Christian faith does not have to be a belief in the unbelievable. Yet, over the last few decades, this is the way many have begun to speak about Christianity. That the Christian faith requires one to blindly accept it, whether or not the ideas are truly believable. For many within the faith, this wouldn’t be…
Every few years, headlines exclaim that the belief in God is on the decline in the United States. The claims often stem from polls conducted by the Pew Research Center, which for some time have shown a gradual increase in those who are classified as “nones,” those who have no religious affiliation. At the same…
What do you do when your minister makes the bold claim that Jesus was definitely not born of a virgin? That when Matthew states Mary was a virgin, the word Matthew used didn’t actually mean virgin. Or that virgin births were a common trope, that even the Emperor was said to be born of a…
Did you know that Christmas is a pagan holiday? It’s one of those “facts” that gets passed around during the Christmas season every year. Most people simply take it at face value. But this fact is a creation of the 19th century. It arose at the same time the myth that Easter was inspired by…
There are times in which the world seems to be overwhelming. Life continues to throw punches, and they all can’t be blocked. Everything can just begin to wear you down, and in those moments, it’s not uncommon to cry out in lament. In Psalms 137, we see that happen. In just a single sentence, this…
Millennia before I sat down to try to tackle the question of why bad things happen to good people, another had set out to do the same thing. Taking traditional wisdom, and using it as a framework for his own argument, the author of the Book of Job created a foundation that I, and a…
Why do we suffer? I’m not sure that question can ever be fully answered. The ways in which we suffer are exceptionally diverse, and the factors that lead to suffering are infinitely varied. But in order to even begin to understand how suffering could coexist with an all-loving God, we need to at least scratch…
What is our relationship to God? Often we think of our relationship with God, but before we can really get there, we need to take a step back and look at a core aspect of God. If God exists, God would be fundamentally different from us. While we may be created in the image of…
When faced with the reality of suffering, the classical view of God becomes exceptionally difficult to defend. The idea that God is all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-loving is challenged by the existence of evil. It brings up the age-old question of theodicy; how do we reconcile our notion of a loving God, a God who has…
The very core if Christianity, what sets it apart from the other Abrahamic religions, and makes it a death cult is substitutionary atonement: the idea Jesus died on the cross so your sins are forgiven. A Get Out of Hell Free card that justifies the cruelty and mass murder done by the church through the…