"we will not fear, though the earth should change, though the mountains shake in the heart of the sea" I have a new book coming out in October. The Shape of Joy is now available for preorder (Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org).  The Shape of Joy continues my project of integrating faith and psychology. After many books that have been very faith forward, The Shape of Joy is my most psychologically focused book, keeping my eye on our mental health crisis and sharing much of the literature coming out of the field of positive psychology. I talk about humility, ego volume, mindfulnes ..read more

As I described in the last post, you can make a good argument that assurance is the major theme of 1 John, that the epistle is devoted to answering the question "How do I know if I'm a Christian?" As I showed in the last post, the refrain "This how we know" threads through the whole letter from start to finish.  So, what's 1 John's answer to the question "How do I know if I'm a Christian"? The answer is twofold.  First, there is a confessional aspect. A Christian is one who confesses Jesus as the Son of God. For example: "Who is the liar? It is whoever denies that Jesus is the Chri ..read more

Out at the prison we were in the book of 1 John. There are passages in 1 John that I adore--God is love!--but I'd never done a close study of the book.  What struck me about 1 John is that a major theme of the book, perhaps its main and overriding theme, is the issue of assurance. How do you know you are, in fact, a Christian?  To start, consider how often the word "know" shows up in 1 John: 32 times in only five chapters. No epistle comes close to this sort of density. By contrast, Romans and 1 Corinthians, the two longest epistles, use the word "know" 31 and 39 times respectively ..read more

For years here at my original blog (which also runs in parallel on Substack for those who like to follow the blog via email) I had a quote from Thomas Merton running in the banner: You are not big enough to accuse the whole age effectively, but let us say you are in dissent. You are in no position to issue commands, but you can speak words of hope. Shall this be the substance of your message? Be human in this most inhuman of ages; guard the image of man for it is the image of God.  After about a decade of writing under that quote, I changed it to lines from Flannery O'Connor's novel The ..read more

Today another film from my 2019 conversation with Travis Reed for The Work of the People.  Again, you can preview the first two minutes of the film. The Work of the People is supported by a subscription-based model, so if you'd like to access the whole film, along with every other film at the site, it's only $7 a month for a personal subscription, which you can cancel anytime. Today's film is entitled "A Great Campaign of Sabotage," and I start it off with this provocative claim: "I think Christianity is inherently involved in ministries of exorcism." Again, this was ..read more

"I recite my verses to the king" Psalm 45 is a marriage song written for the Davidic king. The poem praises his physical beauty and martial prowess. The queen-to-be is also praised and encouraged to take the king's hand. Given all this, I don't think Psalm 45 is in anyone's Top 10 list. The song is too specific to the royal court, and some of its gender assumptions make it fall a bit flat for many modern readers. It's just hard to see yourself in the poem.  And yet, throughout Christian history these songs have been interpreted as describing the wedding of Christ with his church. Israe ..read more

I was recently reminded of an exchange out at the prison that I shared here a few years ago.  In our study we were in Mark discussing the healing of Jairus' daughter. Casey, one of the inmates, was sharing his observations, and while he was talking he said this: "Jesus has this effect on dead people." Casey was connecting the raising of Jairus' daughter with the healing of the woman with the issue of blood (which occurs in the midst of the story). Both women are dead, one physically, the other socially and ritually. Jesus comes into contact with each women, bringing both to life. As I ..read more

Two years ago, I made the intentional decision to pray before all of my classes. I'm in agreement with Andrew Root: the most critical and pressing spiritual formation task facing the church today is teaching ourselves how to pray.  To be clear, this isn't about some pious "add-on" to make my class "Christian." It's not really even about practicing a "spiritual discipline," some grueling work we engage in to become better Christians. Prayer is, rather, simply an enchantment. As I describe in Hunting Magic Eels, prayer helps us overcome our pervasive attention blindness, bringing the danci ..read more

"Wake up, Lord! Why are you sleeping?" These lines in the Psalms, calling out the Lord for sleeping on the job, are some of the most startling, daring, and risky in Scripture. The poet cries out to rouse a drowsy God.  My earliest research in the area of psychology of religion concerned attachment to God, how attachment-related dynamics describe our experiences of God. For example, attachment bonds can be haunted by anxieties rooted in fears about the attachment figure being available to us or abandoning us. When we worry about the availability of the attachment figure we might grow ex ..read more

We've made quite a journey through Dietrich Bonhoeffer's theological letters from prison. We began by considering the central, Christological preoccupation of the letters and then moved through the three dominant themes of the letters: 1. The World Come of Age 2. The Nonreligious Interpretation of Christianity 3. The Arcane Discipline In light of our analysis of these themes, we can now circle back to try to answer the central question of the letters: Who is Christ for us today? In each of these posts we've been examining how Bonhoeffer was trying to create a this-worldly spirituality, a spi ..read more