Following Jesus should mean not only that you should do things in a Jesusy way, but also that you should do Jesusy things.

In progressive and evangelical circles alike, I hear so much emphasis on the disillusionment of the Crucifixion and the joyous surprise of the Resurrection that it’s easy to forget that crucifixion and resurrection were both part of The Plan. Jesus purposely reentered Jerusalem and provoked the authorities knowing it would lead to His trial and execution. He withheld any exercise of power to liberate Himself from that excruciation. And He did this having said repeatedly that He’d come out alive a few days later. We miss some good theology and soteriology if we miss this. Let’s not be like the disciples.

For me, there’s a problem with calling God our “Parent” instead of our “Father.” Besides being distracting, it breaks down the felt relationality of the analogy: No one I know calls either of their parents individually their “parent.” Calling God “Parent” makes Him alien.

You might say that God is alien, and that calling things as they are is good. I grant the point. Yet I say that more than that, calling God “Parent,” before foregrounding any actual theological point, foregrounds the supposed sensitivity of the speaker to other people’s theological hang-ups. That’s its purpose.

And even though it does highlight the theological fact of God’s non-sexed alienness and thus can be said to offer a true good, it does so at the cost of losing the greater good: In so-called progressive churches, it’s more important that we linguistically fortify our relationship with God than that we fortify our understanding of His alienness. I’d rather (and occasionally do) call God “Mother” than “Parent.”

Fundamentally, the Cross of Christ screams two things:

1. We are guilty!
2. We are forgiven!

Ignore either at your moral peril.

If I am to “follow the impulses of [my] heart and the desires of [my] eyes, yet know that God will bring [me] to judgment for all these things” (Ecclesiastes 11:9), how am I to distinguish the impulses and desires that God will judge favorably from those that He will frown upon? If a way already “seems right to [me]” (Proverbs 14:12/16:25), how am I to determine whether it’s the kind whose “end” is “death”? How am I supposed to tell a righteous “desire of my heart” from an unrighteous “desire of the flesh” or “desire of the eyes”?

One rule of thumb is to ask myself, in keeping with my working definition of love, the following question: “To whose importance am I responding?” If the honest answer is “my own,” then I am loving myself, and unless I am a doormat in need of some assertiveness training (which I myself am most verily not), then there’s my clear signpost: WAY OF DEATH.

Genesis is full of weird relational episodes with sometimes inscrutable morality. But the lesson of Genesis 20, one of several stories in which, as Marilynne Robinson puts it, “the patriarchs act badly and the pagans act well,” is clear: Do not presume the moral fiber of people whose ethnicity—or, more pointedly, whose metaphysics—are different from yours. I feel disappointed to be feeling the need to say this.

Given that “if we ask for anything in agreement with [God’s] will, He listens to us,” and that “if He listens to what we ask, we know that we have received what we asked from him” (1 John 5:14-15), then—from a place of excitement—I’m going to stick to asking Him for what I know is His will and not sweat the rest. Actually, it’s more like going to have a field day asking Him for what I know is His will.

NB: There’s very little that I know to be His will: the growth of the knowledge of Him and the flowering of undisputed goods and virtues, such as wisdom, generosity, and the fruit of the Spirit, are pretty much it. The rest, I might talk with Him about and occasionally make requests about, but I won’t come with an expectation of getting what I want.

A friend of mine at UBBC remarked last Sunday that to figure out Paul’s letter to the Romans, you have to “wade through so much Lutheran bullshit.”

I love that phrase, with all apologies to actual Lutherans, who may or may not hold to the biblical interpretation it denotes. The “bullshit” my friend has in view is the idea that somehow, contra James, faith in God without works is alive or is worth something. This friend tends not to like Paul and sees Romans as Paul thinking out loud and thus confusing things. (My friend is not alone in making a remark along those lines.)

In a bid to both correct my friend and the Lutherans he imagines, allow me to say that Paul is plenty clear about this matter and is never, ever saying that faith without works is alive. On the contrary, behold the reasons he puts forward just in Romans alone that God gives us His grace in the Messiah Jesus:

• “…through whom we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith among all the Gentiles in behalf of His name” (Romans 1:5).
• “[G]race abounded all the more, so that…grace would reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord” (5:20-21).
• “We have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too may walk in newness of life” (Romans 6:4).
• “We know that our old self was crucified with him, so that the body of sin would be rendered powerless, so that we would no longer be enslaved by sin” (6:6).
• “But now having been freed from sin and enslaved to God, you derive your benefit, resulting in sanctification, and the outcome, eternal life” (Romans 6:22).
• “My brothers and sisters, you also were put to death in regard to the Law through the body of Christ, so that you might belong to another, to Him who was raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit for God" (Romans 7:4).
• “You…have been shown mercy…oh, the depth of the riches, both of the wisdom and knowledge of God!…therefore…present your bodies as a living and holy sacrifice acceptable to God” (Romans 11:30,33; 12:1).
• “[N]ot one of us lives for himself, and not one dies for himself; for if we live, we live for the Lord, or if we die, we die for the Lord; therefore whether we live or die, we are the Lord’s. For to this end Christ died and lived again, that He might be Lord both of the dead and of the living" (14:7-9).
• “…according to the revelation of the mystery which has been kept secret for long ages past, but now has been disclosed, and through the Scriptures of the prophets, in accordance with the commandment of the eternal God, has been made known to all the nations, leading to obedience of faith” (Romans 16:25-26).

And in Paul’s other correspondence:

• “For you have been bought for a price: therefore glorify God in your body” (1 Corinthians 6:20).
• “He made Him who knew no sin to be sin in our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him” (2 Corinthians 5:21).
• “[T]he love of Christ controls us, having concluded this, that one died for all, therefore all died; and He died for all, so that those who live would no longer live for themselves, but for Him who died and rose on their behalf” (2 Corinthians 5:14-15).
• “…who gave Himself for our sins so that He might rescue us from this present evil age” (Galatians 1:4).
• “[What] counts [is] faith working through love” (Galatians 5:6).
• “For by grace you have been saved through faith; and this is not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them” (Ephesians 2:8-10).
• “For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all people, instructing us to deny ungodliness and worldly desires and to live sensibly, righteously, and in a godly manner in the present age, looking for the blessed hope and the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Christ Jesus, who gave Himself for us to redeem us from every lawless deed, and to purify for Himself a people for His own possession, eager for good deeds” (Titus 2:11-14).

What is the relationship that Paul wants us to understand between grace, faith, and good works? The words I bolded above telegraph the answer: We are saved by God’s grace (i.e., gift) through our faith (i.e., through believing Him about His gift or through Jesus’ faithfulness—or both) so that we do good works.

(See also the Paul-adjacent Hebrews 9:14 and 1 Peter 2:21-25, not to mention the liters of ink Paul spills simply telling Jesus-followers how to act and what to do.)

James may have be arguing with Paul’s hearers, including many Lutherans, Calvinists and evangelicals among us today, but he is not arguing with Paul himself. According to Paul, we can be—no, ought to be—both amazed at God’s grace and therefore diligent to pay God back. God’s grace is freely, undeservedly, surprisingly, extravagantly, and purely benevolently given and it obligates us to grateful good works in response.

In the above, I’m just repeating an important takeaway from John M. G. Barclay’s Paul and the Gift or its lay reduction Paul and the Power of Grace, whose thesis I had Gemini reduce and polemicize as follows:

“Modern Christianity has fundamentally misunderstood the nature of ‘grace’ by projecting a modern, Western, ‘no-strings-attached’ fantasy onto the ancient world. Furthermore, modern scholars have flattened the explosive nature of Paul’s theology. God’s grace is undeniably free, but it is entirely obligatory; it requires a radical return, and its distribution shattered every existing Jewish and Roman system of social worth.”

Here’s a snippet of mine that just appeared in UBBC’s wilderness-themed Lenten devotional series:

In October 2014, I stumbled into a wilderness I hadn’t packed for. After decades of secure faith, I was suddenly struck by what I described at the time as “acute, soul-threatening” doubt. I looked for God, and for the first time, found only silence. I wrestled with the problem of evil, the problem divine hiddenness, and the problem of unanswered prayer, losing sleep and peace in the process.

But that wilderness wasn’t just a place of deprivation; it was a place of transformation. In that dry season, when my intellectual certainty withered, something new began to grow. Drought-tolerant virtues emerged from the dust of my doubt:

• empathy (my uncertainty made me less dogmatic and more empathetic toward others),
• action orientation (“for in Christ Jesus…the only thing that counts is faith working through love”),
• metaphysical flexibility,
• humility, and even
• lightheartedness.

Above all, I discovered that faith isn’t a feeling of certainty, but a decision of allegiance. And I have decided to follow Jesus.

(I haven’t since returned to my homelands of certainty, and probably never will. But thankfully, He has given me practicable confidence more than enough to carry on.)

Just listened to: Days of Ash (2026) by U2. Their most politically charged release in over forty years (or maybe ever), and their first release in over twenty years that I’ve willingly listened to front-to-back more than once. Sonically, it’s sure U2, alright. Lyrically, too—and while in some past U2 offerings that’s been a liability, here their earnest on-the-noseness is endearing instead of cringeworthy, probably because of the smack-dab timing of the release. Lent Rocks, I guess. And the times they are a’crazy. Hear the word of the Lord according to Bono. Forgive us, O Lord, for we have sinned.

After all that rumination on joy and on how to enact the less familiar modes of love I wish to practice, it turns out that for me for now, at least, the secret is this: “Whoever wants to preserve his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake and the gospel’s will preserve it” (Mark 8:35; see also Matthew, Luke, and John). (Let the record show that this illumination came to me yesterday while on a walk around Mount Nittany Middle School as I waited for Éa’s futsal tournament to begin—at least eighteen hours before I heard it in the scripture readings at church this morning. Thus says the Lord.)

What I mean is that over roughly the past ten years, in response to what I think can be safely summed up as social acceleration, I have grown to guard my attention and energies more and more in an attempt to preserve and optimize them for the subset of life’s overabundant opportunities that happens to make it onto my lists (to-dos, goals, albums to hear, and movies to watch).

I suppose that alone isn’t the problem. However, me being me, two problems arise:

• Some of the items that make it onto my lists are mere “things that are on the earth” instead of “things that are above,” and
• Zealotry for my lists closes me off to novel opportunities, whether presented by impulse (my own or others’), emergent or newly revealed needs and desires (my own or others’), or invitations (God’s or others’). I often respond to invitations as if they are intrusions rather than “dancing lessons from God.”

I’m like a National Park Service employee who has decided it’s my desire or my responsibility to work on a path a hundred yards from the rim of Grand Canyon, where I often find myself working alone, and every single time a colleague closer to the rim invites me to come see what they see or to work alongside them on a path that descends into the canyon, I roll my eyes and shout grumpily, “Can’t you see I’m working?!” Some of the time, I go ahead and join them, but always with my path on my mind.

Since I claim to follow Jesus, such cranky insularity is an invalid option, and it forfeits my soul to keep trying it. Most unsettling among its effects is that I find myself growing stony: both unsympathetic and mildly anhedonic. Eesh! Let me be done with that. And yes, let me come see that vista you keep trying to get me to come see.

Lord, let my first response to the prospect of a novel social engagement no longer be, “Aw, man. That’ll impinge on my capacity to discharge my current responsibilities well.” The fact is, half of what I’m calling “my current responsibilities” are no such thing: They are instead scruples, habits, things I probably read at some point somewhere were good for me, parts of my misguidedly constant quest for constancy.

And most of the other half can probably wait.

It shouldn’t be that novel social engagements feel like detractions from these non-social responsibilities and “responsibilities.” From now on, let my first response to the prospect of a novel social engagement be, “Ooh. I’d love to do that.” And let the only energy preservation check be, “Can I do so without irresponsibly detracting from my other social engagements?”

Self care is a necessary evil, and for me, at least, it’s not as necessary or as frequently necessary as you think. More important are self differentiation, authentic self expression, and engagement of self with the world and with the God who made it.

Lord, may mine be a proactive, spontaneous, playful, delighting, and unhurried love.

Love of God cannot be constituted without love of neighbor, but neither can it be reduced to it.

“Stop asking God to do what God has asked us to do” (person quoted in Jeremy Richards’ sermon today).

How long can I continue to fellowship with a people who see the Bible as a lesser claimant to the knowledge of God than themselves? NB: I’m not speaking only of the many good people of University Baptist & Brethren Church of whom this is true, although I admit it was they who prompted this entry. No, people in so-called conservative circles are just as likely to dismiss or be ignorant of the scriptures and the God to whom the scriptures point. And their dismissals seem to me more often further afield of the point than those of the so-called progressives.

“Be yourself,” they say. “Stop trying to be someone else.” But what if who you are is wicked? But then again, who am I to judge myself? In any case, it seems to me the danger with “do the next right thing” is that “there is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death” (Proverbs 14:12, 16:25). If I went with “do the next right thing” unchecked, I’d be lonely, because I’d always choose things I can control. “Do the next right thing” must be defined. And its definition is this: “Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength” and “love your neighbor as yourself.”

C’mon, Enneagram 8! Use your drive for power and control on your own thinking—namely, correct yourself when you are wringing your hands in the face of circumstances you can’t control or people who are speaking or acting in ways you don’t expect. It’s just a variation of the partially reformed perfectionist’s hack: I am not exhibiting self-control if I cannot maintain love and joy when people and things are out of my control. (PSA: People are—justly—always out of my control.)

In recent years, Jesus’ frequent use of the future tense in the causal clauses of the Beatitudes (among a few other, subtler evidences) has inclined me to think of them not as a set of timeless aphorisms (e.g., if-this-then-that precepts or visions of human flourishing), but instead more as an historical announcement in direct relation to Jesus’ advent—a sibling to Jesus’ claim in Luke 4:16-21 to being Himself the messianic fulfillment of Isaiah 61:1-2, and a cousin to the Songs of Mary, Zechariah, and Simeon slightly earlier in Luke.

Hence, when I’m translating or paraphrasing Matthew 5:3-11, I’m now given to rendering μακάριος, traditionally translated “blessed,” as “fortunate,” “lucky,” or most colloquially, “in for a treat” instead and to making explicit the Jesus-specific, redemptive-historical subtext I sense. Like this:

• [Now that I, Jesus, am here,] the poor in spirit are in for a treat, because the kingdom of heaven is theirs.
• Those who mourn are fortunate, because now they’ll receive comfort.
• [In light of what I’m up to,] gentle people are the lucky ones, because they’ll inherit the earth.
• Those who hunger and thirst for righteousness/justice are in for a treat, because [with what I’m doing] that hunger will be satisfied.
• The merciful are lucky, because they’re gonna receive mercy.
• The pure in heart are in for a treat, because [in Me] they’re gonna see God.
• People who make peace are the lucky ones now, because they’ll be dubbed God’s children.

[The above was in response to Richard Beck’s recent post recapping part of Jonathan Pennington’s argument about how to view and translate the Beatitudes.]

Lord, may everything I do today be done out of a deep-seated, automatic regard for You and those around me as important, desiring Your joy and their prosperity.

God’s love is so all-encompassing it’s four-dimensional.

When Jesus says things like “to the extent that you did it for one of the least of these my brothers or sisters of Mine, you did it for Me” and “whoever receives one child like this in My name receives Me; and whoever receives Me does not receive Me, but Him who sent Me” and when John writes things like “the one who does not love his brother and sister whom he has seen cannot love God, whom he has not seen,” they are certainly using rhetorical devices to create moral instruction. But they might also be pointing to a metaphysical fact: If in God we live and move and exist, then loving people is literally loving God—and not just because we’re doing what He told us to (although very much that), but because other people are literally part of God (and some of us, at least, part of Christ).

Lord, Your command is eternal life (John 12:50).

Noel made a distinction I’d never thought to make before: extraverted is not the same outgoing. He defined the former as something like “given to gaining energy from social interaction” and the latter as something like “fully at ease making new friends, as if by reflexive desire rather than by effort.” This was to help me understand the difference between me, an extravert who isn’t outgoing, and him and Mary, who are extraverts and outgoing.

Now, the APA doesn’t make quite as clean a distinction. Nevertheless, I find the distinction illuminating.

The fact is, Noel and Mary are inspiringly friendly. They show enthusiastic, obviously sincere interest in other people, regardless of their initial familiarity, in the same way that I show enthusiastic interest in virtue, reflective conversation, expressiveness, and good music. I want to be like them.

I do usually find it energizing to interact with new people. But I just don’t seek out such interaction quite as liberally or reflexively. And I’m certainly not as skilled as Noel and Mary at the talk required to make such interaction smooth. Frankly, and to my shame, I’m also not as naturally, actually, intrinsically interested in other people.

But all this may be a matter of exposure and practice. The first step will be to build a new habit: I’ll try to change my behavioral bias such that if I see a neighbor, I’m more likely to approach than to avoid. (I think an overzealous commitment to my own agenda is to blame for the avoidance.)

When love says do, you do
When love says go, you go
Damn your fears
And listen here:
When love says do, you do ✏️ 🎤 🎵