Lo-Fi Tribe – Preaching Emerging Faith

Ride On Two Wheels

Ride on Two Wheels

An incredibly interesting quote accredited to Sufi poet and mystic Jalauddin Rumi is written inside the CD booklet of Enigma’s The Cross of Changes. Read more…

Life lessons are learned by actually living life. Sure we can pick up books along the way that will help us along our way but the the only way to really learn anything is by actually doing it. Advice from our friends, loved ones, and leaders is really helpful too, but again, the only way we will really learn all the lessons this life has to teach us is by actually living life. Life lessons are learned by personal experience. Sometimes these lessons are learned the easy way, sometimes they are learned the hard way. Regardless of what you’ve been told or sold, you will have to jump headlong into life and living to really learn anything. Read more…

Only The Good Die Young

Billy Joel

Billy Joel’s Only The Good Die Young, a song from 1977’s The Stranger, is quite possibly the best anti-religion song ever written. Well, maybe that is a slight exaggeration, because there is still John Lennon’s Imagine to consider, but Only The Good Die Young is way more fun. Read more…

The Truth of Myth

Myth, as defined by Frank S. Frick in “A Journey through the Hebrew Scriptures,” reads as follows:

“…myth makes reference to a story that narrates profound truth in story form, the kind of truth that escapes scientific or historical documentation. In this sense, then, myth provides one of the most penetrating ways of talking about the meaning of life, about the relationships between human beings, and about the relationships between God and persons. Myth is a specialized kind of metaphor, a story about the past that embodies and expresses truths about a people’s traditional culture” (Frank S. Frick, A Journey through the Hebrew Scriptures, A completely rev. and expanded 2nd ed. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth/Thomson Learning, 2003. Page 108.)

Frank S. Frick’s definition is one of the best I have ever encountered. It’s too bad that a proper understanding of myth is not emphasized in contemporary spirituality. A proper understanding of myth would go a long way towards the establishment of a “middle ground” in the present debate regarding science and spirituality. Read more…

Learning and Unlearning and the Asking of Rhetorical Questions

Learning and Unlearning

I’ve been spending a bit of time in the Christian Gospels as of late. I must say, they are all beautifully written. I especially enjoy the Gospel of John and all of it’s supernatural pomp and spectacle and oddly long dialogues attributed to Jesus. Jesus is, in the Gospel of John, expressed as the pre-incarnate logos, which existed even before time and space itself. It’s a novel interpretation, if not unlikely. Jesus is also always in complete control in this Gospel; this is a sharp departure from the Synoptic Gospels, of course. Nothing occurs without his willing approval; everything is prefaced upon a methodological sift through his intuition laden pre-knowledge. Again, the Synoptics are slightly different. Compare, for example, Mark and John’s Gethsamene stories and the sharp Jesus juxtapositions found therein (Mark’s Jesus has little control of the situation; John’s Jesus is in complete control of the situation). Matthew, Mark, and Luke give us a bit more human Jesus, or at least Deity with very human skin tossed over it. Read more…

Did Perry Noble’s NewSpring Attempt to Silence Dr. James Duncan with Violence and Intimidation?

Reports from this story are making their way around the Internet this week. Honestly, I’d like very much to say that I’m not shocked, but I really am. I am totally shocked by the unchecked perpetuation of what seems to be a systemic culture of violence, intimidation, vulgarity, and hate that exists in the senior leadership and staff of Perry Noble’s NewSpring Church. This is a truly disturbing story. The excerpt below is only one small part of a very large and long series of events for which someone should be held accountable. Read more…

A Treatise on Atonement by Hosea Ballou

Hosea Ballou

Peter Newport, a colleague and friend, tagged me via Facebook with the following excerpt from “A Treatise on Atonement” by Hosea Ballou (Treatise was originally published in 1805). Read more…

Eckhart Tolle’s Concept of Watching The Thinker

Eckhart Tolle and The Power of Now

One of the most fascinating statements in Eckhart Tolle’s The Power of Now: A guide to Spiritual Enlightenment can be found in his concept of “Watching the Thinker.” Read more…

Do the Evolution

Jesus May Be the Answer, But What Is The Question?

If you want to trace Jesus of Nazareth’s slow transformation from a universally relevant social, political, and religious activist/reformer to a historically and culturally relative and somewhat irrelevant Sunday “god,” look in the New Testament itself. Read more…

Romans Five? And More Abstract Thoughts.

The following thoughts are an addendum to the thoughts I had earlier in the week that are expressed in this abstract-like post: Freedom to Make Good Decisions and Other Abstract Things. If you haven’t read that post, I would suggest that you read it before you read this one. This post is a continuation of the thoughts expressed in the first post. The post below would make much more sense if the original post was read first. At any rate, I encountered more information that is relevant to the sketch expressed in that original post. I thought I’d share it. Read more…

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