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Is it any wonder that fewer people go to church every Sunday?
That kind of church is dying, and it needs to. It has little to do with Christ.
Leaving my church was traumatic, and that trauma was amplified by my childhood experiences of rejection.
We humans are primed to believe what those around us believe, and since our beliefs often drive our behaviors, we have a great incentive to hold values consistent with those of our tribe—
The Church is at least a global community of people who choose to follow the teachings of Jesus Christ. Even if this is all the Church is, the Church is still the largest body of spiritual scholarship, community, and faith practice in the world—and this practice can improve people’s lives in real, measurable ways.
I just realized at some point that my spiritual life was linked to the weekly rhythm that a Sunday-morning worship service provides.
More than anything else, it was reading my Bible that had turned me into an atheist.
Despite compelling passages about love, forgiveness, justice, and peace, I couldn’t shake the sense that this was a book full of primitive brutality.
My faith seemed easier to maintain if I stayed away from the Scriptures—
I had to find a way to read the Bible without either crossing my fingers or waking my most fiery skepticism.
it puts responsibilities on the text that are impossible to fulfill.
Many Christians have felt that they must either accept the lens I was given at birth or dismiss the Bible entirely.
this approach to history can sow: a destructive oversimplification of the Church’s past.
nearly impossible to verify empirically and, therefore, subject to the same acidic erosion via doubt that most theological ideas are.
When I let go of the Bible as an inerrant document and embraced it as a multi-party discussion about God, all of a sudden, I began to see a book I could appreciate on its own terms.
The Bible is at least a collection of books and writings assembled by the Church that chronicle a people’s experiences with, and understanding of, God over more than a thousand years. Even if that is a comprehensive definition of the Bible, study of Scripture is warranted to understand our culture and the way in which people come to know God.
Every one of these stories is more powerful, not less, when viewed as a document penned by humans.
Ancient literature must be read in a historical context, and the Bible is no different.
The Bible is art.
Is The Starry Night infallible? The question doesn’t make sense.
But I believe this approach solves the problems doubters face when they approach the pages of Scripture—all without evicting God from those pages.
I think the Bible was inspired by God in the same way “Song for Jenny” was inspired by Jenny. She didn’t write it—what a strange notion—but you can learn a lot about her if you hear it.
You’re using ancient language to describe modern ideas and then pretending to be a part of the ancient tradition.
Eyes that see the scars of the lesbian whose parents won’t let her bring her partner home for the holidays,
All were ways to describe God appropriate to a time and place, and all were a reaction to some earlier image.
I’m done saying I’ve found the right one—mysticism tells me that these are all metaphors, all symbols, pointing to a single God who is beyond anything I will ever be able to imagine.
To share the joys and sorrows of my friends, to see little ones born and old ones die, all tie me to an incredible cycle of unspeakable beauty that I am a part of, and the only possible word I have for it all is this one: God.
I keep finding God in the waves—the waves of the Pacific, the waves of gravity, the waves of electromagnetic energy, and the waves that move through our brains. I find God in the sound waves of ancient hymns, of children laughing, and in the quiet sobbing of those who say under impossible assault, “I can’t breathe.”
They’re easy to miss and easy to crush in the grip of our desire to control them.
