Our stuff is killing us. The average American home includes more than 300,000 individual items. Our closets average 103 individual items per person, even though we only wear twenty percent of our wardrobe with regularity. According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, Americans collectively spend more than $1.2 trillion on nonessential goods. The…
Continue reading ➞ Less Is More: Reclaiming Christian Simplicity from the American Dream
It's been a year since I've become one flesh with my wife. We married in a muggy parlor room in a historic home surrounded by friends and family after our wedding venue was flooded by a torrential downpour the day before our wedding. "And the two became one flesh" is one of the Bible's favorite…
Continue reading ➞ Thoughts on Sex, Vulnerability, and Spirituality After a Year of Marriage
Despite near-limitless opportunities for connectivity, millennials are finding themselves in a world of increasingly dire social isolation. Popular television shows like Friends, How I Met Your Mother, The Big Bang Theory, and New Girl depict modern urban life as an endless parade of zany misadventures, unannounced visitors, and group hangouts. No one is ever bored.No one…
Continue reading ➞ Love at the Table: The Gift of Hospitality in an Era of Isolation
Have you ever been embarrassed by something in the Bible? Or wished the Bible just left some stuff out? And I'm not talking about a hard teaching on money or a convicting verse about orphans and widows, but one of those passages that makes you pause and go, "Uh-oh." Like, you're chugging along on your…
Continue reading ➞ The Good Book, or How I Learned to Stop Defending and Love the Bible
It is, without a doubt, the most famous death in all of history. And yet, when some of us see the cross, we may see an archaic story wrapped around a barbaric torture device that has no bearing on our present reality. When others of us see the cross, you may literally see your shame.…
Continue reading ➞ The Story of the Cross We Rarely Talk About: A Fresh Perspective
In a bare, windowless room, you are told to sit down in a chair hooked up to a strange device. Moments before entering the room, one of the researchers confiscated your phone and handed you a remote control. You are given a simple instruction: Stay seated for fifteen minutes and think. However, at any time,…
It was 'Sex Night' at camp. A month before my freshman semester, I attended an orientation camp designed to 'welcome' me to my university. Overwhelmingly, the staff was made up of sophomore and junior college students. On the second night, they split the girl and guy campers into two separate groups. The format was a…
Continue reading ➞ Men Will Be Boys: The Root of Modern Misogyny
Hillary Clinton is a liar. She repeatedly told the Justice Department she did not have any classified information on her private email server, which proved to be incorrect. Benghazi is a mess - on both ends of the political spectrum. No doubt. Four Americans died during the attack, and House Republicans have spent an incredible amount of time…
Continue reading ➞ The Evangelical Case Against the Candidacy of Donald Trump
By the time I inevitably sweep up the confetti mess from the dance floor on December 30th, I'll have DJed twenty-five weddings in 2016 through my little DJ company - including my own. I've been DJing weddings for four years, and during that time I've attended barn weddings, tent weddings, church weddings, house weddings, and…
Continue reading ➞ Confessions of a DJ, or In Defense of the Wedding Dancefloor
I can’t be alone. I’m watching the same news reports, interviews, debates and conventions and thinking, “Are you kidding me?” And then I sit in a church pew or scroll through my Facebook newsfeed, looking toward the people whom I respect and raised me and I think, “What is going on here?” It feels as…
Continue reading ➞ Conscientious Objection: Why I’m Reluctant to Vote
Instrument of Mercy 