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I came across a blog today that I really must commend to you: Listen Carefully. The piece that caught my eye is called “The Six Stages of Deconstruction” and it really hit home for me. You should read the piece for yourself. Basically, though, Mike says that we go through deconstructing a belief system when we see that life isn’t black and white or binary any longer. If we are in a system that teaches us to think in an “either/or” manner but we start to see that the world has

This is just a short little post on the Supreme Court's ruling yesterday on Indiana's abortion law. See this Washington Post article for details. Indiana passed a law that said that all fetal remains needed to be buried or cremated just like any other human remains. What was happening to the remains before the law? It was being treated as biowaste. And, if miscarriages were happening at home, the tissue was just going down the toilet if the patient didn't collect it do take t

Franklin Graham, one of the “court evangelicals” (so named by John Fea), has declared that Sunday, June 2 be set aside as a day of prayer for President Trump. Specifically, the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association website states the following: “We the undersigned are calling for June 2 to be a special Day of Prayer for the President of the United States, Donald J. Trump, that God would protect, strengthen, embolden, and direct him. We believe our nation is at a crossroads, a

Obesity and disability often go together. Which came first, the obesity or the disability? It doesn’t really matter. In my case, the chronic migraine led to the steroids and quitting work and lack of exercise which led to obesity. After a year on the ketogenic diet, I’m back down to just being overweight, but that’s the exception and not the norm. This article in Vox sums up the predicament very well. In the author’s case, he was very active until an accident caused serious i

Choice Anxiety. It’s the feeling that we get when we are overwhelmed with having to decide among too many options. This article in The Atlantic is about our current phenomenon of having too much stuff. Do you ever go online to purchase something and find that the options are overwhelming? But when you type hangers into Amazon’s search box, the mega-retailer delivers “over 200,000” options. On the first page of results, half are nearly identical velvet hangers, and most of the

Buzzfeed News is reporting that New York State is suing the Trump administration over a new “conscience clause” rule that would protect health care workers who refuse to participate in medical procedures for moral or religious reasons. Two dozen Democratic-led states, counties, and cities sued on Tuesday to overturn a new Trump administration rule that would protect health care workers who refuse medical procedures — like abortion, assisted suicide, or sex reassignment surger

The Evangelical world is coming to terms with the problems of “Purity culture” from the 1990’s and 2000’s, at least according to this article from the Christian Post. It’s about time! What did they say? For evangelical Christian teens growing up in the 1990s-2000s, purity culture was ubiquitous. From purity rings to True Love Waits pledges, millions of adolescents across the country formally vowed to abstain from sex and save themselves for marriage. But for some, the movemen

Internet Monk today ran one of Michael Spencer’s old columns. It was about his faith journey and why people were so upset with him about it. Wow. So much of it rang true to me! I, too, am rethinking a lot of what I knew about God. And I think it freaks some people out a bit. It freaks me out a lot! But, the freedom to ask questions and to be OK with not knowing the answers is just crazy! My journey isn’t Michael Spencer’s journey and it’s not nearly so public (I have like 30

I came across the following quote in the New York Times yesterday (5/19/2019): Activists have been buttressed by many of the nation’s conservative churches, which have increased their emphasis on abortion policy in recent years. A few decades ago, many Southern Baptist churches would preach far more frequently against divorce, fornication and premarital sex, said Wayne Flynt, one of Alabama’s most influential historians and an ordained Baptist minister. “There has been a huge

I came to this topic in a kind of roundabout way. Let me ‘splain. Someone else in their blog referred to a Desiring God post that called being an introvert an a sin. Someone else on twitter posted a bit from a devotional that also said that being an introvert was sinful. What?? How can a personality trait that’s built into you be a sin? Well, that’s not what I’m going to talk about. Just know that they are wrong. I’ll deal with that craziness at another time. I’ve pretty much