Crucible of Thought

I renovated a house for a homeless prevention ministry that looked fine when I walked in. Under the carpet and fresh paint, the bathroom floor was rotted soft, the kitchen floor was close to collapse, and a past fire had been covered with new drywall instead of being repaired. After a hundred hours repairing the damage, I will never forget the smell of rot.American Christianity has split into two camps looking at the same country and reaching opposite conclusions. Both claim the Holy Spirit is on their side, so how do you tell which one is sound?In this episode I use Jesus' own metaphors, houses and fruit trees, to look past the furnishings to the structure underneath. I walk through three teachings I once supported: purity culture, positive confession and the prosperity gospel, and "taking America back for God." Each looked healthy on the surface and turned out to be rotten underneath. Then I offer the test I've come to trust most: listen to the ones being harmed.This is a hard episode. It's also why I left evangelicalism after more than 40 years, and why I won't stay quiet about it.

Chapters
0:00 Welcome

0:44 Two Christianities, opposite conclusions
4:43 Purity culture: good intentions, bad fruit
6:46 Positive confession and the prosperity gospel
8:36 "Taking America back for God"
10:43 The house that looked fine
12:09 How furnishings hide the rot
17:01 Fruitless trees and the fig tree
18:20 "Come out of her"
19:22 Answering a family member's letter
20:29 Who decides? Listen to the ones being harmed
22:57 Bringing it home
24:13 Closing and news about my book

📖 My upcoming book, Perfect Love, Perfect Fear, looks at how fear became the operating system of institutional religion. Join the mailing list at crucibleofthought.com for updates.

#Deconstruction #ExEvangelical #ProgressiveChristianity #PurityCulture #ProsperityGospel #Faith

Twice in the past year, someone who loves me has written to warn me that my changed theology puts my soul in danger, citing Matthew 18:15 and 2 Timothy 3:16. In this episode I share my response. If you're on a deconstruction journey and someone has told you "I'm concerned for your soul," this one is for you.

I talk about taking 2 Timothy 2:15 seriously and realizing I'd only ever studied to prove myself right. I also share how inner healing and my church's failures in 2020 opened me to real repentance. I explore why the Bible isn't as "plain" as we claim, the Wesleyan Quadrilateral, Gregory of Nyssa and apokatastasis, and whether challenging the church is arrogance (Luther had thoughts). And I explain why I no longer need anyone to agree with me in order to trust their relationship with God.

Plus: I've finished the first draft of my book, Perfect Love, Perfect Fear.

If you grew up in evangelical Christianity, you probably learned a version of prayer that treats God like a cosmic vending machine - put in the right coin, get out the answer you want. But what if that's not how prayer works at all? This episode explores two very different theologies of what Jesus came to do, and how each one shapes what we expect when we pray. If you're deconstructing your faith but want to stay Christian, this might reframe the question in a way that actually helps.

You can watch this in video form at https://youtu.be/WLdsuszojtU

Your brain is lying to you about God - and the consequences are devastating. In this episode, we explore the deeply human psychological habit of “tokenizing” - reducing complex realities to simple mental shortcuts - and reveals how we inevitably do this with God, collapsing the infinite Divine into a neat little package of doctrine, denomination, and politics that fits comfortably in our minds. But that comfort comes at a terrible cost: it locks us into a distorted, shrunken picture of God, turns us against anyone whose “tokens” differ from ours, and has even been used to justify violence, oppression, and the idolization of political figures. Drawing on Scripture, psychology, and his own journey of deconstruction, we make a compelling case that God has always resisted being boxed in - and invites us to the terrifying, exhilarating freedom of encountering a God too wild and vast to be contained by any label.

This is also posted in video format at https://youtu.be/8DPVnnOcqJ0

Did you grow up feeling really squeamish about Jesus' assertion from the Sermon on the Mount that if our eye offends us, we are supposed to gouge it out? I sure did. It seems particularly over the top, even for a radical like Jesus, and I reckon that we'd assume the only people to follow that teaching are probably mentally disturbed. But I think there's something really deep and really valuable that is hiding in that brief teaching, and I'd love to open it up for our thinking today.

You can also watch this at https://youtu.be/RvBd1BnG0lo

I've been so deeply disappointed in watching famous preachers and worship leaders kissing the ring of this antichrist administration.

The Pentagon worship services established by Pete Hegseth are not in keeping with the founding and the character of the United States of America, and the preachers and worship leaders supporting them have abandoned any pretense of serving the church universal, and have taken sides with the empire that stands opposed to righteousness.

You can watch this at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7I8EcxK6ENM

Some things are Truth, but not true. What if everything most Christians have assumed about Armageddon is wrong, and if our holy calling is to love our enemies and lay down our lives in peace, not to march out in war against them?

You can view this as a video at https://youtu.be/3CEtxslXvhE

Most of the time that conservative Christians encounter the doctrine of universal reconciliation, they usually describe it with a bunch of caricatures, and I thought it would be useful to discuss those caricatures and contrast them to the truth about this doctrine.

You can also read this in blog form at https://crucibleofthought.com/why-many-evangelicals-misunderstand-universal-reconciliation/

A video version can be found at https://youtu.be/PYjql3T3VQA

What do we do when our government becomes untrustworthy?

I've been wrestling with this question for a while now. And everything I see coming convinces me that we're in for a REALLY rough ride in the near future. So what do we do about it? I have some ideas that won't fix any of our nation's problems - but they will give us a roadmap for bringing the love of God to those around us, even as the darkness grows.

You can watch this episode at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_IXpfeZ-wnE