Month: March 2022
Biblical or Institutional?: On Navigating Hard Church Decisions
“It’s 2022, the Bible says nothing about (Insert church action) how on earth are they still (Doing/not doing) that!” If you have spent any amount of time in a local church, you have likely heard this or some similar sentiment...
Christians in the Gray Zone: The Strong Gods are Back
In his 1978 commencement address at Harvard University, the great Russian novelist Alexander Solzhenitsyn argued that what united the capitalist west and communist east mattered more than what divided them. Both, he said, had lost any feel for the transcendent,...
The Mystery of Being Human in a Dehumanizing World
In the summer of 2021 I began driving an ice cream truck. My small contribution to Howdy Homemade Ice Cream, an ice cream shop that deliberately employs workers with intellectual, emotional, and/or physical disabilities, such as Down Syndrome, was to...
Black Patriotism and National Conservatism
I watched Glenn Loury’s address at the second National Conservatism conference around the time of the event with great interest. Since then, I’ve also seen the print version of it in First Things. You can view the video of the...
Teach Them Friendship
A significant amount of chatter has occupied social media about masculinity, manhood, and why men, both young and old, seem to shy away from these concepts. And just like the platforms from which these discussions arose, there are as many...
More Than Lip Service: Reviewing Two Books on Holistic Healing
When I started reading Amy Julia Becker’s new book To Be Made Well and Liuan Huska’s Hurting Yet Whole,[1] I was gripped instantly by the opening anecdotes. I had something of a reputation during my Family Medicine residency for attracting...
Concentric Roots
In the twenty-sixth canto of Dante’s Inferno, the pilgrim and his guide come across two figures encased in flame. Virgil reveals to Dante that within this single fire dwells Diomedes and Ulysses, grieving over the horse that penetrated Troy. They...
Eyes to See: On Disability, Spiritual Sight, and the Holy Spirit
When I was pregnant with my son David Samuel, born in the heat of last July, I wondered if I could make a sort of bargain with God. I knew David would be disabled, and I prayed either that God...
The Culture War Comes Home
The culture war arrived in my hometown a few weeks ago with the approval of a new fairness ordinance by the Lincoln City Council. The ordinance is designed to provide protections against harassment and discrimination for LGBT+ people in Lincoln....
Love in A Pillar of Salt
Noah Gundersen, for as long as I’ve been aware of him, has been my quintessential example of an artist whose art clearly depicts his departure from faith. He shares honestly about his doubts much more than his beliefs. He is...