Two Haitian children carrying yellow plastic water buckets on their heads. Behind them is a small water supply building with its door open. In the background are more people carrying yellow plastic water buckets on their heads.

Great Unexpectations

Why does the world exist the way it does that a people confined to a third of an island in the Caribbean are seen as less-thans? How do they grapple with the faith that comes from white people to their land, given to them to give them hope, and yet used as a tool by those same white people to call them despicable names and degrade them?

Man sitting on a park bench reading a newspaper

What I’ve Learned in 2023

I wanted to reflect upon what I learned this year, and also think of how my knowledge will affect my choices and behaviors in the new year…

AI generated image of a black tea kettle and several black pots

When the Pot Gets It Wrong About the Kettle

The oppressing side in its acts of oppression is doing wrong by nature. There is no “just” oppression. Whether it is cruel or superficially “kind,” oppression is wrong and cannot be redeemed either by language or a reduction in cruelty.

Eighteen Months In

Well, I will continue my journey. It’s been a wonderful adventure that not only has helped open up a language and a culture and a people I never knew before, but also has changed me in how I see the world and understand those who live in.

An ocean shore in the tropics. A line of palms stretches from the lower left to the middle right.

When you think you want to help

If you see Haiti and you have the urge to “help,” I would suggest that Haitians don’t really need you to come help them. Haitians, like all humans, have great intelligence, drive, creativity, and their own sense of self-worth. If you want to help, find and support Haitians who are doing that work. It doesn’t give you a place to be centered and it won’t provide photo opportunities of you “helping” Haitians.

But it will help Haitians by letting them do for themselves.

When it is too much to bear but must be borne

How do I make my faith work anymore (and maybe it never did) when such a very Christian nation seems incapable of seeing the violence we are initiating, celebrating, and dismissing, often while claiming the name of Jesus?

protest march with a sign that says "No Justice No Peace."

When we resist, we resist completely

You want to terrify politicians? Take away their signs of power which are “respect” and obedience and decorum and complacency. Trip them up, make a point to oppose them at every turn, continuously point out their failures, and continuously refuse to accord them the power to silence you.

A montage of human faces overlaid by various color filters.

What makes someone a human?

Rather than seek to deny the humanity of gay people and trans people, what about using your religion to help you decide to know more about them so that you can love them better?

A blue police light shining in a dark background.

Safety monitors

That Good Samaritan did a good thing to someone in distress, and if the story stops there, then we have learned a good lesson, right?

But what the story doesn’t tell us in the background, and doesn’t tell us “the rest of the story.”

Two matching windows, side by side, with matching shutters. There is a flowerpot in each window.

De Kestyon, Reponn (Two Questions, Answered)

This kreyòl version is blunt: “Lè Josèf leve nan dòmi an, li fè sa anj Senyè a te di l la. Li marye ak Mari. Malgre sa, li te tann jouktan pitit la fèt anvan l te antre nan zafè sèks ak mari. Li rele pitit ki te fèt la Jezi.”—“When Joseph woke up from his sleep, he did what the angel of the Lord told him. He got married to Mary. Despite this, he waited until the child was born before entering into sex with Mary. He called the child that was born Jesus.”

Day 270 of the Infinite Journey

What better way to find connecting with people than to learn their language well enough to listen to them, understand, and reply in their own language with the full context of their culture?

Do This in Remembrance of Me

There were some who could eat right at the altar of sacrifice and restoration with hearts so hard that they would deny food to their own brothers and sisters in community because “well, if they wanted to eat, they should have brought their own.”

Two orange butterflies alight several thistle blossoms

Bullhorns and Butterflies

If you want to build your faith up so that you honor Jesus and you draw people to Jesus in your lives, might I suggest you do it the way that Jesus did?

When They See Us—Buffalo Edition

Perhaps white people’s thoughts and prayers and good intentions aren’t enough when their Black friends are asking for love and dignity.

Not Your Place, Not Your Time

White people, do not go into Black spaces to help change the conversation or add your very important opinion. It is just not the time and place for that.

Wyte Innocence

Wyte people can’t be accused of bias or wrong unless there is exceedingly overwhelming “proof,” and even then we will go down fighting and insisting that we were not wrong

bronze bust of Julius Caesar seen from the side

Jesus as Emperor

The vision of Jesus for empire Christianity in our Sunday Schools and sermons and theologies is really an irrelevant Jesus who does not match the Jesus of the texts.

A man works to repair a church window.

On Deconstruction

For the vast, vast majority of people, “deconstruction” is a good thing. Deconstruction can result in something far different and, in my opinion, far better than, white Evangelical Christianity.

A stramd of barbed wire running horizontally

When Our Bibles Get It Wrong

The history of the church is our confidence in rightly understanding until we realize how terribly wrong we’ve misunderstood everything.

REVIEW: Anxious to Talk About It

You will not find this to be the “answer book.” It’s not designed for that. This is a book that invites us to join in the community, in the discussion, in the journey.

A footbridge in the fog. The bridge is held up by a concrete hand.

Be Like Betty White

Betty White, a white woman in an industry that empowered only white men, stood up for what’s right. It cost her the job that she loved. But she did it, not “anyway,” but “because.” She did it because of her own moral integrity.

The Cross and the Gun

A lot of what passes for discipleship and church membership in America is lacking in this demand to lay down our lives before Jesus and to cast aside the devil and all his works.

When You See Their Truth

Whatever your beliefs are about redemption and salvation and even universalism—Jesus was always with those who are most despised and feared by Evangelicals. They’re the people he had meals with. Their homes were his resting place. They were whom he wept for.

A woman yells through a megaphone

Which Way?

Your faith is about your personal relationship with your values, and it should not matter in the slightest whether anyone knows why you behave as you do when you behave better because of your faith.