Drew Downs
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11 Things I Will No Longer Tolerate
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4 min read
Wrestling with what we’re willing to tolerate is healthy. And necessary. Tolerance has come up a lot lately. We test the limits of what we’re willing to tolerate and what it means to be tolerant. It’s the sort of idea that comes and goes with the rise and fall of tragedies and terror. And I…
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Fever Dreams
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9 min read
In Matthew 15, a confrontation with leaders, a teaching about evil, and an encounter with a woman expose the true evil of abuse and violence. Proper 15A | Matthew 15: (10-20), 21-28 With Jesus’s words Do not be afraid still ringing in their ears, When they had crossed over, they came to land at Gennesaret. After…
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Nazis Prove the Problem with Bothsidesism
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9 min read
Bothsidesism undermines truth and civil discourse. We need to take a moment to acknowledge the strangest reality of our lifetimes. White supremacists somehow went through a successful rebranding effort like they’re Reebok or Wal-Mart. And we watched it happen in real time. White supremacists and honest to goodness Nazis cast themselves as a new kind…
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In their book The Way of the Dragon Or the Way of the Lamb: Searching For Jesus’ Path of Power In a Church That Has Abandoned It, evangelicals Jamin Goggin and Kyle Strobel explore how the church has wrestled with the nature of power. And as you can guess from the title, the church has more…
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Walking on Water
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8 min read
In the story, Jesus walks on water. So does Peter. He is just doing what Jesus did, offering us an option at a time of great fear. Proper 14A | Matthew 14:22-33 The first time I walked on water, I was 16 years-old. I had never done anything so intentional as that before. It was…
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What’s with some Christians suddenly endorsing nuclear war? The idea pisses me off. But it doesn’t surprise me. It seems like an inevitable, given our present state. Not that war is inevitable (though I fear it may be). But that some Christians are always making it harder on the rest of us. And at the…