Jesus did not arrive safely, comfortably, or legally secure. He fled by night, crossed borders, and lived in fear of returning home—because a politician wanted him dead. The Gospel doesn’t leave us room to sanitize this reality. If how we treat refugees is how we treat Jesus, then the question isn’t whether Christ was a…
According to Stephen’s message in Acts, God appeared to Abraham when he told him to leave his family. While Abraham did not see God regularly, he had seen him enough to recognize him whenever he was around. This fact is especially seen in a strange story where God is on his way to Sodom and…
Eden was the sacred mountain where heaven and earth met. Part of God’s plan was for humans to multiply so they might eventually leave Eden and cultivate the rest of the world to look like this heavenly space. This plan faced some difficulty when humans had to be forcibly removed from the premises for their…
After Noah got drunk and passed out naked in his tent, something very strange happened. The story goes like this: Noah’s son, Ham, “saw the nakedness of his father” and told his brothers about it. His brothers then took a sheet and walked backward to lay it on “their father’s nakedness” so that they wouldn’t…
You’ve probably been told that you were born a sinner, which is a popular theology you can thank Augustine for. As evidence of his thinking, he spoke of a jealous baby he once saw that turned pale as he looked bitterly at his foster brother breastfeeding. Augustine clearly didn’t allow babies the same courtesies most…
If the giants existed before the flood and the flood reached the highest peak of the mountains, how were there still giants after the flood? There are several answers we might propose. As a simple proposal, we might wonder if they saw what Noah was doing, took heed, and built their own boats. As a…
I know it’s a struggle for some when the Bible uses myth to tell truth instead of literal history. I wrote a super short song about how I find peace with such things. Verse 1From apple trees to wardrobesThe Shire lands to MordorA wood in which worlds might exist Mythology is calling meLouder than realityTelling…
At Nerd Church we played a game in which we had to build a society in a fictional world and see how long we could get it to last before it caved under the weight of its social problems. The scenario I offered was a world in which angels and humans procreated and gave birth…
As an exorcist, I have had to deal with many kinds of demons, each one with a different strength, weakness, and personality. When I started this ministry, I’d try to force them out, but it rarely worked. It wasn’t my Christian authority that was in question—indeed, I had forced one of them to admit that my…
Many have heard about the “mark of Cain,” even though no one knows what it is. Whatever it was, its intent was to protect Cain from being killed by anyone now that he was a known fugitive for murdering his brother. This mark communicated in some way that if anyone killed Cain, vengeance would be…
I worked quite a bit with serpentine imagery in an allegorical fantasy book I wrote. The villain was a huge snake with robot legs and robot wings, who tried to pretend he was a dragon. Temptation was offered by snakes that tried (very poorly) to pretend they were harmless sheep. As humans gave into temptation,…
Jamin Bradley 