“Don’t judge me” is, hope, something you’ll never hear me say. I, for one, look forward to being judged. I hope you do, too. Most of us here on Twitter judge every day. You can’t have justice without judgment, by the way. (HT Dale Allison). If you must defend yourself against judgment, perhaps it’s better to say, “Don’t misjudge me” or “Don’t condemn me.“

“Let the seasons begin,” sings Beirut in my head as I wake up. A fair enough piece of advice for a time when I’m upset that I’m not doing anything with my life after Dylan and Noah leave.

For posterity, I’d better explain: Fostering Dylan and Noah lent me noble purpose. Sending them back their parents removes that purpose, which sends me reeling. It doesn’t help that my friend comes over last night with a young man who is determined to build physical environments conducive to the formation of Christian community, after spending the last few days touring the town talking to community-minded folks like Christian Baum of co.space, Joel Martin, and the staff of the College Township government administration, so as to pick my brain about Christian community, something about which I don’t know much. I leave that conversation and go to bed angry that I’m not doing anything “kingdom-minded” or noble.

You, God, or my subconscious mind tells me as I wake up, “Let the seasons begin.” For goodness’ sake, it’s only been two days since the boys have gone home. Give it a break. Let the seasons, the natural turn of time and the changes it brings, begin. Plus, you know you want to focus on the family these days anyhow.

It may help in interpreting Jesus’ parables to picture Him saying them to people, or perhaps to picture yourself saying them to people. That clarified the Parable of the Wedding Feast for me today.

“God will send upon them a deluding influence so that they will believe what is false” (2 Thessalonians 2:11).

This evening, I am uncomfortable with men ascribing action to God. It makes me want to throw out all of the parts of the Bible where that happens. Why would God send a deluding influence on anyone?

Since the parousia has taken so long, It is functional to replace “the day of Christ,” and other such phrases with “the day you die.”

The Bible is very clear about condemning sexual immorality. But there is but one moral absolute: love, that is, self-donation for the benefit of another motivated by a view of that other as wonderful. While that pole means a lot of human-facing behavior will remain classified as immoral in almost all situations (adultery [although not, perhaps, consensual extramarital sex], stealing, killing), some behavior, like same-sex sexual activity, will be reclassified over time. Culture will condition to what degree a specific act is immoral.

We rehabilitated the doctrine of the Final Judgment today in church. That’s nice.

I don’t always mind the aches and pains and the memory glitches that attend aging. They remind me that night comes. My hope is that light shines in the darkness.

— Dale Allison, “Heaven and Experience,” Night Comes (2016)

I don’t care what you think about sola gratia. If you don’t do what Jesus says in the Sermon, you’re building on sand.

I want include idle solitude in my life. I also want to read Richard Foster again.

I must remember that friendship is the gift I am most able to give the world, and that it’s people that matter most before anything else earthly.

I rode my rented bike today from the hotel to Kerry Park Overlook to the Fremont Troll to the Chittenden Locks to West Point at Discovery Park.

I sent a message to Carla upon watching the sunset from West Point saying, “If God is only as beautiful as this, He is enough to hold my attention for eternity.”

After returning the bike to Velo, I spent the entire walk back to the hotel worrying about where to put my stickers—the place stickers I get for my bike and the Restoring Eden stickers—in a place where they can be on display forever (so my computer, water bottle, and bike, which I think I’ll be replacing in the next ten years) but not call too much attention to myself or violate the virtue of humility.

As I read again a few reviews and the publisher’s description of Alan Jacobs’ The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction, this time from the corridors surrounding the escalator well at the Washington State Convention Center, I teared up in gratitude as I concluded, tentatively as always, that You, God, had once again spoken directly to me for my good.

The message: You and those around you will be enriched if you heed Jacobs’ advice about reading, which Oxford University Press outlines as:

• read at whim,
• read what gives you delight,
• and do so without shame.

I’d add to this, as I’m sure he will in the book: read deeply and at length.

Why so grateful to God? Well, first of all, because You continue to speak to me in these little words and names I remember upon waking from a night’s sleep. I think I can tell the difference between a random surfacing of my subconscious mind and when You are speaking. But also because this speaks directly to an inner predicament I have felt acutely since having children, namely, that I want to read, but find it such a chore.

Relatedly, I delight so much more in the children’s books I’ve read than in the “adult” books I’ve set before me to read. Books are not to be broccoli.

For movies, I have no illusions: It is for beauty and entertainment and admiration. Same for music. But for books, I absorbed the idea that you should read in a utilitarian fashion.

Problem number 352 with Christian worship music: too much singing about the relationship and not enough singing about the ones who we are related

friend:

So have you seen your “Kings have no power other than what their subjects give them” anywhere else? Thinking more and more about it in light of 1 Corinthians 1:18 and the Cross being the demonstration of the power of God—precisely because it is the means by which he frees his subjects to become like him.”

me:

I’m not aware of anyone who formulated that thought before I did, although I do connect the highly circumscribed nature of human kingly power to the highly circumscribed nature of divine kingly power posited via the theodicy work of Greg Boyd, Thomas Jay Oord, Christopher McHugh, and John Caputo via Richard Beck. That last link you may find too progressive and deconstructed (as I do), but nevertheless useful. That last link is especially useful because come to think of it, Beck isn’t doing theodicy work with that blog series: He is formulating a rally cry for action. And so are you.

friend:

Hmmm interesting. He is using 1 Corinthians 1:18.

me:

Indeed. Caputo’s ontological assertions aside, Beck’s point sticks.

friend:

Ahh the age of “everyone’s a theologian.” I suppose I’m in that now, too. I think it’s good to have so many eyes on the thing, eh? It just makes for some fun googling—oh, wow, he’s saying angelic beings don’t exist?

me:

Beck is agnostic on the question. He doesn’t think it matters. He wrote a whole book about Satan and purposely plays cagey the whole time about whether he actually believes Satan exists.

friend:

Interesting…where did you come upon him? Now that I consider it, if the whole thing is summed up in love God and love my neighbor, I could be agnostic. Of course, I would have to account for what Jesus was doing and saying all the times he was casting demons out. Hmmm…we should be monks. Then we could just read and contemplate all day.

me:

A friend of mine from my Teen Mania days referred me to him when I first started my soteriology project. For a good understanding of why he doesn’t think it matters whether they’re real (or even, when push comes to shove, whether God is real), see “Is Santa Claus Real? A Parent’s Epistemological Meditation.” As for me, the historical facts before me, both ancient and modern, are easier to explain if there are such beings.

friend:

Yeah…woah this is a rabbit hole…

me:

’Tis. Anyway, yes, let’s be monks. Then we could read, meditate, pray, discuss, eat, and serve. And that could be it. It’d be great. There’s Franciscan monastery in Hollidaysburg. Screw it all. Let’s go.

We are ready to send Everett and Oak home. But we’re not. I’m sure these are the typical feelings of a foster parent. Life is going to be different. Quieter. This evening without them because they’re with Mommy and Daddy makes that sure. But as Everett would surely reciprocate, “I will miss you, Everett.” And I will miss you, Oak. We still have three weeks with them, so let’s make them count.

We asked Éa and Sullivan today whether they’d like to foster again. Sullivan said, “I’d like a year.” And Éa said, “Yeah, in like, five thousand weeks.”

A home is fuller if you’re stretched for the sake of relationships. Let us dig in to more people. Let us “love [our] enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return” (Luke 6:35). Then I will live without regret.

“To put off obeying him till we find a credible theory concerning him, is to set aside the potion we know it our duty to drink” (George MacDonald, Unspoken Sermons, vol. 3, “Justice”).

Baseless speculative interpretation that I already know is wrong but nevertheless want to write down because I’ve never heard it before: the day of the Messiah is the day each of us dies.

I am grateful for Elliott, Amber, and Vinny finally making it over for dinner tonight. I am grateful for a highly contrastive peace of mind today, with no anxiety-producing doubt about God. And I am grateful today for the opportunity to do good work on DiamondBack’s website.

The anxiety I feel was I rise some mornings is not due to a threat to my theism. It is due to a feeling of ought and a greed for accomplishment.

Note to self: Don’t spread alternative views, for example about the pseudonymity of Colossians, unless you think those views are worthy alternatives. In the case of Colossians, if stylistic variance is the only thing that advocates of pseudonymity have in their favor, then I don’t think it’s a legitimate argument.

You want to know what I’m grateful for? I’m grateful that I knew just what to do in the face of anxiety-ridden sleeplessness that plagued my eleven- and twelve-o’clock hours: Drink a cup of chamomile tea, give thanks, and sleep in the guest bedroom. I was downright cheery last night as I went to sleep.

You want to know what else I’m grateful for: The present richness of the “little words” I received last year from You, God, to help me through this mind-crippling doubt. Transcendence was risibly thick with metaphor for You, and the realization about my inner skeptic is the H.L. Hunley is very helpful.

This morning I woke up with the words “dipolar theism” in my head. Fascinating, but I’m not sure how to apply the knowledge, except to say I think You’re perfectly capable of all those opposing traits simultaneously. Oh, and I’ll search the text of Satan and the Problem of Evil to make sure I didn’t see it there.

If I am to be the Housatonic, a blockader of doubt-supply, I know what is the H.L. Hunley: my own skepticism. I had trouble getting to sleep last night because of doubt about whether God is real. Nothing external prompted the doubt this time. Well, except doubt about whether Greg Boyd’s theses about freedom, love, and risk in Satan and the Problem of Evil hold.

Is it possible to create a world in which creatures have the freedom to love but not the freedom to harm, contra Boyd? A world in which all harm is prevented? At first glance, I’d say, “Of course! That’s the kind of world I aim to create in my house. If I fail, it is only because I am not fully able, not fully loving (say, in a fit of grumpiness or apathy), or not fully aware. Were I fully all three of those things, there would be no harm in my house.” I’ll have to work on picturing that scenario some more to see how it would play out.

[…]

If I stepped in every time Sullivan were to, say, swing a fist, might he resign me?

I’m grateful for the video Carla shared with me of a young man reciting a poem about his doubt.

I’m grateful that the warmer-than-seasonal weather has returned.

I’m grateful for the spirit of love I find for my very predictable dad, who called today to postpone his intentions to visit to celebrate Sullivan’s birthday until “sometime halfway between Sullivan’s birthday and Éa’s birthday.” I intend to call him tomorrow. God, grant grace on a salty tongue.