In response to the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York City, the Pentagon, and in a hijacked airplane over Pennsylvania, country music superstar Alan Jackson put out a single entitled "Where were you?" I was living in El Paso, TX in officer housing on Fort Bliss, the army base where my then wife was …
A Prayer for Donald Trump
Holy God I lift up Donald Trump, the currant occupant of the White House, in whose hands rest an enormous amount of power, and I pray Holy One, that you will with astonishing grace pierce through the hardness of his heart that has led him to behave in such reprehensible ways. Holy One, Trump's words …
Supporting Trump: A theological consideration
Can you be faithful to Jesus and support Trump? Read on...
Fourth of July reflections
Summer time and the living is easy...so goes the song lyric. When I was a kid in elementary school living in Kansas City, MO, summer time was a time when good memories got made. Some of those memories are related to the fourth of July celebrations, that in my youthful innocence and ignorance I took …
Bible 101: What is the Bible?
For many people the question posed by the title of this post will be easy to answer and may even cause them to feel perplexed as to why it's a question at all. Their answer would simply be, "It's the Word of God," or they might perhaps quip that it's humanity's Basic Instructions Before Leaving …
A poem for Memorial Day
You've lived your life thinking that every war mattered Wars that we 'won' and that one where America got battered But not before we left verdant Vietnam all torn and tattered Now what will you do since that the illusion's been shattered Propagandists exposed, let's show them door Refuse to believe their phony …
He remembered my name.
In 2015, I was in the midst of an existential crisis. The right livelihood I had attempted to carve out for myself as a permaculturist (see Go Golden chapter seven for an introduction to permaculture) had not worked out as planned. I was struggling to find work, living in a tiny attic bedroom we were renting from …
Christian persecution in America?
Vice President, and fundamentalist Christian, Mike Pence recently told the predominantly white graduates of Liberty University (a fundamentalist university run by Jerry Falwell, Jr. who is a vocal Trump supporter) that they should be prepared to be ridiculed and shunned for holding what he calls "traditional Christian beliefs." In his view the "voices for tolerance" …
Finding hope amidst the chaos
Last Friday night I went to my seminary Alma mater to discuss my recently published book Go Golden with the students in an ethics class. It was humbling to sit there, in a classroom I had spent many hours in as a seminary student pursuing a M.A. in religion, with a room full of students who had …
Embracing diversity New Testament style
In my last post, I posited the argument that God loves diversity and based that statement on the obvious abundance of diversity found throughout the natural world. To me that abundance means we should not only accept people in the LGBTQIA community, we should recognize that they were born exactly as they were supposed to …
The Tattooed Theologian 