and sane. Gifts must not be wasted! But ­here was Paul suggesting that the unmerited nature of grace was precisely what made God’s gift so perfect. This was an audacious and unpre­cedented reversal, a complete inversion of the ancient imagination. This paradigm shift concerning our understanding of grace was Paul’s great legacy….

As Paul would provocatively announce, grace was given to us while we were enemies of God…. God had, in sharp contrast to the Roman elite, showered gifts upon the undeserving, ignoring our merit, worth, and desert. And it was precisely this incongruity between gift and recipient that made the gift so gracious and magnanimous. So perfect. That was the revolutionary heart of Paul’s message. And what was perverse and shocking for Paul’s audiences has become definitional for us. The entire modern world has been converted to Paul’s gospel of grace. Every­one has­ adopted Paul’s upside-­down definition of grace…. Grace is grace because we don’t deserve it.

Beck explains how the small churches or ekklesia that Paul founded were able to exist only because of this radically new understanding of grace:

Gathered around the message of grace, Paul’s churches were diverse collections of people from every conceivable walk of life and social strata. Rich and poor, Jew and gentile…. In a world divided by class conflict, religious prejudice, and ethnic animus, Christian communities tore down the wall of hostility that existed between social groups so that the single family of God—­pluralistic, multicultural, and diverse—­could emerge….

Grace, declared Paul, ignores hierarchies of worth. Grace destroys social rankings based upon value. In the eyes of God ­there are no inferior versus superior­ people.

Paul’s preaching about the incongruity of grace was social dynamite, blowing to smithereens every attempt to rank­ human persons on a scale of value and worth. In the hands of Paul, grace became a tool of social leveling, creating capacities for egalitarian and demo­cratic forms of social life….

Since Christ had welcomed the early Christians, unconditionally and irrespective of worth, they ­were called upon to extend that same unconditional welcome to each other. As Paul would ask of them, “Welcome each other, as Christ has welcomed you.” Despite their differences, grace had made them a ­family. No one would be honored or elevated over another. God had loved them all, fully and equally.

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Hello! I have a thing for trees. I am utterly captivated by them. There is something about standing beside a tree that has been growing for somewhere between 200 and 800 years that offers me perspective. About myself and the world that God sustains. The trees of which I am speaking are colossal in stature, towering above my comprehension of how they have come to be. And indeed, my curiosity of how they have developed holds me most spellbound. And how have they come to be what they are? Simply by remaining where they are, receiving the nourishment provided them.  Year after year. Without fanfare. Without striving. Without needing to prove anything. They do this silently. Faithfully. They have slowly become magnificent over the accumulated decades and centuries of time. Standing beside them, I find myself returning to Psalm 8:4: “What is mankind that you are mindful of them, human beings that you care for them?”

I am a vapor. To read those words in the spirit of shame can feel diminishing. But to imagine them in the context of being deeply known and loved brings me, somewhat counterintuitively, a keenly, abiding sense of liberation. To know that I am a vapor is to remember that I am not God—and therefore do not carry the weight of responsibility that God carries. I do not have to work to be wantable. I am able to exhale and imagine Jesus saying, “When you’re anxious, the answer is not, ‘Work harder.’ The answer is, ‘Come closer.’” Because God is God and I am not, I am able to become who he longs for me to become. There is a great sigh of relief in that. And I sense that sigh as I place my hand on a tree like the one you see here. Perhaps we are meant to become more like these trees—not in size or strength, but in our willingness to simply be where we are, rooted in the spaces God has given us, allowing time and faithfulness to shape us. Year after year after year. Becoming who we were created to be. And perhaps this is part of what it means to walk the path of oncoming beauty: trusting that God is at work in us even when we cannot yet see what we are becoming. Warmly, Curt

Tuesday, September 15, 2026

Father Richard Rohr considers how the apostle Paul identified within himself the many paradoxes that he taught:

After his conversion experience and in all of his letters, Paul seems to love and understand paradox. He teaches through contrast, comparison, and the overcoming of seeming contradictions. Those who read him superficially have almost always heard one of the sides as bad and the other good, but this is largely to miss his genius as a teacher. If one has not consciously struggled, and partly reconciled, these patterns inside of oneself, I think it is almost impossible to understand Paul.

The “language of the cross” (1 Corinthians 1:18) became Paul’s “philosopher’s stone,” his own template by which to evaluate and critique the meaning of reality. It allowed him to break through what seemed like order and logic to discover a new order, which he called “the hidden wisdom of God” (1 Corinthians 2:7). It could never be arrived at by mere study or intelligence, but only by surrender to communion, which he called faith.

He used a juridical word, “justification,” to describe that reunion. Now we might speak of ultimate validation, mirroring, healing, or “salvation.” But Paul knew that the only way this realignment would take place was through an ego-stripping experience that tore away our false and fabricated self and led us into a new self (Ephesians 2:15; Galatians 6:15), where all the contradictions could be absorbed and overcome. It had happened in him, and now he saw his life as “handing on this reconciliation” (2 Corinthians 5:18), which was always through the coincidence of opposites, called the cross.

Let’s just list some of the seeming dualisms that Paul loves to play with and try to reconcile: law and grace, flesh and Spirit, the old self and the new self, Adam and Christ, weakness and strength, foolishness and wisdom, works and mercy, exclusivity and inclusivity. The list goes on. In each case, Paul is describing something that has already been reconciled in him through his life conflicts and by a Larger Love.

It’s almost as if human consciousness was not ready to see this creative tension up to now. Churches have mostly quoted Paul’s letters on the side of structure, unwilling to see his clearly anti-structure opinions, many of which are quite dangerous to a religion that is primarily trying to create order in a disordered world. But neither Jesus nor Paul is especially concerned about order, niceness, or social control. They are concerned about transformation of persons and history and about using the very disorder of people’s lives to bring them to God. That is why both of them called it good news, and why it is a surprising and joyful discovery for any of us who are honest about our state.

What we largely have in Western religion today is bad news, an attempt to superimpose an impossible order on a world that God allows to be disordered, and in which God even uses the disorder to bring us all to Love. How could we miss or avoid such utter good news?

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Does Just Love Silently Endure Abuse? 09/14/2026 Wayne Jacobsen discusses a mis translation of one word that distorts the Gospel and may answer some of your questions……….. You’re never too young to pick up Just Love.A mother from Australia sent me that picture. It made me laugh. No, she isn’t really reading it, but the picture made me wish I had been that old spiritually when I was introduced to a Gospel that had love and justness at its center instead of sin and shame, albeit without the pink pajamas. How much different my life would have been if I’d focused on the transformation that comes from the lived experience of the Father’s love. Yesterday, Tobie and I conducted our fourth class on How Does Love Make this Right. The topic was How Does Love Respond to Injustice?  Does loving an offender mean allowing them to keep being the victim of their abuse? Does forgiveness negate the difficult consequences of someone else’s destructive behavior?These are important questions as we learn to live inside of his love, and remind us that Just Love is not a set of principles to apply to any specific situation. It’s a way of entering into the flow of God’s life through relationship, so that he can guide us through the complicated questions that arise in our lives. Of course, love making things right begins by redeeming us through whatever damage we may have suffered. We have to experience that before we can see how his love might lead us on the outside. So, don’t just run out seeking justice from others until God heals the damage done to our hearts and makes up for what others have done.  That needs to be very practical and can take some time. There are obvious exceptions here. When someone’s actions are violent, illegal, and harmful to yourself or others, get away immediately. Contact law enforcement to expose the problem and protect those who are in danger. I’m writing here about more interpersonal hurts. Once we see how God is at work in us, we will begin to sense how his love can work outside of us to make things right. That’s what I love about Just Love; it isn’t just about being kind and nice to everyone, but to become part of God’s restorative justice to whatever degree the offending party will allow. It is not resubjecting ourselves to others’ abuse in the name of love, unless God asks it of us as he did Jesus in the week of his passion. But that is extremely rare, and we do it at his leading, not others telling us to, and only for a higher purpose. An eye to redemption, however, frames our love inside the desires of a just God. Love and justice come together in him, and, honestly, principles won’t guide us here. As I wrote at the outset, what we need is the leading of the Spirit. This is an invitation into a journey of love, shaping us on the inside—untwisting justice in our own hearts, so that we can be part of his justice unfolding in the world.It doesn’t just ask what would love lead me to do, but more importantly, how is his Spirit leading me in that love? He may ask you to stay in a relationship that’s painful for a larger redemption, or he might lead you away to safety so you are no longer the victim of someone else’s selfishness or anger. But whatever he asks of you, you will have the strength and courage to follow him, however he may lead. Also, we got a wonderful review a couple of weeks ago at Mike Morell.org. Here are some excerpts I especially appreciated: Tobie realized something seismic had just been confirmed: the very word English-speaking Christianity has used for five centuries to translate the heart of the Gospel is unintelligible — even repellent — to the people the Gospel was meant to reach…It makes a case that is at once scholarly and devastating in its simplicity: the Greek word dikaiosynē, translated as “righteousness” in every major English Bible, is rendered as justice in every other language — German, Afrikaans, Spanish, French, Dutch. Every single one. The English deviation traces directly to the Norman Conquest of 1066, which severed English legal vocabulary from its Germanic roots, creating a religious word — “righteousness” — that conveyed personal moral status instead of right relationship, inner purity instead of just action, individual salvation instead of communal transformation…That’s the register of this book: personal, pastoral, luminous with grace, and quietly revolutionary..Tozer sensed it. N.T. Wright and Nicholas Wolterstorff have written about it in academic papers few will ever read. Just Love brings it home — not to theologians with PhDs, but to the “plain man and woman, the insignificant, the widow and the orphan, the poor and oppressed” for whom the justness of God was always intended…What changes when you read justice instead of righteousness? Everything. “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for justice.” “Seek first the justice of God.” “The Golden Rule” becomes the Golden Life — not a rule to follow, but a love to inhabit, overflowing into the world.For the last two years, I’ve enjoyed exploring the connection between living loved and God’s passion for justice in human affairs. I find two or three situations a day that invite me to think differently about what’s going on than I have in the past.

Two questions for reflection:

What contradiction in our own life — strength and weakness, staying and leaving, law and grace — have we tried to force a resolution to, rather than letting a Larger Love hold it unresolved?

Where have we asked God for a new law, a clear rule to follow, instead of the slower, harder call to let his Spirit lead us one situation at a time?

Sunday, September 13, 2026

Father Richard Rohr emphasizes how the teachings of the apostle Paul come from his experience of Christ living in him—and in all reality! 

In his letter to the Galatians, Paul describes his encounter with the risen Christ on the road to Damascus. He writes a most telling line: “God revealed his Son in me” (Galatians 1:16). This high degree of inner trust, introspection, and self-confidence was quite unusual during a time that was more extroverted and literal. In my opinion, this is why the first fifteen hundred years of Christianity did not make much of Paul. Except for the rare Augustine and many of the Catholic mystics and hermits, it took widespread literacy and the availability of the written word in the sixteenth century to move believers toward a more interior Christianity, both for good and for ill.  

Note Paul’s primary criterion for authentic faith: “Examine yourselves to make sure you are in the faith. Test yourselves. Do you acknowledge that Jesus Christ is really in you? If not, you have failed the test” (2 Corinthians 13:5). So simple it’s scary! Paul’s radical incarnationalism—Christ is present in us and in the cosmos—sets a strong standard. He knew that the Christ must first of all be acknowledged within before Christ can be recognized without.  

God must reveal God’s self in you before God can fully reveal God’s self to you. 

It’s important to remember that Paul is just like us in never knowing Jesus in the flesh. Like him, we only know the Christ through observing and honoring the depth of our human experience and gaining new eyes. When we can honor and receive our own moment of sadness or fullness as a gracious participation in the eternal sadness or fullness of God, we recognize ourselves as a member of the one universal body of Christ.  

Thus, Paul shows that we too can know Christ’s infinitely available presence through our own inner dialogue, or the natural law, which is “engraved on our hearts.” Quite daringly, he declares that even so-called pagans, “who do not possess the law … can be said to be the law” (see Romans 2:14–15). This is surely why he spoke to the well-educated Athenians of “The Unknown God … whom you already worship without knowing it” (Acts 17:23). Paul likely inherited this idea from the “new covenant” to God’s people: “I will place my law within them and write it upon their hearts” (see Jeremiah 31:31–33).  

Paul merely took incarnationalism—the divine in material form—to its universal and logical conclusions. We see that in his bold exclamation: “There is only Christ. He is everything and he is in everything” (Colossians 3:11). If I were to write that today, people would call me a pantheist (the universe is God), whereas I am really a panentheist (God lies within all things, but also transcends them), as were both Jesus and Paul. 

A Worldly Apostle

Monday, September 14, 2026

Public theologian Rachel Held Evans (1981–2019) describes how Paul used his education and background to spread the good news of Christ:  

Paul of Tarsus was a proud Jew, “circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews” (Philippians 3:5). A Pharisee and the son of a Pharisee, he knew and loved the Torah and maintained his Jewish identity in a pagan culture. He was also a Roman citizen and Greek, profoundly influenced by Hellenistic thought. Paul knew at least three languages—Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic—and himself possessed both a Jewish name, Saul, and a Greek and Roman name, Paul. 

Originally a persecutor of Christians, Paul experienced a dramatic conversion on the road to Damascus one day, when a blinding light threw him to the ground and a voice from heaven asked, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” (Acts 9:4). Despite their fears, the Christians in Damascus and Jerusalem welcomed Paul into their homes and cared for him until his sight was restored, acts of radical, risky hospitality that undoubtedly shaped Paul’s posture toward others in the years to come. As he came to terms with this divine interruption to his own story, Paul began to understand its place in a larger story, and to preach Jesus as the long-awaited Messiah, whose life, death, and resurrection fulfilled biblical prophecy, in particular Isaiah’s vision that Israel would be “a light for the Gentiles” that would bring “salvation to the ends of the earth” (Isaiah 49:6; Acts 13:47).  

This message of good news for all people of all nations became Paul’s obsession. As he traveled the region with other followers of Jesus, sharing the gospel in cities across Asia and Europe, he almost always preached first to the Jews in the synagogues and then to the Gentiles at their marketplaces, academic forums, and homes. He described himself as a “slave to everyone” willing to become “all things to all people … for the sake of the gospel” (1 Corinthians 9:19, 22, 23)….  

Unsurprisingly, Paul’s declaration of the good news found special resonance among people of lower classes, and with slaves, widows, and women. In fact, women proved to be a vital force in the ministry of Paul, serving as apostles, teachers, benefactors, and friends.  

Paul greets his readers with grace and peace: 

Every New Testament letter authored by Paul or in his name begins with “grace and peace to you,” a combination of the Greek word charis (grace) with the Hebrew word shalom (peace), a seemingly mundane turn of phrase packed with rich theological meaning for both groups, pointing them toward mercy, wholeness, justice, and unity.  

Yes, Paul did a lot of theologizing. The man never met a metaphor he didn’t like. But every letter he wrote was in service to an inclusive grace-filled gospel that he believed was good news for everyone, Jew and Gentile, rich and poor, man and woman alike.

---

For Reflection:

Richard Rohr says he is a PanEnthiest. How does being a panenthiest impact any of your understandings?

A Person of Faith and Love 

A Person of Faith and Love

Friday, September 11, 2026

Brian McLaren explains how he found support in the Bible to welcome uncertainty and expand his faith:  

To my surprise, I discovered that … in the Bible I had been reading my whole life, and especially in the life and teachings of Jesus, Mary, Paul, James, and John, the fresh understanding of faith my heart was thirsty for had been waiting like a hidden spring all along….  

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus doesn’t teach a list of beliefs to be memorized and recited. Instead, he teaches a way of life that culminates in a call to revolutionary love. This revolutionary love goes far beyond conventional love, the love that distinguishes between us and them, brother and other, or friend and enemy (Matthew 5:43). Instead, we need to love as God loves, with non-­discriminatory love that includes even the enemy.  

If that weren’t revolutionary enough, we could turn to Paul…. When he tries to summarize what God requires and desires, Paul does not say: “For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, ‘You shall have the correct beliefs.’” Rather, he declares, “For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself’” (Galatians 5:14)…. 

We find the same in the Epistles of John. In 1 John 4:7 ff., John doesn’t say: 

Beloved, let us hold to correct beliefs, because correctness is from God; everyone who believes the required statements is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not confess the right beliefs does not know God, for God is correctness.  

Rather, John says this: 

Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love….  

Are you a believer who puts your distinct beliefs first, or are you a person of faith who puts love first?… 

That phrase I just used, person of faith, in one sense makes a simple generalization. It serves as a description that makes room for Christians, Muslims, Jews, and so on. But I am coming to see that person of faith is not just a generalization. It is also a differentiation, in contrast to a person of beliefs. It reflects a shared desire among people in all these diverse traditions to be identified not by lists of beliefs that exclude one another but by something deeper, by faith in a universal, non-­discriminatory love that calls us all together. 

In that light, the word doubt can mean two very different things. When it is applied to faith that expresses itself in beliefs, it means one thing. When it is applied to faith that expresses itself in revolutionary love, it means something very different. Sometimes, it is only by doubting a religion that expresses itself in beliefs that we can discover a faith that expresses itself in revolutionary love.

References:
Brian D. McLaren, Faith After Doubt: Why Your Beliefs Stopped Working and What to Do About It (St. Martins, 2021), 123, 124–126, 127.

Image Credit and Inspiration: Richárd Ecsedi, untitled (detail), 2019, photo. Unsplash. Click here to enlarge image. We trust the way forward even as the unexpected appears just beyond the edges of the map.

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John Chaffee Five on Friday – 9-11-26

1.

“It is no use walking anywhere to preach unless our walking is our preaching.”

– St. Francis of Assis, Founder of the Franciscan Order

St. Francis seems to be talking here about what we now call “being integrated.”

We most know something once we have metabolized it into our every day life.  We have most integrated the teachings and the lessons of Jesus, not when we can talk about them, but when they even affect the way we walk.

This reminds me of an old story of a rabbi and his student.

The student was asked one day why he was following his rabbi in every single task, in every room, throughout the entire day.  He was a brigth student and was known as someone who was already knowledgeable about the Hebrew Bible and the Talmud.

His response?

“I follow him in order to learn how to tie my shoes.”

The rabbi had integrated the teachings into his own life so thoroughly that the student realized that was what he most needed to learn!

2.

“I never so much as take a step onto the ladder of spiritual progress without placing death before my eyes before going up it.”

– Amma Sarah of the Desert, 5th Century Desert Mother

It is vitally important for us to remember that our time is finite.  It is not a bad thing to have a limit, but it is certainly unhealthy to live as if we did not.

For the early desert monastics, to acknowledge and remember one’s death was a sure fire way to maintain our own humility.  It is incredibly difficult to make any spiritual progress if we do not maintain a humility about our own existence.

Yes, some might think that this leans too far into morbidity, but I would respond that our whole culture in the West is lived in avoidance of the fact that our lives are limited.

This theme is picked up again in the 5th quote for today.

3.

“Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment.”

– Rumi, 13th Century Sufi Poet

As a recovering Enneagram 5 wing 4, I have spent seasons of my life wanting to be known as clever or unique in my thoughts about the world.  This is not to say that I inherently leaned toward the obscure, but it does mean that I at least enjoy the minority view out of hand.

Nowadays, though, I appreciate mystery and wonder.

So, when I came across this qoute from Rumi this week, I couldn’t help but resonate with it.

A few years ago, I wrote a book that touched on some of this.

It is called “The Wonderstanding of Father Simeon.”  It is a dialogue between a young cynic and a desert monastic.  I was about 2/3 of the way through writing it when I realized that it was the two parts of my own inner landscape talking with each other and coming to some sense of reconciliation.

The young cynic who wanted to be known as clever had to sit and riff things out with the old, joyful desert monk who was content in his wonder.

4.

“Books… are like lobster shells, we surround ourselves with ’em, then we grow out of ’em and leave ’em behind, as evidence of our earlier stages of development.”

– Dorothy Sayers, English Novelist

How interesting!

Books can be a road map or a record of where we have been and what lesssons we have gone through!

I am guessing this principle applies to every genre, too.

Children’s books, teen adventures, these books probably spoke to something that we were developmentally going through.  Then we moved on to romance, or philosophy, or art.  Then we read things about emotions, psychology, lessons from history.  Or, at least, that was my trajectory.  It is likely that your trajectory had its own twists and turns.

What if the next book or the next genre of books we might reach for is the next thing we need to learn, integrate, grow through?

5.

“Tenderly now I touch all things, knowing that one day we will part.”

– St. John of the Cross, 16th Century Spanish Mystic

I wonder how we would relate to everyone and everything if we remembered this wisdom from St. John of the Cross?

At the church where my family goes on Sunday morning, there is often a closing benediction that goes like this…

“Life is short, and we do not have too much time to gladden the hearts of those who travel with us.  So let us be quick to love, make haste to be kind, and may the blessing of God Almighty, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, be with us.  Amen and amen.”

Belief Is Not Certainty

Thursday, September 10, 2026

The issue in prayer is not to pray because we are certain, but to pray because we are uncertain. 
—Renita Weems, Listening for God 

The Methodist minister Renita Weems was questioned about prayer by a woman no longer practicing her Christian faith: 

“What sense is there in praying if you don’t believe in God?”… She sounded pensive. 

“You pray in order to believe,” I answered.  

“That sounds backwards to me. What’s the sense in praying if you don’t believe?” 

“Sometimes you can’t wait for your mind to catch up. Sometimes the heart has to take the initiative.… Even when I don’t, or can’t, believe, I still believe that it’s important to believe,” I heard myself saying. “That’s enough to keep me stammering my prayers.” 

“You don’t mean to tell me that you have doubts yourself?… [Why] don’t you just walk away from it?”… 

“For the same reason I don’t walk away from any of the myriad things I’ve committed myself to. I don’t want to live my life based solely on my feelings. Feelings change from one moment to the next. I don’t walk away from my marriage just because I don’t love my husband today. Eventually it returns…. I continue to pray until the belief returns.”  

Weems reflects on the conversation: 

Whatever spirituality is, it is not something to be discovered. It is something to be recovered—something you misplace and recover a thousand times in a lifetime. Nor is belief in God, mystery, or prayer something one either possesses or doesn’t. Rather, belief is something one tries continually to keep oneself open to, accessible to, or something one continually refuses to open oneself up to. The only difference between … [the two of us] was that I still wanted to remain open. Open to what? Open to the possibility that there was something more to life than my vanity, something more than what I could manipulate or grasp…. As inadequate as I felt that day … I wanted to remain open to the possibility that there was something nobler in life than what I could see or touch.  

Sometimes we awaken to it through nature. Sometimes it comes to us through art, music, dance, or silence. Sometimes we are reminded of it by interacting with or observing children. Sometimes we happen upon it through chance encounters with strangers. And for a moment, we are smitten with the sublime. And then we lose it. We lose its scent, we can’t make out its sound. Sometimes we stumble around for what feels like days, months, perhaps years, trying to recapture it—trying to pick back up the scent, trying to make out the sounds. But even though we find ourselves stumbling, we’re onto something.

References:
Renita J. Weems, Listening for God: A Minister’s Journey Through Silence and Doubt (Touchstone, 2000), 43–44, 46, 47. 

Image Credit and Inspiration: Richárd Ecsedi, untitled (detail), 2019, photo. Unsplash. Click here to enlarge image. We trust the way forward even as the unexpected appears just beyond the edges of the map.

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A Multi-faith Declaration of Peace – Safi Kaskas w/ Bradley Jersak

Discussing Safi Kaskas’s Qur’anic Vision for a Shared Future 

Those who’ve known me (Bradley) for a while probably also know my friend Safi Kaskas. Briefly, he is a Jesus-loving Muslim, Qur’anic translator and scholar, and a deeply committed bridge-builder/peacemaker. Despite being in his eighties, he continues to create opportunities to write and speak about how Jesus is the great Unifier, emphasizing the shared teachings of Jesus and the Qur’an. 

In this two part video series, Safi discusses with me the foundations (part 1) and principles (part 2) of his “IQRA’ Declaration to Humanity.” As a spokesperson for Islam, he represents the best of that tradition in a way that makes space for a Christian-Muslim collaboration for peace, rooted in our common humanity and our belief in Jesus as the one and only Christ. 

While we hold our doctrinal differences with deep respect, our mutual regard has led us beyond dialogue into collaboration as peacemakers and into communion as Jesus-following lovers of God. 

One of the great values of viewing our conversations is that Christians can become informed about Islam from an actual, deeply-devout cradle-Muslim (originally Lebanese, now American) who regularly preaches in Mosques on these very themes. No, not all Muslims share his perspective, just as not all Christians share mine—but far better to understand another faith from an authentic adherent than from the caricatures we see in public. 

Safi’s Ten Core Principles

In the videos to follow, Safi’s ten core principles for human flourishing are as follows:

1. Humanity Is One Family
The Oneness of God is the foundation of the unity of humanity. All people share a common origin, equal dignity, and a shared responsibility for the future of our world. Diversity of cultures, languages, nations, and traditions is not a cause for conflict but an opportunity for mutual understanding, cooperation, and enrichment.

2. Human Dignity Is Sacred
Every human being is endowed with God-given dignity. Human dignity transcends race, nationality, religion, gender, social status, and political identity. The protection of dignity requires respect for life, freedom, conscience, equality before the law, and participation in public life.

3. Knowledge Is a Sacred Trust
The Qur’an places knowledge at the center of human development. Learning, research, education, and intellectual inquiry are not merely practical pursuits; they are moral responsibilities. Knowledge should be used to advance wisdom, alleviate suffering, strengthen justice, and serve humanity.

4. Revelation and Reason Work Together
Faith and reason are not adversaries but partners. Revelation provides moral guidance and purpose; reason enables humanity to understand reality, solve problems, and advance civilization. The future requires both ethical wisdom and scientific knowledge.

5. Justice Is the Foundation of Peace
No lasting peace can exist without justice. The Qur’an commands fairness, accountability, honesty, and equal treatment under the law. Governments, institutions, and individuals alike are responsible for protecting rights and resisting oppression.

6. Mercy Strengthens Society
Justice must be accompanied by mercy. The Qur’anic vision calls for compassion toward the vulnerable, care for the poor, support for families, and solidarity within communities. Mercy transforms power into service and strengthens the bonds that hold societies together.

7. Consultation Builds Good Governance
The Qur’an describes healthy societies as those whose affairs are conducted through consultation (Shūrā). Consultation affirms human dignity by respecting the voices and participation of people in matters that affect their lives. Good governance requires transparency, accountability, fair representation, and commitment to the common good.

8. Humanity Is Steward of the Earth
Human beings are entrusted with responsibility for the care of creation. Environmental protection, sustainable development, responsible use of resources, and concern for future generations are essential dimensions of this trust. The earth is not merely a possession; it is a trust to be preserved and passed on.

9. Technology Must Serve Humanity
The digital age presents both extraordinary opportunities and significant ethical challenges. Artificial intelligence, digital communication, and emerging technologies must be guided by principles of truth, justice, transparency, privacy, and respect for human dignity. Technology should strengthen human flourishing, not undermine it.

10. Renewal Begins with Iqra’
Every generation is called to renew its engagement with the Qur’an. Renewal does not mean abandoning foundational principles. It means applying timeless values to changing circumstances. The command Iqra’ invites every generation to learn, reflect, innovate, and contribute creatively to the advancement of civilization.

The Cost of Doubt

Wednesday, September 9, 2026

Brian McLaren normalizes painful experiences of doubt: 

The origin of the word doubt helps name the pain. Doubt derives from the same roots as duo and double, suggesting that to doubt is to be in two minds, one that believes and one that doesn’t. The two minds wrestle and writhe in tension, pulling you in two directions, leaving you in di-stress. You can see with eyes of faith and you can see with eyes of skepticism, leaving you with double vision or internal di-vision.

Before doubt, you simply believed. You were in one innocent and undivided mind, seeing with one vision, feeling a comfortable confidence rather than distress. But that innocence, that simplicity, that peaceful unity of mind and clarity of vision now slip away, the first casualties of doubt….

For many of us, faith is our map of reality, our map of the universe. It tells us where we are, where we’ve been, where we’re going, where to turn. But as soon as our trusted map stops matching reality, we feel disoriented. We have no idea where to turn, what to do, how to survive….

People experience the failure of a mental map, paradigm, or worldview as personally traumatizing. Even scientists, when their conceptual maps fail them and they must challenge some of their fundamental scientific assumptions, use emotionally charged language to describe the experience….

Albert Einstein … described the experience of coping with data that took him off the edges of his scientific map: “It was as if the ground had been pulled out from under one, with no firm foundation to be seen anywhere, upon which one could have built.” [1]

If the loss of a scientific map or model creates anxiety, how much more does the loss of a religious worldview? This loss threatens us with another even greater loss: the very loss of God or of God’s favor, love, and protection. What could be more terrifying for a sincere believer?

This terror is especially real for people … who were taught that God is an almighty supreme being who demands absolute perfection and submission, a strict and demanding father, and a tough and exacting judge. Yes, we were also taught God is loving, gracious, and forgiving, but the one requirement God demands above all others is precisely the thing that doubters struggle with most: God demands firm, unwavering faith, which we understood to mean correct beliefs. To question those beliefs throws open the terrifying possibility that God might at any moment turn against us, punish us, reject us, maybe even send us to hell if we don’t get our beliefs straight and hold them tight, without doubt….

Doubt can breach the psychological fortress in which we’ve felt safe, tear up the internal map by which we’ve navigated the world, and threaten to separate us from God’s favor and love.

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If the apocalypse comes for us all

Life in the face of death

DREW BROWN SEP 9

I woke up this morning to news that an AI researcher quit yesterday over ethical concerns. He said that if we don’t take the threat of AI seriously, we are headed in a bad bad bad direction.

—

I just finished reading a double feature of Wild Dark Shore and The Dog Stars.¹ These are books existing inches away from a near future apocalypse. Wild Dark Shore focuses on the threat of global warming. The Dog Stars is set after a global pandemic wipes out most of the earth’s population.

Grim stuff.

—

Last night, we hosted our welcome picnic for the Western Theological Seminary community. Faculty, staff, students, and families all came to the seminary for food trucks (tacos! bbq! ice cream!), mini golf, and a bounce house.²

It was supposed to end by 7, and Lex and I told ourselves before we went that we wouldn’t stay the entire time, that we would be responsible adults with busy weeks, that we would go home early to clean and watch New Girl and be in by by 8:30.

Reader, we did the opposite: we stayed until after 8.

—

Let’s face it: I would not be well suited for a post-apocalyptic world. I’m doing my doctoral work in creative writing, for crying out loud. 

What am I supposed to do to prove my worth? When food rationing causes us to build our own societies of hunters and gatherers, how am I going to convince some small survivalist collective to feed me and let me live? Write them a play? Write them a fun poem that rhymes “dysentery” with “Joseph and Mary”? Write them marketing copy for the three artisans still living?

—

The researcher who quit posted a note on the-site-formerly-known-as-Twitter explaining his rationale and the threat. It—just like Wild Dark Shore and The Dog Stars—was grim.

Curious, I read a few comments underneath the researcher’s tweet. One of the commenters said she wasn’t afraid; she said God was in control.

It’s true, God is in control, but I don’t see anything in the Bible that guarantees that all of this this—waves hands at all of America—is going to end well.

Ta-Nehisi Coates concludes his book We Were Eight Years in Power on this note: “I don’t ever want to forget, even with whatever personal victories I achieve, even in the victories we achieve as a people or a nation, that the larger story of America and the world probably does not end well. Our story is a tragedy.”³

I too believe God is in control, but I also think Coates is onto something. This is—by and large—a country and world of death. Those of us living in extreme levels of comparative wealth and comfort—cloistered, as Switchfoot once sang, inside our “convenient Lexus cages”—are the ones blinded to the realities of destruction, malnourishment, war, abuse, etc, etc. that have always existed around us.⁴

God has given no guarantee America will make it to the New Jerusalem intact.

We are living in a land of death.

—

I sponsored a junior high church camp outside Joplin, MO the summer after my freshman year. I was almost twenty and felt very sophisticated with my one year of theology classes.

On the fourth night of camp, I stood in the back and watched the junior highers standing and swaying and holding their hands in the air. I looked out at a sea of fourteen-year-olds and felt—as a nineteen-year-old—so superior to them.

What did they truly know about life? Had they experienced any suffering? Had they truly understood the depths of sin or sadness?

What had they done to deserve God’s presence or attention?

—

That whole living-in-a-land-of-death thing isn’t actually an original thought. It comes from—if you’ve read my stuff long enough you can probably guess it blind folded—Eugene Peterson. He wrote in Practice Resurrection,

“The Holy Spirit formed [the Church] to be a colony of heaven in the country of death.”⁵

America, try as it might to listen to its better angels, is a country of death. This started way before AI, way before global warming, way before the first pandemic, way before the current president, way before war, way before systemic privilege and systemic prejudice, way before America itself. This is true for every country and every government built with human hands. All of them Towers of Babel; all of them lands of death; no one is immune; no, not one.

And that’s kind of depressing.

—

I looked out at the seminary community last night, saw the laughter and the conversations. Saw faculty sitting with students and staff meeting each others’ families. Kids in the bounce house. New students playing mini golf, making the first tentative steps towards friendship and community. My friend Kate—who helped plan the whole night—told me it was the most RSVPs we’ve ever had. Something seems to be really clicking at Western right now, and I’m just grateful to be a part of it.

As we left, I told Lex how good it felt to see the community all come together. As the Director of Admissions, I spend so much time tilling the ground and hoping for a crop. To see it come to fruition last night meant a lot to me.

So much laughter. So much life.

—

Eugene didn’t only say we lived in a country of death. No, he said we—all of us who make up the Church—are a “colony of heaven.” He continues this thought, telling us that we are participating in the “resurrection life, life out of death, life that trumps death, life that is the last word, Jesus life.”⁶

The Bible tells us that this world—this aching world of AI, this aching world of global warming, this aching world of pandemics—will be redeemed and made new someday. Theologians call it the eschaton. Guns will become plowshares, we will run and not grow weary, and we will eternally journey—as C.S. Lewis famously said—further up and further into God’s goodness.

Amen and amen and amen.

But until then, the Bible also says, God and Christ and the Holy Spirit are with us. In the midst of all this death, God is collecting our tears in bottles, intimate with us in our suffering. And God is asking us to be this colony of heaven, this post-apocalyptic colony of life and beauty, standing in stark contrast to the bleak fatalism of a world focused on its own entropy.

Life and life and life quietly living amidst death and death and death.

—

As I watched—smug and embittered—that sea of fourteen-year-olds holding their hands in the air, I was swiftly convicted by a song. A few months earlier, Gungor’s Ghosts Upon the Earth had been released. I bought it for $10 on iTunes, and it felt like the greatest worship album I had ever heard.⁷ As I stood in the back of that chapel looking out at all that presumed ignorance, one song from that album—“Church Bells”—came into my head:⁸

Let church bells ring
Let children sing
Even if they don’t know why let them sing
Why drown their joy
Stifle their voice
Just because you’ve lost yours’

May our jaded hearts be healed
Amen

Let old men dance
Lift up their hands
Even if they are naïve, let them dance
You’ve seen it all
You watch them fall
Wash off your face and dance

May our weary hearts be filled with hope
Amen

Those fourteen-year-olds in that chapel outside Joplin were doing the exact right thing. God was pleased with those hands in the air, and I was the one who was wrong.

Who was I to look down at them—naïve though they might be—and tell them not to dance, to tell them not to sing?

—

I am not an an AI ethicist; I am not a global warming scientist; I am not an epidemiologist. To be honest, it is often too much for me. I do not read the books published or the articles written by the prognosticators and experts. If I did, I think I’d be too wrapped in fear.

In this way, I am just like those fourteen-year-olds in that chapel: I am ignorant to what lies ahead, oblivious to the pain that could be around the corner, whether at the hands of AI, global warming, pandemics, or a combination of all three.

But does that mean I should lower my hands? Is God that nineteen-year-old in the back, smugly looking at me and not counting my praise because of my ignorance?

Obviously not! God wants that praise, naïve as that may be.

—

I think of that time when a woman poured the perfume on Jesus’s feet, when some of those with him rebuked her, telling her she shouldn’t be doing that. She should give it to the poor or do something better with it. It was so wasteful, so naïve. What was Jesus’s response?

“Let her alone; why do you trouble her? She has performed a good service for me. For you always have the poor with you, and you can show kindness to them whenever you wish, but you will not always have me. She has done what she could; she has anointed my body beforehand for its burial. Truly I tell you, wherever the good news is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will be told in remembrance of her.”⁹

What she did for him was worship. Ignorant and naïve, perhaps. But Jesus honored it, promising her that this beautiful act would be an example for the rest of the world, for the rest of all time.

A colony of heaven…

Do you know what happened immediately after Jesus praised this woman with her wasteful and naïve worship?

Judas left and went to the chief priests in order to betray Jesus.

…in a land of death.

This death-dealing and life-giving have existed way longer than everything threatening us now.

—

All those students last night are preparing to go into a world of death to share God’s life. They are naïve just like I am. None of us know how this whole thing will play out. We believe God is in control, but that doesn’t mean there won’t be suffering, that doesn’t mean there won’t be AI disasters, global warming catastrophes, or pandemic casualties. We are—all of us—venturing through a land of death.

BUT.

BUT.

BUT.

Each of those students is about to do what they do best: worship God by creating life. They will preach sermons and baptize parishioners and sit in hospital rooms. They will walk with counseling patients and fund non-profits and serve immigrants and the marginalized. 

They will naïvely raise their hands like children and dance like old men and pour their perfume on the feet of Jesus, believing that small acts of extravagant love—of faithful living—make a difference.

—

Someday Jesus will come back and turn all this death into life. Until then, I want to innocently and boldly lift my hands and dance, doing things that model this future world redeemed. I will kiss Lex and recruit future pastors and therapists and receive communion and clap as people are baptized. I will call my mom and hug my friends and go a little too hard at game night.

Maybe it is all a waste in the obliterating gaze of the apocalypse, but I believe it is worth it.

“Truly I tell you, wherever the good news is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will be told in remembrance of her.”

==============

Two questions

1. If faith no longer means having all the answers, what does it mean for you to “stand” in faith when you are uncertain?

2. In the “land of death” we live in, where are you being invited to create or participate in life—even if part of you wonders whether it will make any difference?

The Center and the Edge

Tuesday, September 8, 2026

I have learned to prize holy ignorance more highly than religious certainty and to seek companions who have arrived at the same place.  
—Barbara Brown Taylor, Leaving Church 

The writer Barbara Brown Taylor had to deepen her trust in God, as she stepped away from pastoring in an Episcopal church: 

By the time I resigned from Grace-Calvary, I had arrived at an understanding of faith that had far more to do with trust than with certainty. I trusted God to be God even if I could not say who God was for sure. I trusted God to sustain the world although I could not say for sure how that happened. 

I trusted God to hold me and those I loved, in life and in death, without giving me one shred of conclusive evidence that it was so. While this understanding had the welcome effect of changing faith from a noun to a verb for me, it was an understanding that told me how far I had strayed from the center of my old spiritual map. 

Like any other map, mine had both a center and an edge. At the center stood the Church, where good women baked communion bread, ironed altar linens, and polished silver that had been in the church family for generations. Parents presented their children for baptism, and those children grew up with dozens of church aunts and uncles who knew them by name…. These people at the center kept the map from blowing away. 

As it turned out, the edge of the map was not all that far from the center…. All we had to do was step outside the Church and walk to where the lights from the sanctuary did not pierce the darkness anymore…. There were no slate roofs or signs to the restroom out there, no printed programs or friendly ushers. There was just the unscripted encounter with the undomesticated God whose name was unpronounceable…. These people at the edge kept the map from becoming redundant. 

According to the Bible, both the center and the edge are essential to the spiritual landscape, although they are as different from one another as they can be…. There is life in both places …, but they are so different from one another that it is often difficult for people … to agree that both places really belong on the same map. Much that is certain at the center is up for grabs in the wilderness. [1]  
 
Brown Taylor feels called to continue her vocation beyond priestly ordination: 

My vocation was to love God and my neighbor, and that was something I could do anywhere, with anyone, with or without a collar. My priesthood was not what I did but who I was. In this new light, nothing was wasted. All that had gone before was blessing, and all yet to come was more.

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Building Character Through Connection 

(Not Perfection)

CHUCK DEGROAT SEP 8

Here’s something I’ve learned about character formation across thirty years of ministry and counseling. 

Who you really are shows up right here and now—in patterns of thinking, believing, feeling, working, and relating that reveal the deeper and more subtle habits of your heart.

Sure, we’re all prone to occasional mistakes and misjudgments. Even people of high character will sometimes disappoint themselves and others. It’s inevitable. Yet when it comes to character, we shouldn’t just pay attention to one-off behaviors; instead, we should focus on what has become second nature, revealed in the everyday habits and patterns of our lives.

And those habits didn’t begin yesterday.

To take character seriously, we need to look deeper and start much earlier. Because who you are didn’t happen overnight. The architecture of your character has been shaped over a lifetime. Who you are is revealed not just in the habits of the heart, but in the hub of what James K. A. Smith calls the “automaticities”—the workings of the central nervous system.

Well before modern advancements in neuroscience and physiology, ancient pastoral psychologists were mapping the inner landscape. Rowan Williams notes that these cartographers of the soul named a “whole realm of instinct, reaction, [and] coping mechanisms” that drive our outward behaviors.

If you want to understand character and why people are the way they are, you’ve got to understand what’s happening at this subterranean level within the human heart. You need to pay attention to that realm of instinct, reaction, and coping mechanisms that often operates beneath conscious awareness. Or in more contemporary parlance, you need to pay attention to emotional regulation and dysregulation.

And these states are anchored in your story.

Before you had words, your body was already asking, Am I safe? Am I seen? Am I loved? Often, your present character is a direct result of the answer your body was given in those early days, inextricably shaped by these deep, embodied learnings.

If your parents or caregivers consistently responded to your needs, you likely internalized a felt sense of security. Through the reliable presence and secure love of your parents or caregivers, you experienced the soothing co-regulation your young and fragile nervous system needed.

This safe connection may have led to habits of regulation, prompting healthy patterns of reflection, compassion, kindness, patience, long-suffering, even self-awareness—echoes of Christlike character.

Conversely, the prolonged absence of co-regulation—either through neglect or abuse—shapes the soul and body much differently. If your early needs were met with inconsistency, criticism, or absence, your body likely learned to adapt. You may have become hypervigilant and people-pleasing, performing for approval, or withdrawing to protect yourself. These are all signs of a character shaped for self-protection and survival, leading to internal division.

Such adaptations don’t just disappear either; they become the soil out of which habits grow. As these early self-protective strategies endure into adulthood, they become second nature. And the capacity to love becomes disordered—which, from a classic theological lens, simply means that our loves are out of order. Instead of learning that love is anchored in connection, we find that love is based on survival and self-protection.

When our lives are shaped more by survival than connection and when our hearts become divided and disordered, patterns of autonomic nervous system dysregulation are inevitable. This isn’t something to beat ourselves up about, but it is an invitation to curiosity because our reflexive responses do have an impact—on us and others.

At times, our patterns will be charged with the self-protective energy of what I call Storm, reflecting the activation of our sympathetic nervous system. Here, we might see the instinctive and involuntary response of fight, flight, fawn, and find. At other times, our patterns will reflect the parasympathetic pull to preserve energy or shut down in what I call Fog—with its responses of freeze and fold.

These six patterns—fight, flight, fawn, find, freeze, and fold—often shift from short-term survival responses to chronic and long-term ways of navigating a fraught world, the proverbial mask becoming the only face we know. Once these autonomic responses become second nature, they’re hard to see. We may even baptize them as righteous.

But there is hope, my friends. Our nervous system is not set in stone; our learned automaticities can change with curiosity and compassion. Over time, it’s possible to reorient ourselves away from disconnection and back toward connection, creating the conditions for the character change we long for.

Character, you see, is not ultimately behavioral. It’s relational. In some ways, then, Christlike character, too, is more caught than taught. Of course, a mix of factors contribute to Christlike character and wholehearted devotion: worship, discipleship, prayer, community, catechesis, and more. But these are actually built on a foundation of connection—and wither when it is absent.

This isn’t about perfection; it’s about connection. We don’t have to get it right every time. When we don’t get it right, we get to circle back around and reconnect. We get to check in and re-tune. Perfection doesn’t build the secure foundation. Connection does, even when we mess up.

“You are what you love,” James K. A. Smith writes. Our capacity to love, and love well, requires a secure foundation. Understanding how your loves were shaped and your habits were formed is key to transformative character change. You are not doomed by your painful past, and there is no expiration date on the possibility of repair and reconnection.

Grace isn’t a race to the finish line. You can’t force character change. Reckonings and reformations—personal and collective—take time. A sacred repatterning within needs to happen, and it can with your consent. If you long to change—or long to see someone you love change—it begins here, at this foundational level, as you find your way into the safe arms of divine Love, as you are held by others who want what’s best for you, as your loves are reordered at the depths.

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To Contemplate:

Where in your life might you be being invited to let go of certainty or self-protection—and trust that connection, rather than having all the answers or getting everything right, is enough?

The Dance of Faith and Doubt

Sunday, September 6, 2026

Father Richard Rohr reflects on the place of doubt in a mature life of faith: 

Basic religious faith is a vote for some coherence, purpose, benevolence, and direction in the universe. Unfortunately, the notion of faith that emerged in the West was much more a rational assent to the truth of certain mental beliefs rather than a calm and hopeful trust that God is inherent in all things, and that this whole thing is going somewhere good.   

I worry about “true believers” who cannot carry any doubt or anxiety at all. People who are so certain always seem, like Hamlet’s queen, to “protest too much” and try too hard. To hold the full mystery of life is always to endure its other half, which is the equal mystery of death and doubt. To know anything fully is always to hold that part of it which is still mysterious and unknowable. [1]  

Doubt and faith are actually correlative terms. People of great faith often suffer bouts of great doubt because they continue to grow. Mother Teresa experienced decades of this kind of doubt, as was revealed after her death. In a letter to a trusted spiritual director she wrote, “Darkness is such that I really do not see—neither with my mind nor with my reason.­—The place of God in my soul is blank.—There is no God in me.” [2] The very fact that people were scandalized by this demonstrates how limited is our understanding of the nature of biblical faith.   

It seems a movement from certitude to doubt and through doubt to acceptance of life’s mystery is necessary in all encounters, intellectual breakthroughs, and relationships, not just with the Divine. Human faith and religious faith are much the same except in their object or goal. What set us on the wrong path was making the object of religious faith “ideas” or doctrines instead of a person. Our faith is not a faith that dogmas or moral opinions are true, but a faith that Ultimate Reality/God/Christ is accessible to us—and even on our side. [3]   

Our youthful demand for certainty eliminates most anxiety on the conscious level, so I can see why many are tempted to remain in such a control tower. We do not have enough experience of wholeness to include all its parts yet. First-half-of-life naïveté includes a kind of excitement and happiness that is hard to let go of unless we know there is an even deeper and tested kind of happiness out ahead of us. But we do not know that yet in the early years, which is why those in the second half of life must tell us about it. Without elders, a society perishes socially and spiritually.  

It  is probably necessary to eliminate most doubt when we are young; doing so is a good survival technique. But such worldviews are not true—and they are not wisdom. Wisdom happily lives with mystery, doubt, and unknowing and, in such living, ironically resolves that very mystery to some degree. [4]   

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Before and After Doubt

Monday, September 7, 2026

Labor Day (U.S.)

When grounded in an experience of Love, doubt does not represent a step backwards but is a necessary condition for any movement forward. 
—Richard Rohr  

CAC core faculty member Brian McLaren speaks of doubt as an essential part of his growth in faith, from a focus on “orthodoxy” or right belief to “orthopraxy” or right living. 

Before doubt, I thought that faith was a matter of correct beliefs. My religious teachers taught me so: that if I didn’t hold the right beliefs, or at least say that I held them, I would be excommunicated from my community, and perhaps, after death, from God’s presence. They taught me this not to be cruel but because they themselves had been taught the same thing, and they were working hard, sometimes desperately, to be faithful to the rules as they understood them. I tried to do the same, and I would still be doing so today if not for doubt. 

Doubt chipped away at those beliefs, one agonizing blow at a time, revealing that what actually mattered wasn’t the point of beliefs but the clear window of faith, faith as a life orientation, faith as a framework of values and spirituality, faith as a commitment to live into a deep vision of what life can be, faith as a way of life, faith expressing itself in love. 

For all those years, when I said, “I believe,” I thought I understood what I was doing. But more was going on, so much more…. 

Looking back, I now see that underneath arguments about what I believed to be true factually, something deeper and truer was happening actually. 

For example, whether or not the creation story happened factually as described in Genesis, I was committing myself to live in the world as if it actually were a precious, beautiful, meaningful creation, and as if I were too…. 

What mattered most was not that I believed the stories in a factual sense, but that I believed in the meaning they carried so I could act upon that meaning and embody it in my life, to let that meaning breathe in me, animate me, fill me…. Whether I considered the stories factually accurate was never the point; what actually mattered all along was whether I lived a life pregnant with the meaning those stories contained. To my surprise, when I was given permission to doubt the factuality of my beliefs, I discovered their actual life-giving purpose…. 

Doubt need not be the death of faith. It can be, instead, the birth of a new kind of faith, a faith beyond beliefs, a faith that expresses itself in love, a deepening and expanding faith that can save your life and save the world.

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Where Exactly Did Jesus Ascend To?

ODDS AND ENNS. SEP 5

Ascension – John Singleton Copley (1775)

There’s one scene at the beginning of Acts that is worth looking at more closely.

Jesus has been raised from the dead. He spends forty days with his disciples. And then this happens:

“As they were watching, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight” (Acts 1:9).

The disciples stand there looking up.

Then two men in white robes appear and ask, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven?” Jesus, they say, has been “taken up from you into heaven” and will return in the same way they saw him go.

So let’s just notice what Luke is describing.

Jesus goes up.

A cloud takes him out of sight.

The disciples keep looking up toward heaven.

Jesus has gone to heaven, and at some point he will come back the way he left.

Where exactly did Jesus go?

I don’t mean that as a gotcha question. I mean it as a very basic question about how we read the Bible.

Because if we read Acts 1 as a description of Jesus physically traveling from one location in the universe to another, we have a problem.

Whatever we think heaven is, it is not located behind cloud cover.

We know what is up there. Atmosphere. Space. Planets. Stars. Galaxies. There is no point at which, if you travel far enough upward, you leave the physical universe and arrive at God.

Of course, someone might say, “Pete, you’re being ridiculously literal. Luke isn’t giving us a NASA report.”

Fair enough.

But that doesn’t quite solve the problem.

What’s with the Cloud?

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Before we make fun of ancient people for thinking God lives behind a cloud, we need to slow down.

Clouds mean something in the Bible.

At Sinai, God descends in a cloud (Exod. 19:9; 24:15–18). In Daniel 7, “one like a son of man” comes “with the clouds of heaven” into the presence of the Ancient One (Dan. 7:13).

And Luke himself has already used this imagery.

At the Transfiguration, a cloud overshadows Jesus and the disciples, and the voice of God comes from it: “This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!” (Luke 9:34–35).

So when Luke tells us that a cloud receives Jesus at his ascension, the point probably isn’t simply that Jesus got high enough in the atmosphere that he disappeared into a cloud bank.

The cloud signals the divine presence.

Jesus is entering the presence of God.

That helps.

But it doesn’t make the problem go away.

The symbolism is still working within an ancient way of imagining the cosmos.

Heaven is up.

Jesus goes up.

The disciples look up.

And Jesus will someday come back from where he went.

And It’s Not Just Luke

Other New Testament writers talk this way too.

Ephesians says that God raised Jesus from the dead and “seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places” (Eph. 1:20).

Hebrews says Jesus “passed through the heavens” (Heb. 4:14) and entered “heaven itself” into the presence of God (Heb. 9:24).

And 1 Peter says Jesus “has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God” (1 Pet. 3:22).

This language is all over the New Testament (Acts 2:32–36; 3:21; 5:31; 7:55–56; Rom. 8:34; Eph. 4:8–10; Phil. 2:9–11; Col. 3:1; 1 Tim. 3:16; Heb. 1:3; 6:19–20; 8:1; 10:12; 12:2; Rev. 3:21).

Jesus is above.

God is in heaven.

Jesus has gone there.

And Jesus is now at God’s right hand.

Of course, “seated at the right hand of God” is biblical royal imagery, especially from Psalm 110:1:

“The LORD says to my lord, ‘Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool.’”

The New Testament writers aren’t necessarily picturing two enormous chairs somewhere above the clouds.

But that observation can also become a way of avoiding the issue.

The language may be symbolic, but symbols come from somewhere. They make sense within a way of imagining reality.

And the ancient biblical writers imagined the cosmos differently than we do.

Jesus Doesn’t Get a Free Pass

Christians have gotten fairly accustomed to acknowledging that the Old Testament reflects an ancient way of understanding the cosmos.

Genesis reflects such an ancient way, as does the flood story. The psalms talk about waters above the earth, the foundations of the earth, and the heavens stretched out like a tent.

Fine.

Ancient people thought ancient thoughts.

But things get more uncomfortable when we move into the New Testament.

And more uncomfortable still when Jesus is involved.

But Jesus doesn’t get a free pass.

If we take the incarnation seriously, Jesus was an ancient person.

He wasn’t a twenty-first-century person temporarily dressed in first-century clothing.

And the people who experienced Jesus, remembered Jesus, and wrote about Jesus were ancient people, too.

They understood reality using the categories available to them.

That shouldn’t surprise us.

It’s what human beings do.

So What Happened at the Ascension?

I don’t think our options are simply (1) that Jesus literally traveled upward through the atmosphere until he reached the place where God lives, or (2) the whole story is nonsense.

Maybe Luke’s cosmology is the vehicle rather than the point.

Jesus’ earthly mode of presence has ended.

Jesus has returned to the Father.

Jesus has been vindicated and exalted.

Jesus now participates in the rule of God.

And the Spirit will empower Jesus’ followers to continue what he began.

Those are enormous theological claims.

But I don’t want to wrap everything up too neatly.

What exactly does it mean to say that Jesus “returned to the Father” once we stop imagining heaven as a place above us?

Where is the risen Jesus?

What does it mean to say Jesus is “with God”?

What does it mean to say Jesus is “seated at the right hand of God”?

Is that language about location? Divine presence? Authority? Participation in God’s life? Some combination of all of them?

I don’t think those questions have easy answers.

And maybe that’s the point.

The ascension is a particularly clear example of something we encounter everywhere when reading the Bible.

The Bible comes to us from another world.

Not just another language or another culture, but another way of imagining reality itself.

Our job is neither to pretend that the ancient world is ours, nor just discard the Bible because it isn’t.

Our job is harder, and more interesting:

To ask what these ancient writers were trying to say about God within the world as they understood it.

And then to ask what it might mean for us to say it now.

A Question to Contemplate:

Where in my life am I still demanding certainty, when I might instead be invited into trust, wonder, and mystery?