personal and theological reflections after a minor bike wreck

19 November 2024 - kudos:

After six years and over 6,000 miles1 of bike commuting without any real incident2, I took a corner too fast this morning, hydroplaned, and slid a few feet on the road before picking myself up to get back to the sidewalk and out of the way of the cars whose path I was blocking. It wasn’t a huge wreck: I didn’t hit my head, my bike seems to be fine3, and three scrapes (one bigger than others) and some torn-up clothes are the worst of the damage.

trying to define a non-theist God

11 June 2024 - kudos:

As I write this, I’m almost done with a reread of Gérard Siegwalt’s La réinvention du nom de Dieu (Reinventing God’s Name), which is not an easy read (my French is pretty good but not accustomed to theological treatises) but has a lot to offer for thinking about what Christianity might look like today. Of the many things that I’m getting from this reread, one of the things I appreciated most is that Siegwalt has helped me understand a concept that I’ve been trying to get my head around for a year or more: the idea of a non-theist God.

coming to peace with the Kirtland Temple sale

6 March 2024 - kudos:

Yesterday, Community of Christ and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints announced that the former had sold the Kirtland Temple, other historic sites, and some important documents and artifacts for $192.5 million dollars. As the title to this post suggests, I’ve pretty quickly come to peace with the decision, and I want to explain some of that process in this post. However, there are some conflicted emotions lingering beneath that peace, and I want to make clear that the goal of this post is not to tell anyone how to feel about this.

📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️ for Curveball: When Your Faith Takes Turns You Never Saw Coming, by Peter Enns

29 January 2024 - kudos:

I owe Pete Enns a lot. Reading his books in the years before I hit a faith crisis helped that experience go a lot more smoothly, as did continuing to read his stuff and listen to his podcasts during the process of faith transition. Around the time this book was coming out, though, I needed a break. I felt like I knew most of his stuff, his media efforts felt like they were getting bigger and more corporate, and as much as I owed him, I wasn’t feeling it anymore.

📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️🖤🖤 for The Courage to Be, by Paul Tillich

23 January 2024 - kudos:

I was recently complaining about religious books that I felt were below where I am in my thinking, so this was a slice of humble pie. I don’t do great with dense philosophical or theological works, and my rating is more a reflection of that than anything else. I made it through with an audiobook, but I don’t know how much I’ll retain. Tillich came highly recommended by other authors, but I think that most of what I wanted to get out of it was concentrated in the final chapter of the book.

the Bible—not the Book of Mormon—as weak point of Mormon apologetics

23 January 2024 - kudos:

Almost a year ago now, Stephen C. at the Mormon blog Times and Seasons wrote a post asking what might be an “extinction-level event” for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. There’s a lot of interesting speculation in the post, but the passage that I copied down at the time was this one: Of course, the truly fatal circumstance is if the President of the Church stopped believing in the truth claims.

an 'enmediated' God

19 January 2024 - kudos:

Mormon theology doesn’t really do incarnation. Latter-day Saints believe in an embodied God and that (nearly) all humans will be resurrected to perfect bodies after this life and inevitable death. Latter-day Saints are also not Trinitarian and see Jesus and God the Father as more distinct than most Christian traditions do. Between those two beliefs, Jesus’s taking on a mortal body is not really a big deal—it’s kind of par for the course for any human, whether or not they are the Savior of the world.

📚 bookblog: ❤️❤️❤️❤️🖤 for Jesus for the Non-Religious, by John Shelby Spong

29 December 2023 - kudos:

I have a lot of small irritations with this book: I feel like Spong takes too long deconstructing before reconstructing (though that may reflect my own personal stage of faith), like his arguments are sometimes sloppy, and like he can be awkward (but clearly sincere) to modern eyes in his commitment to non-discrimination. He also seems more sure than I am that this is the obvious and only way to read Jesus; I agree with his reading, but I’m not sure it’s as straightforward as he makes it.