Author: fbwl

An Amulet Over the Heart: Faith in an Age of Magic

Wellness. Healing. Protection. Blessing. Transformation. Our age of anxiety has birthed an age of remedies, medication, rituals, and therapies whose promises are often breathtaking. As we feel the loss of

The Purpose of the Gospel is Your Holiness: God’s Love in an Age of Empathy (w/ Rev. Chris Stratton)

Flannery O’Connor described the modern world as one ruled by a “tenderness that ends in terror.”  Is empathy the same thing as love?  Does the Gospel transport us, affirm us,

A Canary in the Coal Mine, P.II: Ministry in an Age of Crisis

We live in a time of incredible instability.  Institutions are crumbling.  The church’s witness is faltering fatally.  Now more than ever, the work of the Spirit in each person’s life–the

A Canary in the Coal Mine, P.I: Life and Ministry w/ Pastor John Hallowell

CHURCH-GROWTH STRATEGIES. THE MEGACHURCH MOVEMENT. THE SEEKER-SENSITIVE MOVEMENT.  For the last 30 years, the contemporary evangelical church in America has been the subject of intense devotion, intense marketing, and intense

The Reading Room: The Temptation

What tempts you?  Why are you tempted?  What is so attractive about sin?  In this final meditation on John Milton’s Paradise Lost, David reflects on Eve’s dream in Book 5

The Reading Room: Human Face Divine

How do we understand God in the midst of suffering?  What does it mean to search for God and to have trouble finding him?  In this meditation on Paradise Lost,

The Reading Room: The Satanic Mind

The Fall of the Rebel Angels…  Down through endless darkness and deep perdition.  This week in The Reading Room, David plunges deep down into the abyss of the opening books

The Reading Room: Introducing Paradise Lost

“Of Mans First Disobedience, and the Fruit Of that Forbidden Tree, whose mortal taste Brought Death into the World, and all our woe” Gentle listener, for a moment this Advent

The History of Freedom, P.II: Giraffes with Long Necks

Telos.  Nature.  Plato’s Cave.  In-N-Out.  John 8:31-32.  And, of course, Giraffes.  In this episode, Justin and I attempt to chart the last leg of our history of freedom as we

The History of Freedom, P.1: Nihilism to Enlightenment

“Don’t Tread on Me!”  “Get off my lawn!”  “‘Merica!”  We are a people obsessed with the idea of individual sovereignty and autonomy.  We are also consumers at our core and

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