Category: Embodiment
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 Logic of the Body
Making ourselves vulnerable is dangerous. It’s dangerous because many of us have theological lenses that prohibit us from seeing those who are emotionally overwhelmed as deserving compassion. Too often we see their anxiety, depression, or anger as guilty until proven...
A Theology of Faces: Notes on the Costs of Masking
I have heard it said time and time again: “Wearing a face covering is a small sacrifice to love your neighbor.” All this in the context of discussing face masks ever since the CDC and, some experts, decided that it...
Ecumenism of the Grave
“If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable.” — 1 Corinthians 15:19 Walt Whitman was one of the first in America to articulate the modern sensibility with respect to death. He...
Against An Economy Financed by Human Bodies
By Andreas Vesalius During my teenage years, I experienced periods of intense disdain for my physicality. In becoming fully aware of my sexuality and my existence as a sexual being, I came to oppose such an existence. I envied the...
Evangelicals are not modern gnostics. We’re materialists.
There’s a scene in HBO’s John Adams miniseries that remains one of the most succinct summaries of today’s defining cultural battle. The scene features the two guiding stars of the American founding, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams. The two friends are attending...
The Strength of the Hills Is Not Ours–Our Modern Identity Crisis
Tolkien once remarked to me that the feeling about home must have been quite different in the days when the family had fed on the produce of the same few miles of country for six generations, and that perhaps this...
The Fatal Tensions of the Fight Churches
“It’s physics, basically. You bend the guy the other direction than God intended.” Or so says Paul Burress, pastor of Victory Church and central character in Fight Church, the new documentary co-directed by Brian Storkel. Like Holy Rollers, Storkel’s previous...
God Become Man: Toward a Richer Theology of the Incarnation
For He was made man that we might be made God; and He manifested Himself by a body that we might receive the idea of the unseen Father; and He endured the insolence of men that we might inherit immortality. —St....
Marijuana, Caffeine, and a Therapeutic Drug Culture
That’s the subject of my latest essay over at The Gospel Coalition. Here’s my concluding paragraphs: Yet the more interesting cases come closer to us. Consider the interrelationship between caffeine and marijuana. On the one hand, many of us rely...