How dangerous a thing it is to claim a mantle of being God's chosen people living on God's promised land, and not scrupulously following God's laws! The land itself will spew them out.And yet, that's exactly what a massive number of American evangelical Christians are doing - even as they celebrate the horrible injustices being carried out by their government, violating the single most emphasized commandment in the Bible.You can also watch this in video form at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6JCqc63Qwk
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Internal Family Systems - an Overview with Andy Luiten
Perhaps you've heard of "internal family systems" or IFS. I had encountered that idea about a year ago, and found the concept intriguing. But what is IFS, and can it help us heal? Can it help us reveal the Image of God within us?When I started talking to Andy on BlueSky, and discovered he's a counselor that specializes in IFS, I really wanted to talk to him about it. So we spent some time today exploring the basics of IFS, and how it can help us understand what's going on inside ourselves. And we wrap up with a bit of geeking out about the bands he plays in.
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Integrating the Mystical and Liturgical Practices of Christianity Today (w/ Paule Patterson)
Paule Patterson and I spend some time in Section 5 of his book, talking about two topics. The first is communion, where it came from, how we practice it today, and what we might be missing in our modern practices.Then we switch gears and spend the second half of our conversation on the integration of consciousness and mysticism. I think I've always held a particular understanding of that word, mysticism, and I'm learning that it can be used quite differently than I had assumed. I grew up thinking of it as the weird old guy in the desert muttering to himself. But I find now that it's actually a core part of religious practice - or at least, it should be, if we evangelicals hadn't been taught to fear it.So if we understand mysticism as a healthy spiritual practice, what about the less mystical practices? How do we integrate mystic practices with more liturgical, more Western, ways of relating to God and the Holy Spirit?
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Reaffirming in 2025
Have you ever realized you were really, seriously, badly wrong in a way that hurt other people? In 2022 I realized I had been incredibly wrong about gay and queer people and their acceptability to God. So I publicly and clearly repented. This Pride Month, I'd like to spend a few minutes retelling and expanding on some of my history that led to that decision.
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Was Christian Orthodoxy Created by God or Man? (w/ Paule Patterson)
It's a provocative question: do we believe that God guaranteed that all the human activity since the time of the writing of scripture has led the Church to a divine, perfect orthodoxy? Is today's definition of "Christian" more accurate today than it was in the early church? And how did we get here, anyway?I spoke with Paule Patterson, who goes by the online moniker of Drunk Pastor, about Part 3 of the book he's writing about the ongoing formation of the Church, titled "The Coming of the Son of Man and Mystical Awakening," where he explores recent changes in the church and theology. In this episode, my third conversation with Paule, we actually look back in history at the early church, from about the second century up until the end of the Dark Ages, and consider the forces that shaped Christian thinking and led to our modern sense of orthodoxy. I've personally looked into Christian church history quite a bit in the last few years, but Paule brings some new light to the topic, with his background in philosophy, that helped me understand some of the higher-level thinking, and gave me some fresh insight into the forces of human nature that shaped history and drove a lot of the changes. It seems that as humans we either naturally want kings and we want certainty, or we want to be those kings and to be certain that those under us are well-controlled. Those themes show up again and again through history, and it seems to have driven Christian history as well.And this leads to the question: are those all-too-human tendencies what created orthodoxy - which would imply that it probably isn't quite what God intended? Or did God superintend the process to ensure that we arrived at a truly holy orthodoxy today?I think that's a very important question, and this discussion begins to shed light on it.#sonofman #mysticism #christianmysticism #progressivechristianity #orthodoxchurch #orthodoxchristianity #churchhistory
An exploration of current affairs - refining my mind, burning away impurities, in the forge of truth. Find me on Twitter at https://www.twitter.com/crucibleofthght/
New Zealand