Soong-Chan Rah and The Mistakes of Multi-culturalism

The Emerging church is blamed for being too white, too young and too mono-cultural and lately for being too dead. The most scathing critique is that there are few if any minorities involved in the movement. The first time I heard this was when D.A. Caron, one of the leaders of the Gospel Coalition, remarked that Crawford Lorritts said something like this to him regarding the Emerging Church movement during the 2007 Gospel Coalition conference,

"Of course there's a sense in which from the point of view of the African American community, the Emerging Church movement is basically a movement of rich white kids who have their dad's platinum cards and can thus pay for their journey along the road."

The audio can be found here

If you want to hear Crawford's quote as stated by D.A. Carson it begins at about the 12:00 minute mark.


Lately, Soong-Chan Rah has written in his book, The Next Evageliscalism: Freeing the Church from Western Cultural Captivity about the Emerging Church being too white and even more recently an article from Sojourners Magazine gave Dr. Rah a chance to write (along with a student at North Park Seminary) more detail on is perspective.  Chances to respond were given to Julie Clawson and Brian McLaren, to spokespeople from the Emerging Church family.  The article can be found here

In the article Rah and Mach researched the emerging church's ethnic orientation and Dr. Rah had this to say,

"At the time the emerging church was coming into vogue, I was pastoring a multi-ethnic, urban church plant in the Boston area. It seemed that every brochure for nearly every pastors’ conference I received featured the emerging church. As I began to attend some of those conferences, I noticed that every single speaker who claimed to represent the emerging church was a white male. A perception was forming that this was a movement and conversation occurring only in the white community."

So why is that seemingly true?  Why are there so many white guys and girls in the Emerging Church movement?  Some would say it is because the EC is a reaction against modernity's influence on the conservative from of Evangelicalism - the search for certainty (which is not Christian but human) through Biblical exposition and propositions.  Some would say it is a long overdue re-alignment of the Gospel with social justice.  Why the re-alignment - apparently  because of the theological witch hunt that many conservatives went on in decades past to protect the Gospel from Liberation theology, the World Council of Churches' dismal failure and the Social Gospel.  The result being that social justice and mercy ministries were relegated to the place of little importance or a tool to get people saved - which was the real deal.

Recently in a conversation that I was having with two African American students on campus at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, I asked them why they thought that the Emerging Church movement wasn't as prevalent or even known in the African American community.  They were surprised to hear about some of the aspects of it but when I asked more pointed questions, one of the girls laughed and said in so many words, "We have always been the emerging church.  Social justice has always been a part of who we because the social needs of our communities have always been right in front of us - that's how you do the Gospel." 

Most African American communities skipped the invasion of modernity into every aspect of their culture and thereby didn't need to be post-modern because they were largely never modern (with exceptions of course).  So what bearing does that have on Crawford's earlier remark and did Dr. Rah do enough research into why some whites are drawn to the elements of the Emerging Church movement as opposed to why large swaths of other ethnicities aren't?  It is frustrating that whatever white males do can always stink with the stench of imperialism instead of understanding how white people form their cultural identities alongside everyone else.  Imperialism is an issue but it isn't the greatest contributor to the distinctives that  make up a people group's cultural identity (though it can play a part).

Epistemology, the study of how we know what we know, is much more the issue at hand rather than the color of skin.  So how do we do multi-culturalism responsibly without making blunders along the way (which is ultimately impossible but we can do a better job)?  If multi-culturalism is good are there any mistakes to be made along the way and have we made some already?  What are the mistakes of this ideal push for multi-culturalism?  I will discuss that from a First Nations perspective in my next post.

Breaking News: Police Brutality for Christians

Mega Church Mania

Is it wrong to make fun of stuff like this? Sometimes

"Sunday's Coming" Movie Trailer from North Point Media on Vimeo.

Tim Keller on the fence?

Tim Keller recently spoke at the recent Q conference on the contested issue between justification and justice?  Out of Ur reported on his presentation here.  How are they related and how are they unrelated?  Which one is more important or which one comes first?  Are they part of the same message or is one the central message and the other follows as an implication.  Generally I have heard Tim Keller, a leader of the Gospel Coalition, teach that the Gospel is the Gospel of Justification by faith through Christ's death and resurrection.  Once we as sinners are justified and set free from the condemnation of our sin by faith in Christ, we have received the Gospel - therefore the Gospel is strictly our justification by Christ's death and resurrection.  In an interview with D.A. Carson and John Piper, Keller outlines that he agrees with this clearly,



The question remains - is the Gospel just justification or is it what N.T. Wright projects as the rescue, redemption and reconciliation of all things, (Colossians 1:19 and the full passage of I Corinthians 15)?  Keller goes on to explain this further in the first part of this video,




Tim Keller is helping a lot of people and is a great teacher and communicator.  I believe that he doesn't want to fall on one side of this issue or the other because he's trying to forge a via media.  Some have called this the "third way" kind of thinking which is fine I guess.  There are many third ways that are helpful but this is not one of them.  Tim is hard to nail down on this issue - he's on the fence in a manner of speaking.  I can appreciate what he's trying to do but it might cause confusion.  Either way, he seems to be saying two different things.  On one hand he is in agreement with Carson and Piper's view of how we do social justice and mercy ministries but on the other hand he wants to say that justice and justification joined at the hip and should be view through the lens of a "both/and" rather than an "either/or" perspective.  I couldn't agree more with the exception that it doesn't seem like he really believes that.

What he believes it seems is that justification comes first and then an obvious implication from a human being justified is social justice.  Social justice has no place in the definition of the Gospel because it is not the Gospel or an aspect of the Gospel - it is only an implication that follows the Gospel - the Gospel Christ's death and resurrection that sets us free from the condemnation of sin.  Therefore instead of a "both/and" view he is actually positing a "this/then that" view.  Social justice is not the Gospel because it comes after the Gospel.  This is an effort to protect the definition of the Gospel from being appropriated like it has been in the past and being widened so far that it loses its justification foundation.  That's a good concern, but we need to revisit the lost cause of the battle between social justice/the social Gospel and the fundamentalist clinging to the proclamation of the Gospel as primary.  If we revisit this debate, it is possible that a new way of inter-relating these two poles could come into existence.

Either way, it seems that Keller is still riding the fence on this one with a few quotes and comments here and there to put him on either side.  Is the Gospel on about Jesus dying and resurrecting to free us from spiritual death or is it the whole message of reconciliation and redemption of all things - which includes and even elevates humanity's redemption but not to the exclusion of everything else as being part of the Gospel's reconciliatory effects.  Our redemption may be the first fruits of the Gospel's effects but it's not the only fruit.  If sin's effects are as complicated and pervasive as they are, the Gospel's effect has to be as pervasive and effective and more.  Christ told his disciples to preach the Gospel even before he died or they understood how his death would play a role in the Gospel.  The book of Hebrews teaches that the Old Testament saints had the Gospel preached to them.  If that's the case then the Gospel has to be the whole message of redemption that has been communicated throughout both Testaments, not only the work of the cross for our justification but the work of the Trinity to redeem all things so that God might be all in all (I Corinthians 15). 

Jim Belcher, Francis Chan, N.T. Wright, and Others Leave the Pastorate to Write and Speak | Christianity Today | A Magazine of Evangelical Conviction

Pastors are leaving the pastorate for writing and teaching careers. Is this a good thing or a pejorative path to avoid the difficulties of working with people instead of paper and podiums? I have appreciated Steve Taylor's comments in the comment section on this post. By the way, Peter Rollins as far as I know hasn't moved to the US. He's on a one year visit to speak, write and interact with people who appreciate his writing in the US. A few names to add to this list would be Ravi Zacharias, Ed Stetzer and Alan Hirsch among many others.

Jim Belcher, Francis Chan, N.T. Wright, and Others Leave the Pastorate to Write and Speak | Christianity Today | A Magazine of Evangelical Conviction

Craigslist for Creeps

They are found on the internet.  Trafficking of sofas, computers and children...

Stealing quotes!

I'm stealing more quotes and this time they are from - Dave Fitch's blog, "Reclaiming the Mission."  Here is one of the few that he posted as his favorite for the year.


“There are many Kingdom churches that don’t know what the cross is about and there are many cross churches which don’t know what the Kingdom is about … the Kingdom and the cross go inextricably together. They cannot be separated from each other.”  - N.T. Wright

Pastors - whipping boys or fraternal fathers

Pastoring is a weird vocation.  Have you  ever thought where they came from?  What impresses God and how should our pastors be impressive?  Why do we call them pastors when the leadership gifts in the New Testament are actually in a list of 5 - pastor being only one of them.  Apostle, Prophet, Pastor, Evangelist and Teacher makes up the list but only one of them is given leadership in churches and maybe one or two of the other can work for him.  Some are more forgiving and gracious than I am, but part of the reason I have hard time being so, is that I have been an associate pastor and a quasi youth pastor. 

Should I be gracious, yes.  Is it difficult to be so, yes? 

The pastor of The Church of the Open Door came to speak at Trinity on "celebrating the pastorate" and his last comment before he walked out went something like this, "A pastor will always have a ministry but may not always have a job.  If you're not willing to lose your job as a pastor, then you are not supposed to be a pastor.  When a pastor focuses on being conventionally nice and making people happy - nothing prophetic comes out of his mouth and he loses his ability to be who he is, but in turn doesn't lose his job.  A true pastor will always have a ministry but may not always have a job."    (This is not an exact quote)

Dave Fitch  writes from his blog - “Because our pastors have been so trained to understand the ministry in terms of their own success, we have thousands of them who are either manic-depressive or egomaniacs.”

So what does it mean to be a pastor and why do we focus on them to lead our churches and be the top dog?  Where do the other 4 leadership gifts come in?  Let's stop hurting their ability to live, to disciple and remove the ornate soap boxes we've given them and put away our whips.  They are our brothers who we have given the ability to be fathers.  They live in a difficult tension because they are nothing more than who we are as people - brothers and sisters working together and yet they have a responsibility to lead us.  We need to discontinue choosing them based upon their height, their smooth tongue, their strong personalities and their ability to play politics but ignore the prophetic potency of truth.  I wan to put away our whips, break down our soap boxes and stand in comradery with our brothers who are our fathers as they lead us. 

Jesus is Better but what is Best?

In the book of Hebrews there is a recognition of the faith of the Old Testament saints as a really good thing.  Then there is the recognition that our position in Christ "better."  It seems then there is a movement from good to better.  As a result, I've heard it taught that "Jesus is Better" when studying the book of Hebrews.  This is the statement that best describes Hebrews as many have taught.  Yet in Hebrews there is still a tension that projects that more is yet to come that is even better.  So is there a best?  If Jesus is better, then what is best? 

We see aspects of a realized eschatology present in the book and at the same time an unrealized eschatology.  There is an "already not yet" pattern throughout the whole letter.  So to whatever extent Christ's work accomplished better things through his incarnation, death, resurrection and ascension, there are still many things that need to happen in the future according to what has happened.  Is he the only one acting or are there others?  What place does the church have in all of this, a church that he has "sent?"  What about the other members of the Trinity?  So some better things have happened since the coming of Jesus yet some more things are still to happen.  Is it possible that these things might fit into the superlative, the best, aspect of what God is accomplishing in salvation history. 

So if Jesus is better, what is the best?  

The hopeless relationship between Faith and Reason

Reason and Faith are like two betrothed infants - totally unaware of each other in their early development or acutely unaware.  They may sit in the same classroom, play with the same friends and grow up in the same neighborhood but haven't been introduced to each other.  They eventually do grow up become introduced, check each other out and hate each other, have a few fights, and eventually avoid each other at all costs.  A few people try to reconcile them because they see a possible fit, others try to assist them to no end in avoiding each other through maligning, gossip and tearing down the "opponent's" credibility.  Secretly in their hearts, they are heavily attracted to each other and have pining moments of desire and a few fleeting chances to re-connect. 

At present they are living their lives pursuing their passions and secretly (though not so secret to some) they long for each other.  While some are hopeful and working tirelessly to set up environments for them to "encounter" each other, the enemies of their union work tirelessly in the opposite direction.. They demean one or the other in order to install their proponent as the innocent and more discerning member of the pair.  Often enough they cross paths in their vocations, their vacations and their favorite gas stations, and their posture towards each other is at times increasingly favorable, but they still haven't been able to sit down for coffee and just get to know each other. 

I am of the hopeless sort, but not hopelessness of this world, a hopelessness that is from God - hopelessness that is assured by what I believe to be true.  Faith and Reason will meet and actually I believe they will marry, based upon their prior betrothal as well as their coming marriage of love.  I also believe they will bear many children, healthy children who will create a legacy of love, revelation, transformation and beauty.  Love takes time, heritages take time, time to grow up and mature, time to become aware of oneself and of the other, time to interact - to hate, to love and time to make a decision.  Just because one is betrothed to another, that doesn't remove the necessary growth of the organism of love in your and the other's heart.  We have to both be committed and commit to the growth of our commitment, but that commitment requires love, a  love relationship between Faith and Reason.  Are they there yet?  No.  Will they be?  - to that I would say "I am hopeless romantic."

Interview with Dallas Willard

Dallas Willard responds to issues of Atonement.

Interview with Dallas Willard

The Evangelical Habitus*

This link is hilarious - it's good to laugh at ourselves.

The Evangelical Habitus*

Its' Healthy To Laugh At Ourselves - Christianese is a language.

I Can't resist posting this - have fun!

Going to Heaven in a Residential School bus

Left Behind but on the Bus

Left Behind - the eschatology of the 20th century, kick-started by promoting a disembodied view of what man really is, has had its profound Displacement effect upon us as Christians.  For so long we have thought and were taught that we were going to go to heaven, that our bodies weren't important, that earth wasn't important and that whether it was important or not, the point is to get us to heaven, because that is what we love, need and want.

We should not want this world, to renew this world, to care for the physical needs of others to appreciate what humanism offers in spite of its anti-God point of view.  What if humanism is just an extreme of a much more foundational view of how we are designed to view our own humanity - a design given by God?  N.T. Wright discusses this in his latest lecture at Wheaton's theological lecture from last week.

Depending upon God too much?

What if humanism is actually a pendulum swing that swung far enough in the opposite direction of an extreme Theism that had us depending upon God too much and ignoring the role that our humanity has always been set to play in this grand drama of redemption.  We are meant to, in our humanity, do a lot more, be a lot more and accomplish a lot more than we actually think possible.  This is best taught from the book of Ephesians.  Does this push God out of the picture - no but it pulls us into a picture that we were always supposed to be in.  We are the puzzle piece that we have tried to fit with God - yes the puzzle is about God and is full of pieces of God, but what if his design is that we are actually a bigger part of the puzzle than we initially thought possible?  I think we are and to dislocate our telos - the goal of redemption to a place up in the sky away from the good earth and the good bodies and the good creation that God has created and wants to restore is much the same experience that the First Nation children and their families experienced over 50 years ago through the Residential School system.

Civilizing our Way

In the 1900's all over Canada, the U.S., New Zealand and Australia, Indigenous people groups had their children literally kidnapped from them systematically by the acting governments and the Anglican and Catholic church (a meager attempt but destructive attempt at ecumenism).  The idea was that the only way to have the Indigenous people's of these westernizing nations "catch up" with civilization was to educate them.  Education is a great idea, if you remove the kidnapping, strategic displacement, sexual abuse, physical abuse, imperialistic religious instruction, beatings for speaking one's own language, and spiritual figures who don't give a $@#! about your identity unless you took on a "Christian" identity, spoke their language, wore their clothes, and haircuts and acted with "propriety" according to their customs and culture.  Becoming civilized sure could lose a lot its baggage - or as it should be called - pure evil.

If I sound angry it is because I am.  Some of my longest known friends and adopted family had to endure the most atrocious of these acts in their lifetimes and today find it very difficult to look with any sense of favor on anything to do with church, Christianity, the Bible or faith - a faith that I embrace and a church that I love by people I embrace and families that I love.

Tamar tells All

The fulcrum effect of this has left First Nation communities with layer and layers of shame, pain and disdain for their pain by those who caused it.  It is much like the story of Tamar - the daughter of David in the Bible.  She was "loved" by her half brother who couldn't control his raging lust so he raped her.  Afterward, she told him that he would have to marry her to compensate for the wrong (which was understood to be the way that this could be solved - wow) and care for her but instead he rejected her and the Bible said he hated her after more than he had loved her.  A nations abuse and rape of another's causes the offender's cultural sensitivities to be fully deadened and they begin to hate that which they were enamored by or at the least humored by.  There are many ways to deal with this growing and self-inflicted disdain - our nation chose the worst option - a second displacement - the displacement of our concern, guilt, our own shame and the people themselves.  Not only did we rape them of their culture, identity and family, but in order to deal with the guilt we hid from them and became indifferent toward the aftermath of their plight and we continue to do so today.  Like Tamar's offender, we have offended twice and the second offence is worse than the first.

The Second Cut is the Deepest

To know that one has offended the "other" and to be aware of the offended "other" right in front of your eyes and then to act as if the offense never took place - to attempt to normalize an obvious act of evil with the person whom you have wronged so deeply - is a greater and deeper offense than the first.  It is not even an act of deception because both parties are fully aware but only the offender has the power to do something about it but chooses to do nothing and moves to normalization and as soon as possible - to act as if it the offense had not even happened.  This is evil destroys oneself and the "other" at a level that is almost irreversible. 


 Resurrection on the 'Rez'


This description can mirror what we've done to ourselves through our previous eschatology - we have disdained our own identity - our embodied selves and have sought a gnostic emancipation from this "body of death" that only brings pain, suffering and loss.  In so doing we have split our identity and deemed that which God called good, evil or at the least - we have become indifferent that which God has given great attention and focus to.  We have displaced our embodied identity, dismissed its place in the good creation and the ever looming eschaton and have dreamed of a world where we won't have bodies, our earth, the good creation anymore.  We have displaced our identity?  The second evil - the evil of indifference towards our first offense can still be reversed, still be unlayered with the shame that we have piled onto our eschatological selves.

Guess who might be the best to lead us there?  That's right - our First Nations Brothers and Sisters.  They have travailed, torn away from the power of oppression, from the demise of identity, from the loss and are beginning to stand again, with pride, wisdom and forgiveness.  This forgiveness will be what heals us, what restores us.  God didn't intend for Tamar's offender to just come to Him, God, and ask for forgiveness, he was supposed to ask for forgiveness from her and to do whatever he could to restore to her what he had taken, as difficult as that may be.  As David so readily judged the wealthy neighbor who stole the only sheep from his poor neighbor to feed his guests, we too can so easily judge David's son who raped Tamar.  But where are we in that story?  We may need to begin asking.  This is not only for the sake of those we have offended but for ours too.  Mutual restoration is at hand.  Let's quit the one way benefits and pray that we don't colonialize our efforts.  This can't be done unless we ask, unless we know, unless we become aware.  The peace we desire, the shame we want to shed and holistic healing we need will need to be given and one cannot be given what they need until they are ready to ask and receive.

S. Kierkegaard's pedagogy

"God's education consists in leading one to being able to do freely what at first one had to be compelled to do"

Soren Kierkegaard, C.S. Lewis and narcissist "I"

"At the bottom of enmity between strangers lies indifference."   - Soren K.


"The opposite of love is not hate, it is indifference."   - C.S. Lewis


"Lack of intention rather than ill intention is the greatest evil."  - N. Smith
(can you quote yourself?  what?)

The Insecurities of God

In a recent blog roll started by Scot McKnight about Brian McLaren's new book A New Kind of Christianity, a comment made by John Sylvest (comment #60) had this to say mid way through...

"As Brian put it to me, for the gospel to incarnate into a culture is very different from a culture co-opting the gospel." 

They are discussing Scot's critique of Brian and his neo-liberation theology.  John's response is that Brian is proposing more of a Theology of Liberation that is faithful rather than a resurgence of liberation theology.

In his own words he writes, "I would counter that Brian has not embraced a subversive liberation ideology but has articulated a sound theology of liberation, as systematically consistent with his other Franciscan sensibilities ( see Leonardo Boff's Cry of the Earth, Cry of the Poor)"

We are faced with the temptation every day to domesticate God and the Gospel for our purposes and to allay our fears.  Our culture's greatest fears look to the answers which are most readily available - the ones that offer the path of least resistance.  The Good News that God has always been telling and that Jesus told best (better than Paul?) is part of this process of God's incarnational activity to introduce the Good Virus of the Gospel into our sick and broken culture in order to heal it.  The culture is good but broken and is being redeemed but how does God do that?

In reference to Sylvest's prior comment, I would say God actually co-opts human culture to incarnate the Gospel.  The problem for a lot of people of faith is that this does not allow God to be a strict purist or an originalist (He doesn't have any insecurities so he has no need to be wholly original as he communicates).  We want him to come up with most of his revelatory methods and rituals apart from co-opting the cultures that form our identity as humanity.  We want him to be completely other when he defines who He is to us.  We can't have that - it's impossible but we want it because of our innate human insecurities.  We need him to be original, not to hi-jack or borrow from the "world."   On the other hand, we do need fixed and formal categories to move forward in our understanding of who God is but as we do so, our moorings can tend to shift under our feet and we find more incomprehensibility than anything else.

The path of discovering God is a lot like someone being born in a sunken ship that has water which leaked into the ship as it sunk.  It rests at the bottom and lays there for years untouched.  A baby is born in the sunken ship and as it grows, the child learns about the water, its properties, its temperature, how it changes temperature, its taste, etc...  Those in the ship are in control of the water and can transfer it throughout the ship when needed but can never remove it.  One day the child decides to open the hatch to go outside and discovers that they are engulfed and crushed by that same water that was so tamed and tempered inside the sunken ship.  God knows that our capacity to understand him is a process of discovering more of his incomprehensibility.  Keith Yandell says that mystery is not a good category for describing God's incomprehensibility.  Though that may be helpful we can still use mystery as a category for describing God but only loosely.

God, therefore cannot be original because his originality would require too much of him for us to handle in our finite, fallen and I would add, infantile status.
 

Kenton Sparks presents this view extremely well in his book, "God's Words in Human Words: An Evangelical Appropriation of Critical Biblical Scholarship" with the Scriptural view of Accommodationism.

He writes, "Accommodation is God's adoption in inscripturation of the human audience's finite and fallen perspective.  Its underlying conceptual assumption is that in many cases God does not correct our mistaken human viewpoints but merely assumed them in order to communicate with us." (p.230-31).

Later he points out that the need to think this way is because there are obvious errors in the Bible, but not errors that actually challenge its authority but point to a doctrine of inscripturation which he labels - Accomodation.

Accommodationists, he says, "are as interested as anyone else in allaying impressions of divine error in Scripture, they are uncomfortable with slavishly equating the mind of God with the mind of the human author, and have no fixation whatever on rescuing the Bible's human authors from error...God has accommodated his discourse to us, not by instructing the human author to express things simply, but by adopting the simple viewpoints of that human author, whose perspectives, personality, vocabulary, and literary competence were well suited to the ancient audience of Scripture."  (p. 245)

Taylor College and Seminary in Edmonton, AB held their Faith and Culture Conference in September of 2007 where Kenton presented the lectures that formed his aforementioned book.  The MP3 files are titled, Epistemology, Biblical Criticism, Accommodation and Path of Wisdom.  These lectures give a fantastic overview of the subject matter in his book. 


Our fear is that if our God isn't original to categories that we define him with then we, as Christians or Evangelicals, aren't out in front of the "world" and they might be "original" than us.  So we project our fixed and purist notions of God onto him while he's busy incarnating himself into the mess of the world.  We end up with a God that is shaped by our insecurities rather than by his mysteries while the world moves forward.  He is not unfaithful to his promise to work through us - so he does (another form of Accommodationism) but the goal is to become more faithful to the way in which He is doing his work of redemption rather than to what makes us "feel" the most safe or comfortable.  We all have insecurities and because security is in the top 3 needs of humanity if not the top need, we will generally design our approaches to God based upon those insecurities more than He would have us do so.  Though He is patient, he will eventually remove those in order to draw us to who He really is.  

Because idolatry is really our projection onto God of that which we believe will meet our most pertinent needs, we posture a God who meets those needs and does so to allay our fears (which are sourced in our insecurities).  To worship a God like that is idolatry, but he because he's patient, he works with what we give him.  Over time, the good virus of the Gospel should constantly reform our view of who God really is and at times cause radical shifts in that process.  So the question remains?  Will I approach God today more out of my insecurities or will I come to him in his mysteries.  Both require dedication but only one requires submission.

Evangelical Scholar Believes in Evolution?

ABC News covers Bruce Waltke's resignation from Reformed Theological Seminary and Ken Ham comes to the rescue with his absolutist version of truth that seems to ignore so much of what is being discovered about the Ancient Near Eastern Cultures that surrounded Israel at the time of the Old Testament's composition. It's only a matter of time.

What Are We to Make of Adam and Eve? | The BioLogos Foundation

Peter Enns discusses the topic of the need for a historical dude named Adam from the Genesis narrative. This is exciting dialogue for people who want to understand how the genres of Scripture interact with the reality of Scripture and the issues raised by Science. Very refreshing!

What Are We to Make of Adam and Eve? | The BioLogos Foundation

What I feel like lately...

Phil Nellis put me on to this video today.  Pixelated, frustrated, castrated, mandated, cremated, dated.  A reminder that my story is meant to be lived outside as well, not observed and created indoors.  Compelling piece - not sure what to do with it.