Randy Elrod's Blog, page 16

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I Read Banned Books as a Child and am Better For It

During my elementary school years in the early 1970s, I read everything. Books about Roman gods and teen detectives (male and female) and gruesomely martyred saints, but also ancient encyclopedias bought at Goodwill, used Reader’s Digests and my grandmother’s Penny’s catalog. In the time-honored tradition of nerds everywhere, I read the backs of cereal boxes […]

Observations As We Prepare to Move to Barcelona

9/24/2023 —We are back in the States, and Gina and I miss Barcelona desperately. It sounds strange but true. Why? —We miss the atmosphere. The division, anger, and daily mass murder we take for granted in the US are not there. There is a peacefulness, a sense of family, and a zest for life rather […]

The Search for an Equal Companion

Eighteen years ago, in 2005, I sat down with my wife of twenty-six years in our dream home on Main Street in the utopian town of Franklin, Tennessee. I will never forget it: the classy Lane recliners, the marble fireplace, the horrendously expensive Oriental rug, the aroma of Spring flowers coming through the open French […]

Why Are We So Divided?

America is a fragmented country. Her people are divided. Why? An opposite of division is wholeness. As I continue to travel inward and expand my Quest for wholeness, I realize once again that most people want easy answers—sequential steps to a better life. But what if life is more like a meander, not a sequence? […]

I Defy You, Oh Church (Notes from a Rebellious Ass)

And now I, at long last, know why I can’t stand religious people. They try to take away my wholeness: my sensuality, my curiosity, my intimacy, and my freedom. For how can any person be free without an illimitable life? Yet religion tries to imprison me in a sterile sanctuary and make me sing boring […]

Rewriting the Rules (The Ten Commandments)

Do I Regret 30 Years of My Life As A Christian Minister?

Over the past seventeen years, I’ve had several social media comments asking how I reconcile spending thirty years in Evangelical ministry and, in their words, “deceiving people.” These comments deeply wounded me as I struggled with the first half of my life spent making a career in a religion I have renounced. Was all that […]

Everybody Wants Rules

But what if there aren’t any? Really? I’ve found life is too damn messy to be simplified into a list of rules. But everybody wants them. They lap up the next big list of rules. Why? Everyone wants easy answers. See Twitter’s 140 characters. See T***p. See religion. See fundamentalists. See five or ten steps […]

The Frustration of Being a Man in America

Joe Rogan, Donald T***p, Jason Aldean, Josh Hawley, Andrew Tate, Jordan Peterson, Bronze Age Pervert, Tucker Carlson, Mark Driscoll, White Evangelicals, Republicans, and their ilk say that they have the answers to being a real man in America. Watch UFC, buy big guns, buy bigger trucks, learn self-defense, wave big flags, treat women like property, […]