Biographical Stories
The essays in this blog reflect my tendency to use my lived experiences in story form to speak theologically about the world. Storytelling lets others learn how to think about their lived experiences and open their hearts to the larger world beyond their familiarity.
Theological Adventures is interspersed with numerous personal stories that align with the academic study and theological reading of scripture’s most violent texts.
Four Biographical Stories and Racism
In my youth, prior to advocating non-violence, I had joined the USMC. Forty-Six years later I still remember boot camp with clarity and laugh at most the stories from the fourteen-week experience. This story is about my gradual education on racism in America.
Theopoetics and the Language of God
The experience that has most impacted my life (at this point) is the dissolution of a settled life brought on by the mental decline of my first wife. Within the next decade she would abandon our marriage to return to the Philippines and live the conflicted life of a vagabond. In time, COPD and Myeloma cancer would slowly deprive her of independence and culminate in her passing.
Stories of Labor - Thoughts on Capitalism and Christianity
Capitalism is a natural outcome of our efforts to work and succeed in the world. However, unregulated capitalism is like a virus that kills the innocent. The rights of workers to unionize and ensure their well-being is essential for a just society and regulating capitalism is as important to Christian faith as preaching the gospel; in point of fact, it is part of the gospel. Corporations are not people, people are sacred to God, corporations are at odds with God when profit is more important than people, and the environment.
The Incompatibility of Good Religion and War
A human beings first reaction to war should be horror and repulsion. War is a sign of a lack of intelligence – it is madness.
More than a Crumb and a Sip
One of the primary purposes for the institutional church is to remember the poor with a systematic effort to lift them up into the flourishing of a society’s structures.
Male and Female Spirituality
Masculine spirituality is risk oriented, as is faith. Feminine spirituality is security oriented, as is faithfulness.
Hope for Today
Religion without concern for the present is useless; all who seek God in a broken world should avoid it.
Idealism is Unethical in a Crooked World
Idealism is unethical because it cannot address the complicated reality of human need. Idealism is the weapon of religious extremists; it blinds their humanity and erupts in violence.
Idealism is by nature extreme, it calls for unbending laws, laws that lack awareness of the human condition. It is a bipolar world of extremes like heaven and hell. But the mercy of God endures forever.
