Carla, a middle schooler, and I collaboratively created the above design for our local municipality. KB Offset printed it, and it now stands as an 8' × 4' banner posted along PA-26 outside the township administration building.
Here’s the municipal webpage on the subject of College Township’s sesquicentennial.
Just re-read: The Epistle of James, and I am more convinced than ever of this: Donald Trump is an antichrist. (Please note the indefinite article.)
My God, please have mercy on all of us, including him, by relieving him of his power to do ill.
“Mere faith alone is not sufficient for salvation…Yea, I confess…that mere faith does not deserve to be called faith, for a true faith can never exist without deeds of love” (Balthasar Hubmaier).
Just finished reading: “The Nonviolent Atonement: Human violence, discipleship, and God” (2006) by J. Denny Weaver, which I summarize as follows: All previous accounts of the role of the Cross in how God brings us back to Himself, except for most Girardian explanations and the cosmic battle version of Christus Victor, implicate God as in some way needing violence to get the job done. Yet such a need stands in unacceptable tension with the consistently nonviolent life lived by Jesus, God’s perfect and authoritative image. Thus, we should to what I call “narrative Christus Victor,” by which I posit that neither the Father nor the Son in any way willed the Son to die, and that God brings us to Himself instead by vindicating Jesus’ way via the Resurrection. If we need forgiveness, we need only repent.
I disagree with Weaver about the Cross and don’t think his argument about it succeeds on his own terms: The Father is still “implicated” in the Son’s death if He knew that Jesus’ death was...
// read full article →A friend asked me how I thought The Parable of the Prodigal Son related to my insistence that forgiveness, rightly practiced, requires amends be made. I initially responded: “This is an excellent question. The Parable of Prodigal Son comes up a lot in discussions of God’s forgiveness, mostly among folks who insist God forgives without requiring anything. So I have some answers percolating.” Later, I replied by subjecting him to a 10-minute think-aloud voice message, which I then revised and summarized in writing as follows: “The Parable of the Prodigal Son demonstrates, among other things, that God is so keenly interested reconnecting with and embracing His people that mere but provably genuine repentance can count as amends. (God’s relative position of power, which the parable keeps in view but which should be noted is not a feature of every relationship, facilitates this mercy.) However, the story is not absent an amends more concrete: Besides your beautiful, literary observation...
// read full article →Just re-listened to: Resurrection Letters, Volume I (2018) by Andrew Peterson. A stirring, orthodox anchor in my “progressive” Christian seas. CCM through and through, but with much stronger- and clearer-than-average theological ties to The Story and The Book.
Here’s a very concise summary of my take on the Cross of Christ: Jesus’ death can be a manumission of our minds from five things that would keep us in servitude:
all of which facilitate separation from God.
John 20:23 and Matthew 18:18 say the same thing: God respects human decisions about what to forgive and what not to. That’s because God can’t forgive on someone else’s behalf; that’s a logical impossibility.
Just listened to: Light for the Lost Boy (2012) by Andrew Peterson. Probably a keeper, but I’m not completely sure about that because I know I give a positive bump to Christian albums whose theology and ethics I find agreeable. Two things regarding this album are obvious, however: First, he found a new producer. It’s striking how different this album sounds from all the albums he put out before it. Every review of this album you’ll read rightly talks positively of its use of “atmosphere” and “space.” It makes me wonder: Is receptivity to child-of-Lanois audio production a fruit of the Spirit?
For my part, as much I share this affinity, I nevertheless usually regard such atmospherics as a pleasing way to mask poor songsmanship, a deed of the flesh that sometimes seems endemic to Christian music. In Peterson’s case, though, not to worry: The lyrics here are among his strongest, and that’s saying something. He continues examine and deploy his favorite motifs (youth, memory, geography, the...
// read full article →Just re-listened to: Resurrection Letters, Volume II (2008) by Andrew Peterson as part of a slow-motion Peterson marathon meant to confirm or repudiate my September claim that he’s the most skilled evangelical songwriter of the century. This album, unlike the three that come between it and his 2000 debut, is evidence in favor of that claim. Polished folk pop expressing orthodox Christian thoughts. The Mullins mimicking continues, and that’s not a bad thing.
What’s more, this album will forever be linked in my life to one particularly long drive home from Florida back in October 2015. I drove a thousand miles through hot tears of doubt about God’s existence. Along those long highways, I had seven companions consoling and counseling me: over the phone, five good friends and one mom, and over the truck stereo, Peterson, who sang “I believe You are the Christ, the son of the living God” with enough conviction that I eventually joined in.
Scott [handling small bottle near Sully’s backpack]: What’s this?
Sully: Oh, that’s my backup soy sauce. It comes in handy more than you think.
Scott: I’m kind proud of you, actually.
Sometimes it’s hard to wake up
Sometimes it’s hard to sleep ✏️ 🎤 🎵
His Cross is not a coat of arms. It’s a teacher, a master, a goad.
Can anything good come out of universalism? /s
Other people’s kids always seem to grow up faster than your own.
If I gaze at a planet—and there are at least three visible to the naked eye these days in Pennsylvania—I feel mildly dizzy.
Screen addiction, which I define much more broadly than the APA might, is harmful for the same reason suicide is harmful (and thus called by many religious people a sin): It removes people, with all the skills, humor, and other virtues they might bring to bear on the world, from the social nexus and destroys human attachments. It is a hermitage.
Just finished reading: “Contemplation as Rebellion: The case for unenchantment” (2025) by Nicholas Carr, whose main ideas are that to patiently, contemplatively attend to things is to engage ourselves and our world in the best way—especially contra a society rife with stimulation and mere perception. And it has nothing to with “enchanting” anything.
Just finished reading: “Beyond Words: On the role of silence in film and faith” (2025) by Arthur Aghajanian, whose main idea is that filmmakers can use and sometimes—but not often enough—do use silence to draw viewers in to spiritual experience.
Just finished reading: “From Dietrich Bonhoeffer to James Cone: The complexities of forgiveness in a racialized Society” (2024) by Reggie Williams, whose main idea is that in America, Black forgiveness is a maintainer of the status quo.
Some striking quotations:
Some quick reflections: This is why forgiveness without amends is usually bad.
Potts is right that punishment and recompense will always be incommensurate with the wrongdoing (except for restitution, which can come close). That’s how you can say that forgiveness and justice can and do coexist: Forgiveness doesn’t say nothing is due; forgiveness says that what’s been paid is enough. Nothing more is due.
Just finished reading: “Forgiveness ≠ Reconciliation: Wisdom for Difficult Relationships” (2024) by Yana Jenay Conner, whose main idea is well summarized by the title. This was my favorite article in the Winter 2024 issue of Comment. Conner helped me realize that Matthew 18 contains a righteous unforgiveness: “And if he refuses to listen…let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector" (v. 17). And these two partial quotations struck me as beautiful: “I was a daddy’s girl without a dad…” and “Even if I was interested in adjusting my grip on the cross…”
Just finished reading: “Promise, Gift, Command: Mapping the Theological Terrain of Forgiveness” (2024) by Brad East, who main ideas can’t really be summarized but can be itemized. According to East, forgiveness is:
Just finished reading: “Out of the Depths: How Forgiveness Brought a Sex Offender Into the Light” by a man who fell and “Into the Depths: The cost of forgiveness will be your life” (2024) by a wife who forgave.
The man who fell submits that both easy acceptance and permanent excommunication are not good, the former creating dysfunctional communities by ignoring the woulds of the aggrieved, and the latter destroying the sinner. (For my part, I’ll add that the latter also creates dysfunctional communities.) His wife forgave him, doing neither of the above. And by that, he was saved. It even elicited repentance, he says.
The wife who forgave says she forgave he husband, and it has cost her a lot. But it’s the way of Christ, and it, she says, has made her holy.
Just finished reading: ”New Eyes: Forgiveness is not erasing” (2024) by Amy Low, whose main idea is that there is danger that forgiveness will unjustly erase the past. There is also a danger that unforgiveness will spoil potential futures for aggrieved and offender alike. Let us avoid both ditches as we walk the path.
I dedicated the new TV I bought to the Lord. That felt like syncretism.