After sharing this dramatic story, Harris makes a provocative claim: If Jesus had grabbed his own sword and stabbed Judas in the gut when he betrayed him, Christianity would have a very different vibe today. If Jesus had not stopped Peter’s sword and instead drawn his own, Jesus would now be remembered as a religious figure who sanctions violence as a first option, initiates a paramilitary and apocalyptic sect, and enforces obedience through fear and loyalty. A movement where brutality and bloodshed are legitimate expressions of faith is born. He may not have been aware of the possible ramifications of his instinctual actions, yet Jesus only has a split‑second moment to decide the future fate of a religion predicated on his words and actions.

Not long after hearing Harris’ lecture, I read Fluke by Brian Klaas, a professor of global politics at University College London. The premise of his book is that random events shape our lives and history far more than we can fathom. Tiny, insignificant moments can dictate major changes and outcomes. The smallest random occurrence can radically alter our personal lives and world history.

Harris and Klaas inspired me to think about key moments in the New Testament and how, with one tweak in the words or actions of Jesus or other important characters, Christianity might have become something else entirely. It would have produced a different vibe — if it had survived at all.

For this article, I’m focusing specifically on possible changes to the Gospel stories during the last week of his life, changes that could have easily unmuted a more militant, nationalistic, apocalyptic, muscular, violent, or authoritarian Jesus. If he had made different choices than what is shared with us in the Gospels, Western civilization might be radically different today — although, truth be told, Western society has never lacked these characteristics. But it could have been worse.

There are moments in the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ journey to Jerusalem where he deliberately refuses violent, hierarchical, or coercive measures — or, if he did use them, the Gospel writers chose to ignore, soften, or explain away his “un‑Jesus‑like” responses. But what if…

If Jesus had openly joined or endorsed the Zealot movement with a dagger to Judas’ torso, Christianity becomes a militant anti‑Roman and anti-Temple insurgency. In that case, we would see Jesus recruiting fighters rather than faith‑challenged disciples; the “kingdom of God” becomes the impetus for a political insurrection against the kingdoms of Herod and Rome; and Jesus elevates his status to “commander” rather than teacher of soft commandments — a leader whose authority is violently enforced and whose followers’ loyalty is demanded.

If Jesus had entered Jerusalem on a warhorse, the oxymoronic “Triumphal Entry” would no longer signal peaceful intentions. Instead, it would signal military kingship, not humility. Crowds would have more readily accepted him as the long‑awaited warrior‑Messiah. At the end of the week, the crowds would not have chosen Barabbas over Jesus and yelled, “Crucify him!” His followers would have learned to expect conquest rather than compassion.

If Jesus had escalated his Temple uprising to the point that people were injured, the event moves from symbolic protest to violent outburst. Rome responds with immediate suppression, the religious leaders with a show of force, and the movement goes underground — becoming a revolution seeking control of the Temple.

If Jesus had promoted hierarchical leadership instead of servanthood — having the disciples wash his feet instead of washing theirs — humility and service would not have become Christianity’s major motif. The foot‑washing episode is the anti‑authoritarian moment of the Gospels. Reverse it, and Christianity becomes a religion that demands honor and obedience, promotes rigid authority structures, and creates a coercive, punitive community.

Even prior to the Holy Week events, the Gospels repeatedly show Jesus refusing the violent, authoritarian options readily available to him. A more muscular Christianity isn’t hard to imagine — it’s simply the road Jesus didn’t take. But could have.

This brings us to Christian nationalism, a movement that seems determined to resurrect the very paths Jesus refused. Christian nationalism is not simply patriotism among Christians, nor is it the belief that faith should inform moral life. It is a political ideology — not a theological one — that asserts that the United States was founded as a Christian nation, must be governed by Christian principles as defined by its adherents, and should privilege Christians (often narrowly defined) in law, culture, and public life.

Its core claims include America has a divine mandate, Christian identity should be fused with national identity, political power is a tool for enforcing religious truth, violence, hierarchy, and dominance are acceptable means, and minorities, dissenters, and outsiders are threats.

Christian nationalism often draws selectively from Scripture, emphasizing conquest narratives, warrior imagery, and apocalyptic rhetoric while downplaying Jesus’ teachings on humility, peacemaking, and enemy‑love. It imagines Jesus not as the one who refused the sword, but as the one who would have used it — the alternate Jesus Harris speculates about.

In this sense, Christian nationalism is a modern attempt to walk the very roads Jesus declined. It is a movement that treats Jesus’ anti‑authoritarian and anti‑violent choices as optional, inconvenient, or irrelevant — spawning a religion grounded not in the soft power of love but in the hard power of coercion.

Although Jesus is remarkably consistent in his actions and words, Christianity’s ethos is still shaped by a series of “flukes” — moments where Jesus could have chosen differently. Had he taken the sword, mounted the warhorse, escalated the Temple protest, demanded hierarchical obedience, or embraced political rebellion, Christianity might have become a violent, nationalist, authoritarian movement from the start.

Instead, the Jesus of the Gospels repeatedly chooses the path of nonviolence, humility, and service — the very path Christian nationalism now attempts to reverse.

Christianity could have been worse. It could still become worse. But the flukes of the past — the roads Jesus didn’t take — remain a quiet reminder that the kingdom he announced was never meant to be built by swords, coercion, or nationalistic fervor.

As I walked through the sun-dried grassy plots, I encountered a dozen or so folks with my last name, all of which are distant relatives of mine. The most interesting tombstone I encountered belonged to a young man named James “Screech” Watson (1994-2015). Etched into his stone is an ornate cross and a cowboy on a bucking bronco. His epitaph reads: “Lived like someone left the gate open.” I recognize that DNA in some of my immediate family.

We’ve all seen what happens when someone leaves the gate open. The horses get wide-eyed and frisky, the cattle begin to eyeball the exit, the sheep look around to make sure no one is watching, the chickens act like they don’t see it, but head that way, and the goats stage a dramatic jailbreak.

Christianity, in my view, is like a religion for domesticated animals. We are a “gated community.” We regulate who and what (in terms of theology and worship) can get in. This is how denominations are created. People and perspectives come and go until everything gets “locked in.” Which is okay until they throw away the key.

Here’s a recent example. A few weeks ago, the Southern Baptist Convention voted to permanently exclude women from ministry. They had been debating it for years. I was a part of that debate in the mid-to-late 1980s. The gate was always shut, but not locked. Now it is locked. If you are a woman called to ministry, you need to go elsewhere.

I don’t mean to pick on my former denomination—we all have our locked gates—but Christianity’s mantra should read like my deceased relative’s epitaph: “Live like someone left the gate open.” Within reason, religion should be relatively unrestrained, love unleashed, holiness unharnessed, and faith unfettered.

This is what I see happening in Matthew 16:13-20. The gate to the kingdom of God swings wide open.

In the summer of 1988, I participated in an archaeological excavation, representing Hardin-Simmons University in Abilene, Texas, a Southern Baptist institution. Our site was a place in northern Israel called “Banias.” It was first named “Panias,” acknowledged as the birthplace of the Greek god, Pan, and for a brief moment was named “Caesarea Philippi,” after Philip the Tetrarch. This is the name we find in the New Testament.

After I returned home from this six-week dig, I researched the history of the area and wrote my Master’s thesis, titled, “The Religion History of Banias and its Contribution to an Understanding of the Petrine Confession.” Obviously a best-seller.

Here’s what happens in the story: Jesus takes his young disciples to this strange and exotic border town, a culturally diverse place of shrines, grottos carved out of the sides of mountains, and idols of pagan gods.

The Greek god Apollo was popular among the folks who lived there in the time of Jesus. Apollo wore a lot of hats. He was known as the god of music, poetry, prophecy, healing, light, and archery. Jesus’ reputation as a healer was growing, so if Jesus had asked the locals “Who do you say that I am?” they might have answered, “You seem like you might be Apollo. Did you let your hair grow out?”

As noted, the original name of this border town was named after Pan. He was the kind of god you would like to hang with, maybe share a beer or two with. He was the god of both wild and domesticated animals. He was also a companion of the nymphs, which means he was a little naughty.

If you were hiking through the woods in that day, you would be on the lookout for Pan. If he were real, he would have been easy to spot, with his hindquarters, legs, and horns of a goat. He was also an excellent flute player, which, I suspect, is why the nymphs liked him. If there was ever a mythological figure that lived like someone left the gate open, it was Pan.

Today there is a growing interest in Greco-Roman culture, mythology, and philosophy, such as what we see in the popularity of the movie The Odyssey, and in a new-found interest in Stoicism and Greek philosophy in general. Our cultural fascination with all things Greco-Roman makes sense because Western civilization, including Christianity, is a descendant of that culture. The early Church consisted mainly of Roman citizens. This is why we call the largest expression of Christianity the Roman Catholic Church.

In a way, living like someone left the gate open means revisiting the pastures of these ancient philosophies, mythologies, and traditions. By doing so, we are reclaiming our cultural and religious underpinnings.

The most important gate that opens in the story from Matthew 16, however, is the question of Jesus’ identity. Jesus asks two questions. First, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” The young Jewish disciples share what they have heard whispered discreetly among the Jewish population: “Some say John the Baptist but others Elijah and still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.”

These answers are understandable, but not the answer Jesus was looking for. We can assume that until this moment, the question of Jesus’ identity is hush-hush. Why? Because the answer is potentially blasphemous.

But Jesus decides to open the gate to blasphemy anyway. He asks his disciples, “But who do you say that I am?” Jesus invites the disciples to step out of the corral of secondhand faith. No more feeding from the common trough of public opinion. Tell me what you think, he says to them.

If anyone lived like someone left the gate open, it was Simon son of Jonah. Simon doesn’t tiptoe with trepidation to the gate. He bolts through the gate like a dog chasing a squirrel. He gives the answer everyone is thinking but afraid to say: “You are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God.”

In Jewish theology, this is blasphemy. There is one God—and to imply God has a son is very Greco-Roman. Nevertheless, Simon is rewarded (for the moment) for running through a theological gate that had been closed for centuries.

The way Jesus rewards him is the third and final “open gate” of this story. Jesus enjoys a good play on words, so he names Simon “Peter,” which in the Greek (there they are again), refers to a rock, and upon Peter, the rock, Jesus will build his movement (later called the “church”), and, most importantly, “the gates of Hades will not prevail against it.”

Hades. Most readers think this refers to a place, a polite synonym for hell. Actually, I suggest Jesus is also referring to a Greek god and the place that is named after him. Hades was the son of Cronus and Rhea, a brother to Zeus and Poseidon. He was the god of the underworld where dead souls go. And, if Hades has his way, no one is getting out of this miserable hell-hole.

So, when Jesus says, “The gates of Hades will not prevail,” he’s saying that the church will overwhelm the underworld kingdom of Hades, force open his gates, and let loose those who don’t deserve to be there.

Jesus gives Peter the keys to the kingdom. I like to imagine he has the key to unlock the gates to the kingdom of the One True God—a.k.a. the Pearly Gates—to let people in, and another key to unlock the gates to the kingdom of Hades to let people out.

And guess what? We have been given a set of those keys as well. We can lock or unlock the gates of grace. Some folks err on the side of a closed and locked gate, while others err on the side of an unlocked if not wide open gate. The latter is who we should be.

I’ve shared a lot of information, but here’s the main takeaway: Run into God’s pasture with the confidence of a horse that’s been waiting all day for someone to accidentally leave the gate open.

This might be the snappiest comeback in the entire Bible (if not all of human history). When we think of snappy comebacks we tend to think of cutting remarks, such as, “If you’re going to be two-faced at least make one of them pretty” or “Whoever told you to be yourself gave you really bad advice.”

In the familiar story found in Matthew 15:21-28, the woman’s snappy comeback is an act of desperation mixed with faith. By using her “sharp tongue” to make a point, she is trusting that Jesus will respond in grace. It’s a gamble, because their respective communities are historic enemies. But as the old saying goes, “Nothing ventured, nothing gained.”

What does she have to lose? It’s a bit of a Hail Mary pass, but her options have run dry. Her daughter is “tormented by a demon,” which is a first-century way of saying she is in a heap of trouble. Either she is possessed or harassed by some kind of supernatural evil spirit or she is suffering from a severe mental illness. Whatever her symptoms are, I’m sure they can be found in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5).

Either way, her daughter is in a world of hurt; unfortunately there are no psychiatrists in the vicinity that accept their version of Medicaid. Knowing Jesus’ reputation as a healer and a performer of exorcisms, this proud gentile woman decides to become vulnerable, humble herself, and seek help from a man she calls the “Son of David.” As a non-Jew, David would not be on her list of ancestral heroes. She may have held her nose when she called him that.

What follows next is one of the most uncomfortable stories in the New Testament because it makes Jesus look narrow-minded, uncaring, and maybe a little racist and sexist. It’s not a good look. The optics are bad.

It’s a story that has baffled church-goers ever since it was first published. Interestingly, in the world of Biblical scholarship, it is one of those stories that people point to and insist that it must be authentic. If it didn’t happen, there is no chance Matthew includes it in his gospel. Matthew wants to help Jesus look messianic, so why would he make up a story that makes him look so un-messianic.

Or maybe it does make Jesus look messianic . . . Stay tuned.

Jesus’ first response is to ignore her. How rude. Is he having a bad beard day? Does he have disdain for gentiles and their pork rind snacks? Is he just tired of needy people getting all up in his face and not respecting his space? Is he testing the authenticity of her heretical faith or motherly determination?

Or is he holding up a mirror to his disciples to expose their prejudices and pathologies? If it’s the latter, the disciples don’t see it. They take his silence as a cue to get rid of her, to ask her to leave. He responds to the disciples, perhaps loud enough for the desperate mother to hear: “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”

Does he really believe this? Does he see his ministry in such exclusionary terms? Is he waiting for one of his followers to say, “No, Lord, please don’t limit your gifts to one community or ethnic tribe. We have an entire world to save. Don’t make us wanna go back to fishing.”

Instead, crickets.

Rather than walk away, the gentile woman doubles down on her efforts to save her daughter. She comes closer and throws herself down in front of Jesus, tearfully begging him, “Lord, help me.” Now, you would think this would melt the heart of a man who has been cast as the Savior of the World.

But at this point, he’s in it too deep. He needs to continue with the ruse. So, he doubles down again, saying, “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” The optics really look bad now. Why does he add insult to injury by referring to her as a dog—actually, a puppy, which is a politically incorrect thing to say? To call a person, especially a woman, a “cur” is definitely a slur.

Surely, this is the moment the disciples look at Jesus, wide-eyed and appalled, saying, “Jesus, what is wrong with you!”

While you are considering whether to leave Jesus behind in the dustbin of the inherent bigotry of religion, here’s a question to distract you for the time being: What if this woman had tucked her tail between her legs (like a beaten-down dog) and walked away? It’s impossible to imagine if or how history changes based on one verbal exchange between two people, but I do think Christianity would have a very different vibe, even today, if the story ends that way.

There is already plenty of exclusive theology baked into this religion and others. Imagine if Jesus and the efforts of Peter and Paul had never even tried to create more space for grace in another race, namely, the gentiles. The vibe would be much different today. Actually, there might be no church at all if Jesus had not opened the door to non-Jews allowing a few crumbs of mercy to fall from the table.

History has changed course on much smaller moments than this.

Rather than walk away after Jesus continues to rebuff her, the gentile delivers her beautifully well-crafted, witty, snappy comeback, “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.” That’s all it took. A snappy comeback, and Jesus snaps out of his ethnocentricity.

If Jesus had truly believed his mission was only to the Jews, he would not have acquiesced so easily. He would have dug in the thin heels of his worn-out sandals, stuck his nose in the air, gathered his merry band of male followers, and stepped away. Instead, he gives in to her request. Why?

I like to think Jesus is utilizing reverse psychology. He knows he is going to help the woman’s daughter, yet before he does that he has bigger fish to fry. He needs to show his disciples what not to do, so he holds up their worldview as if they are looking in a mirror.

He has been around these young men long enough to know what they are thinking. They are typical, average, ordinary young first-century Jewish men. He knows how they think. He knew as soon as this woman fought her way through the crowd that they were going to try to get rid of her.

So, he also gambles. “Nothing ventured, nothing gained” is the theme for both Jesus and the gentile woman. He sees an opportunity to heal the disciples of their small-mindedness knowing that repentance can’t materialize until the fog of the mind fades. He exposes the blockage that has stopped their hearts from bleeding for others. He allows them to see that despite every obstacle in front of her—being a gentile and a woman—she has more faith in one little pinkie than they have in their entire bodies.

He strategically utilizes silence to reflect their own silence and complicity in the suffering of another human being. He wants them to be aware that their main concern is selfishly to not be inconvenienced and spiritually stretched too far. He wants them to notice that their God has borders (and that they see themselves as border patrol), while her God has open borders. He wants them to understand that her grasp of grace, unlike theirs, spills over and overflows, and is often messy.

Jesus teaches them what not to do by doing what they think should be done, thus exposing the pathetic limitations of their theology, worldview, values, and feelings. Reverse psychology at its vibe-creating best. Maybe we should give it a try?

One reason preachers, teachers, and other public speakers feel the need to say, “May I have your attention please?” is because it is becoming more and more difficult for people to maintain their attentiveness. Some folks suffer from Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD), but even people who do not have a diagnosed neurological disorder have shrinking attention spans.

In 2004, our average attention span clocked in at 2.5 minutes. That’s how long we used to stay focused on the topic at hand. Today it is 47 seconds. We spend more time on our digital screens these days, but we get bored more quickly. “Swiping left” has become a symbol and a symptom of our desire to chase chemical happiness in our bodies through quick and sudden changes.

And then there are all those notifications. I get one every few minutes—sometimes seconds—on Facebook, Instagram, Threads, Substack, a text, a news headline, a new podcast. I even get notified when the James Webb telescope posts a new picture. My attention is constantly interrupted. And when I read that it takes an average of over 23 minutes to fully regain focus after a digital interruption or notification I realized why it takes me so long to write a sermon.

When our phone make one of its little “dinging” noises (the variety of the sound of the dings is tantalizing to me), it’s like a hypnotist snapping their fingers so that we “snap out of it.” (I fully assumed that the phrase “snap out of it” came from the world of hypnosis, but was unable to prove my thesis.) I realize that “snapping out of it” is usually a good thing—it’s what we tell our friend who won’t stop talking about his or her ex—but when it refers to interrupting our attention to an important matter, not so good.

For my sermon this morning (August 9), I read about Peter attempting to walk on water. (Peter is always doing something ill-advised.) Suddenly, he becomes aware of the strong wind that is blowing on the Sea of Galilee. At that moment, he snaps out of it, becomes frightened, and begins to sink. He’s like Wyle E. Coyote running off a cliff, suspended in mid-air for a moment, when the reality of his dilemma becomes apparent to him. He begins his descent to the desert floor where he will land in a puff of dust. He doesn’t die, of course, because the roadrunner needs a hapless enemy to maintain his reputation as the one who is truly wily.

The story in Matthew 14 is trying to tell us that Peter begins to sink because he is, at heart, lacking in the faith department. Jesus is even quoted as saying to him, “You of little faith, why did you doubt?” But I don’t see any of the other disciples trying to walk on water, so I don’t think we should be too critical of him—other than for ignoring the laws of physics.

This story reminds me of Thomas—the “Doubter”—who doesn’t believe Jesus had risen from the dead earlier that day before he has seen the evidence. The only reason the other disciples believe so easily is because they have seen the evidence. Were they more faithful than Thomas? I doubt it (no pun intended). Both Thomas and Peter unfairly get a bad rap in these highly mythologized stories, in my opinion.

Whether Peter should be chastised for not believing he can walk on water or not—and I don’t think he should—the story still has something to teach us about maintaining our spiritual focus and trying not to get too distracted by the wiles of life. In this story, the big distraction is a “strong wind,” which is an ancient metaphor equivalent to a “notification” on our phones or “clickbait” on our computers.

As an aside, if someone like Jesus emerges as a messianic figure in today’s world, two things will be very different. First, he or she will have to keep telling their young followers to put their phones away and pay attention—snap out of it!—so “put your phones away” will become one of our new commandments, right up there with “love God,” “love your neighbor,” and “love your enemy” (the three Jesus commandments that pretty much sum up his theology and moral philosophy).

Second, because we are all armed with pocketed and ready-to-access cameras, many of the messianic miracles will be visually recorded. Theorizing in the mist of mystery, which religions rely on to keep their followers seeking, will no longer be an effective strategy. Lack of seeking will be replaced with willful stubbornness among those who prefer a totally secular existence. Religion will consist of Sunday morning streaming of TikTok and YouTube videos. In other words, the timing of Jesus’ appearance in history is noteworthy.

Notification bombardments might be the most obvious “strong winds” of the world today distracting us and interrupting our shrinking attention spans. But it’s more than that. Our entire economy is run by folks whose job it is to distract us from the important stuff and pay attention to what will pay them. That’s what advertising is designed to do.

Paying attention to attention became a hot topic back in 1971 when Herbert Simon coined the term “the attention economy.” Our economic system focuses on our foci, which is treated as a scarce and valuable commodity. Businesses have to compete for our attention.

And the competition is getting fiercer by the day because there are more things to pay attention to. Simon said (sorry, couldn’t resist writing that) that a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention. Too much of a good thing is not always a good thing.

As our knowledge gains, our attention wanes. Simon could never have imagined how much our “wealth of information” would grow in the next 55 years. Because of that, the attention economy eventually took a backseat to an “information” or “knowledge” economy. Attention is still a big part of the vehicle that runs the economy, but now it is the backseat driver sitting behind and tapping the shoulder of information, the one sitting behind the wheel of today’s economy.

Once upon a time, our economy was fueled by customers narrowing their focus on certain products and services, but now our economy is fueled by expanding our focus. The goal is to overwhelm people with choices and options of information. If we are given multiple choices, we will suspect a product is worth having, so we will make a choice. If we are given few choices, we will suspect a product may not be worth having, so we might not make a choice. This is my economic “theory of everything” (T.O.E.).

Evidence of this “expanding focus” is 24-hour news, the internet, social media, and now, AI. We are drowning (like Peter) in information (accurate or inaccurate), knowledge (with or without wisdom), facts (alternative or factual), truth (with a small “t” or capital “T”), theories (rational or conspiratorial), opinions (informed or uninformed), guesses (educated or ignorant), and intelligence) (artificial or official).

May I have your attention please? I doubt it.

I am not a stereotypical sport’s fan—if by “fan” we mean a full-throated fanatic of a particular sport, team, or athlete. I do root for certain teams such as the professional and college teams from my home state, Texas. When they are competing against one another my common posture is, “I don’t have a dog in that fight,” which allows me to subtly root for both sides.

If sports fanaticism is measured in the frequency of attending athletic events or watching them on television, I do not qualify. Other than the local high school—if there are participating athletes who attend the congregation I serve as pastor—I have not visited very many stadiums over the years to watch games. It would be irrelevant to mention the ones I have attended, although the amount does not warrant my bust in the Hall of Fame for Fans.

However, I am a casual fan. Why the casualness? Honestly, I suggest that anything other than a relatively unemotional connection to competitive athletic fandom could be interpreted as an unhealthy grasp of reality. It’s normal to cheer for a team or athlete; it is not normal to cherish them so much that our emotional stability teeters on the edge of insanity if and when the object of our affection has an off year. (As a Dallas Cowboys fan, I speak from personal experience.)

I prefer not to use up too much of the precious time allotted to me in this universe. I prefer to ground myself in reality and accomplish something more relevant than hours logged immersing myself in sports. At the end of the day, or rather, season, sports is not all that relevant. It offers a few highs in the midst of a multitude of lows. I do not judge those who spend hours upon hours watching their favorite teams or players; I just have better things to do.

However, I do enjoy athletic competition. It would be too pretentious to elaborate on the several ways I have participated in athletics, both in my youth and now as a person who swings golf clubs with just enough vigor and consistency to be announced a “weekend hacker” (although, because of my “Sunday job,” I only play on weekdays).

Although I freely admit that I am a casual sports fan, I can’t say the same about my level of religious fanaticism. I confess that sometimes I make light of those who take a more laid back approach to religion, those loosely affiliated friends and neighbors that are pejoratively labeled “C & E” Christians. These well-meaning, yet otherwise too-busy souls, claim their seats—often sitting in a regular attender’s habitual spot—on the highest of holy days, Christmas and Easter. We can also refer to them as “CEO’s”—Christmas and Easter Only Christians.

These are the folks who, for various reasons, wish to keep their names on the rosters of congregations where they were likely baptized, confirmed, and married, and where their ancestors made their spiritual homes. Their grandparents were likely around at the formation of the congregation or the building of the newest sanctuary.

Whatever their origin story happens to be, the C & E Christians maintain a deep or lengthy, yet spiritually shallow connection to the church of their ancestors. Knowing that there is a historical connection to the church, pastors like myself always hang on to the hope that one or two of the C & E’s will “get convicted” or become so impressed with our Christmas Eve or Easter sermons that they will subsequently make church attendance a more frequent and habitual affair.

The motivations for being a casual Christian certainly vary. Sometimes folks are too shy to be out in public like that, too busy, or simply not curious enough to darken the doors of a church, at least on less celebrated days. Maybe they feel their lives are full and fine as they are. Organized religion—with all its known foibles and hypocrisies—is just not worth their time and effort.

Nevertheless, if I could bend their ears for one moment, I would offer the following advice, hopefully without sounding too pedantic: The spirituality of C & E’s is likely off-balance, out-of-whack, off-kilter. A minimalist two-pronged Christianity, one that absorbs only the highly mythologized stories of a miraculous virgin birth and the bodily resurrection of a sacrificed savior does little more than whet the appetite for something more substantive and real.

C & E’s are like patrons of white cloth restaurants claiming a table on a busy night, partaking of the appetizers, perhaps sampling the complementary bread and a glass of red wine, then disappearing into the night without bothering to order an entrée. The dessert? Not a chance.

They probably assume that by remembering and celebrating the birth and resurrection of Jesus they are skipping the appetizers and going straight to the main course. It seems to be enough for them. But just as a carnivore diet—although temporarily filling—is not a well-balanced and sustainable meal, neither is a religion that only focuses on the least understood and least provable aspects of its doctrinal dishes.

Without the support of the morsels of Christianity that are more digestible, such as Jesus’ parables, and the ethical principles of the entire canon of scripture, the more fantastical stories and claims leave the C & E folks baffled, confused, and only minimally inclined to recommit to their family’s historic faith, especially if they are educated in critical thinking skills.

Circling back, these same criticisms apply to casual sports fans like myself. Utilizing the same acronym—“CEO”—I hereby declare that I am a CEO sports fan—Championships and Eliminations Only—the “win or go home,” “one and done,” or “do or die” events. My fandom is most certainly off-balance and under-developed. I generally witness only those highly mythologized sporting events that do not give me the whole story. I didn’t see the struggles that transpired before the team or athlete made it to the Big Game. I didn’t see the pre-season preparation, the evolving strategy of the coaching staff, the years in the gym, the sacrifice of time, tears, and torn ligaments. If the Big Game were a meal, I’m missing how the meal was made—the prep, the ingredients, the mixtures, the amounts, the heat, and the time that it took to produce a meal that’s worth eating.

Because of my casual CEO approach to sports, I’m not getting the full effect of what’s being played out on the field, just as casual CEO Christians are likely missing the more sublime aspects of the faith. Folks might argue that the birth, death, and resurrection stories are the most inspiring and beneficial stories in the New Testament, but I argue that a singular focus on them have the negative affect of producing doubt rather than faith.

The championship and elimination games, and the Christmas Eve and Easter services, are nice for what they are. The cherry on top. But is the cherry ever enough?

When I returned from that six‑week excavation, I wrote my Master’s thesis: The Religious History of Banias and Its Contribution to an Understanding of the Petrine Confession. A real page‑turner. Oprah never called.

For New Testament scholars, the heart of the story is Peter’s answer to Jesus’ question: “You are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God.” It’s the first great leap of Christian theology. And in my book Christianity Lite, I retell the scene as if Peter were an astronaut. Far‑fetched? Sure. But if Peter had been an astronaut, we’d have to go far to fetch him.

And honestly, you might have a blast.

If Simon Peter landed on the moon, we’d say he took a giant step forward for all mankind—and then promptly took a step backward. He’s right about Jesus’ identity (Jesus says so), and then he’s wrong. That’s Peter’s pattern.

He’s not alone. For centuries, the early church used up most of the oxygen in the room debating Jesus’ identity. From the fourth through the eighth centuries, Christianity’s top brass gathered at seven ecumenical councils to hash it out. Five hundred years of theological air travel, and we’re still arguing. Anyone who thinks they’ve got Jesus’ identity neatly solved is a loony space cadet.

Peter, though—he’s the kid who always wants to be first in line. He blurts out the answer: “You are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God.” In Neil Armstrong terms, it’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind. The first time someone exits earth’s theological orbit.

Jesus responds like Mission Control after a successful moon landing: “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah! My Father has revealed this to you.” Then Jesus gives Simon a new name—Peter, the rock—and declares that on this rock he will build his church. Long before Dwayne Johnson, Peter was the Rock. The launch pad of Christianity.

Jesus even hands him “the keys of the kingdom,” meaning Peter gets to hit the ignition switch and steer the mission. Captain Peter, commander of the USS Christianity.

But Peter’s rocket boosters don’t stay lit for long.

As he basks in the moonlight of his new rank, Jesus reveals the next part of the mission: suffering, rejection, death—and a relaunch on the third day. Houston, we have a problem. Peter hears “crash landing” and panics.

He pulls Jesus aside and says, “God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you!” Captain Peter tries to overrule the Admiral.

Jesus’ response is a cosmic demotion: “Get behind me, Satan. You’re thinking in earthly terms, not heavenly ones.” In other words, Peter is drifting toward the dark side of the moon.

Two steps forward, one step backward.

This rhythm continues throughout Peter’s life.

He tries to walk on water as if gravity doesn’t apply to him. He initially treats Gentiles like aliens until the Spirit lowers a UFO‑adjacent sheet full of unclean animals and tells him not to call anything unclean that God has made clean.

Peter is bold, impulsive, occasionally brilliant, occasionally clueless. He is, in other words, just like us.

In our voyage with Christ, we follow the same pattern:

• Sometimes we make it to the launch pad, but the ship isn’t ready.

• Sometimes we suit up and forget the air tanks.

• Sometimes we strap in and realize we left the keys at home.

• Sometimes we lift off but don’t have enough fuel.

• Sometimes we make it to the moon, but the hatch won’t open.

Discipleship is not a straight ascent. It’s orbital wobble. It is thrusters firing, alarms beeping, occasional crash landings, and the grace of a Commander who keeps calling us forward.

In a nutshell—or rather, in a space module—this is how it is for followers of Christ.

Beyond climate change, three other subjects still manage to capture some of our collective bandwidth, though not nearly enough:

1. the universe—deep space, deep time, and the possibility of life elsewhere,

2. the hard problem of consciousness, and

3. the technological “miracle” of artificial intelligence.

Another way to frame the deepest questions is chronological:

1. the origin of existence,

2. the origin of non‑sentient life,

3. the origin of sentient life.

All of these questions—cosmic, biological, technological—are modern versions of an ancient inquiry: What is ultimately real? Each tugs at the hem of mystery. Every new insight expands the frontier of human knowledge, and at that frontier, when our limitations are exposed, theological questions inevitably arise.

This is where the familiar fallacy appears: the God of the gaps. Whenever science pushes the boundary of understanding, some rush to place God in whatever remains unexplained. But as soon as the gap closes, God is squeezed out. The divine becomes a placeholder for future research rather than a meaningful theological claim.

I have two paradoxical responses. First, claiming concrete knowledge of God is itself a fallacy. Human language and cognition are limited; the divine—if real—would be transcendent, infinite, and beyond comprehension. Any attempt to define God is, frankly, pretentious. My own theology leans toward the apophatic tradition: understanding God by negation, by saying what God is not. And one thing God cannot be is a temporary stand‑in for scientific ignorance.

Second, I offer a counterintuitive suggestion: the more science uncovers, the larger the universe becomes—and thus, if God exists, the larger God becomes. As Carl Sagan once told Johnny Carson, “Science flatters God.” This only works if science adds rooms to the mansion, not if it keeps pulling rugs out from under God’s feet.

The three topics I’ve named—the universe, consciousness, and AI—do precisely this. They expand the mansion. They create more rooms, more mystery, more awe.

Artificial intelligence, though a product of human ingenuity, feels miraculous to most who use it. From our technologically limited vantage point, AI seems to create gaps even as it fills them. It imitates omniscience without possessing it. And it raises provocative questions: How far can we stretch our tower of Babel? Could a sufficiently advanced system develop something like consciousness—or even something analogous to a “soul”? Inquiring minds made of gray matter want to know.

Consciousness itself remains the most stubborn gap. The hard problem—how subjective experience arises from physical processes—has opened more mysteries than it has resolved. For now, consciousness is the one thing that separates biological minds from machine intelligence. Some might argue the gap involves “divinity,” though divinity, by definition, resists measurement. Still, AI forces us to ask whether human intelligence is derivative—an imprint or reflection of something greater. If we can create artificial intelligence, what does that imply about the source of our own?

The study of consciousness—human, animal, or artificial—leads inevitably to theology. It is one of the most theologically charged questions science has ever touched, rivaled only by existence itself and the emergence of life. And now, with AI in the mix, everyone wants to know whether artificial intelligence can illuminate organic intelligence.

Meanwhile, the universe—the womb of existence—continues to astonish us. Its origin, scale, operating manual, and future remain beyond our grasp. We approach these questions with a default posture of mystery rather than mastery. Whether apophatic or not, we instinctively sense that connecting the universe to God lies outside our jurisdiction. Faith fills the gap for now, even as priests, poets, philosophers, and physicists long to break the code.

Only recently have we even known what questions to ask about space and time. Once we grasped the enormity of the problem, we had no choice but to acknowledge the Fermi Paradox: the contradiction between the high probability of extraterrestrial life and the total lack of evidence for it. Yet we continue to ask, because these questions are not really about aliens—they’re about cosmic loneliness, cosmic purpose, and cosmic order. They lead us back to theology.

All three mega‑topics—the universe, consciousness, and AI—whisper the same question: Is there someone or something intentional behind all this? It is the largest gap in our Gap Manual, paradoxically too big to solve and too big to ignore.

Inquiring minds made of gray matter want to know.

As the years went by, the immigration issue became more complex and combustible, mainly due to cynical ploys to use it as a political football. As an adult, I have learned that people are susceptible to “proof” that derives from anecdotal “evidence,” first or second-hand.

For example, there is probably a stronger anti-immigration (especially illegal immigration) stance in the town where my wife and I currently live because of a horrific incident that took place here in 1999. When I say “here” I mean the house in which we live, where the infamous Railway Killer brutally murdered the pastor and his wife, Skip and Karen Sirnic. The serial killer was a Mexican national who was here illegally. Even knowing the statistical evidence that immigrants are less likely to commit violent crimes than non-immigrants, a story like that will elicit an emotional response.

The last two presidents have made the topic more controversial. Biden apparently “opened” the border, which was probably an overreaction to the first Trump administration’s overly punitive policy. Children separated from their parents and put in cages is not a good look. Trump’s second term has created another layer of excessive force with the overly enthusiastic deployment of ICE agents into America’s neighborhoods.

This past week, ICE killed a Mexican family man who had raised three educated son—all American citizens. 52-year-old Lorenzo Salgado Araujo was shot after he allegedly rammed a law enforcement vehicle and refused to follow verbal commands during a traffic stop. Law enforcement’s version of events is disputed by three men who were with Araujo at the time and are currently detained. Whatever the truth is about this incident, immigration policy will continue to be an agenda item for our politicians to solve.

When Texas Senate candidate James Talarico was accused by his opponent, Ken Paxton, of placing a giant welcome mat on the southern border, implying he was in favor of open borders, I knew something in that accusation was missing. It was. It turns out that Talarico finished his brief snippet of immigration policy by adding “and a locked front door.” From my perspective, an immigration policy that tries to balance compassion (welcome mat) with pragmatism (a locked door) is the appropriate approach.

As that analogy was percolating in the coffee pot of my brain, and as I was watching a World Cup match, the thought occurred to me that an analogy from the world of football (American soccer) also strikes the right balance between compassion and pragmatism—specifically a wide net (compassion) and a skilled goalie (pragmatism). In the Talarico and soccer analogies, someone is getting in, but not without an appropriate level of difficulty.

This got my creative juices flowing. What are some other analogies that could be used to describe a decent philosophical approach to immigration? How do we capture the tension between hospitality and security, opportunity and order? (How this translates into policy is a job for lawmakers and law enforcement).

Here are some possibilities:

1. A public library with a membership card – Knowledge is open to all, but you still check in at the desk so the system stays organized and protected.

2. A community garden with a fence and shared key – The garden thrives when many hands tend it, but the fence prevents vandalism and ensures the space is cared for.

3. An airport terminal with friendly staff and TSA – Smiling greeters and clear signage welcome travelers, while security screening protects the whole system.

4. Any event with ticket scanning – The event (game, concert, lecture, etc.) wants a large and enthusiastic crowd, but scanning tickets keeps the event safe and manageable.

Here are some other possible analogies for an immigration philosophy that is rooted in the Texas culture in which I live:

1. Church potluck with a sign-in sheet – Everyone’s invited to bring their best casserole, but you still jot your name down, along with your dish, so that we know there is an appropriate amount of meat, side dishes, and desserts.

2. Interstate highway with a speed limit – The roads in Texas stretch far and wide, but a speed limit, however high they are set (and they are set extremely high on less-traveled Texas highways), keep everyone safer on the journey than they would be if there was no speed limit.

3. Honky-tonk dance floor with a bouncer – The dance floor’s open to all two-steppers, but the bouncer keeps the rowdy folks from ruining the night.

Maybe you can imagine some other analogies that express a hospitable, yet practical, border philosophy. Whatever they are, they need to reflect two simultaneous facts:

1. Immigration enriches all of us – new people bring ideas, labor, culture, and vitality.

2. Systems need boundaries – not to exclude broadly, but to filter out genuine threats and maintain order.

I had this conversation with my late father years ago before he became radicalized by the current political climate. He wisely told me that the best way to “solve” the immigration issue is to freely give out green cards to everyone who comes across the border. If there is work for them, they will stay and contribute to our economy. If the jobs are not there for them, they will go home. Of course, his “theory” didn’t take into consideration political asylum cases or drug trafficking problems, but there is a beautiful simplicity in allowing the “invisible hand” of capitalism to work its presumed magic.

Immigration will continue to be a hot topic in this country. We need to take the issue seriously, but we don’t need to be jerks. We just need to reflect on how best to blend compassion and pragmatism into our immigration philosophy, if not policy.

My personal gripe? There simply aren’t enough of them.

Major sports have been tweaking their rules to increase excitement—MLB speeding up the game, the NFL reinventing kickoffs—so here’s my humble proposal: widen the soccer goal. Add a couple of feet on each side and raise it a couple of feet higher. More scoring. More drama. More joy. That’s my two cents.

But the World Cup has drawn my attention for reasons far more interesting than my armchair rule‑changes.

Two things stand out this year:

1. The sheer number of international visitors arriving just as we celebrate 250 years of American independence.

2. Their reactions to what they see here—massive stadiums, grocery aisles overflowing with choices (especially Ranch dressing), Texas BBQ, and of course, Buc‑ees.

Many visitors are surprised by something else: our diversity. The United States is one of the most ethnically varied nations in history. People from nearly every corner of the globe live here. For some of these soccer fans, it must be surreal to meet Americans who share their ethnic heritage.

And that brings me back to goals. The goal in soccer is to score goals. The goal of America is to live as one.

We try. We don’t always succeed. But the aspiration is embedded in our national motto: e pluribus unum—out of many, one.

E pluribus unum was proposed in 1776 by Pierre Eugene du Simitiere, a consultant to the committee designing the Great Seal. Congress approved it in 1782. Even the thirteen letters of the phrase symbolically represent the original thirteen colonies.

This motto captures what people mean by “the American experiment.” It was a radical idea in the 18th century. Nations were typically defined by a single ethnicity, a single monarch, or a single religion. America attempted something different: political unity without cultural sameness.

That experiment has never been easy. The Civil War and today’s hyper‑partisan politics testify to that. Still, e pluribus unum remains our north star, our aspiration—something to recommit to before we drift into expiration.

To borrow a biblical word, America is held together by a covenant—a social contract that requires daily renewal. Like the covenants in Scripture, unity is not guaranteed. It must be chosen, guarded, and cherished. George Washington said unity must be “the main pillar” of our political house.

But unity is only half the story.

The church mirrors this same tension. Paul writes, “We, though many, are one body in Christ.” Revelation envisions a people from “every tribe and tongue and nation.” Even my own denomination, the United Church of Christ, echoes the national motto: out of the many, one, with Jesus’ prayer “that they may all be one.”

We emphasize unity—and for good reasons. We long for harmony, wholeness, and peace. But sometimes we put the emphasis on the wrong end. If unity is our only goal, then our goal might be too small. The net is too small. And what happens when the net is too small? Fewer goals.

Focusing solely on unity risks neglecting the diversity that gives both church and nation their vitality. Unity without variety becomes uniformity. And uniformity is not life‑giving.

E pluribus unum—out of the many, one—is essential. But perhaps we need a complementary aspiration: ex uno, plures—out of the one, many. These two truths are not opposites; they are the inhale and exhale of a healthy society and a healthy church.

Think of breathing:

• Out of the many, one is the inhale—drawing diverse elements together into a single body.

• Out of the one, many is the exhale—allowing that unified body to express itself in countless ways.

Scripture is full of this outward movement:

• One Creator gives rise to many creatures.

• One sin multiplies into many.

• One man, Abraham becomes the father of many nations.

• One leader, Moses shapes many laws.

• One Redeemer brings forgiveness to many.

• One message is heard in many languages.

• One Spirit gives many gifts.

• One seed becomes a tree with many branches.

• One vine nourishes many branches.

• One Shepherd tends many sheep.

• One Gospel produces many disciples.

• One Commission sends us to make many new believers.

It all begins with one body, one Spirit, one hope, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all. But that’s the beginning, not the goal. The goal is for the One to generate the many—for unity to flower into diversity.

America needs a wider net. The church needs a wider net. And yes, soccer needs a wider net. Because the point isn’t just to keep the ball out. The point is to score. Unity matters. Diversity matters. Inhale. Exhale. Out of the many, one. Out of the one, many. That’s how nations flourish. That’s how churches flourish. That’s how life flourishes.

Maybe it’s time we widened the goal.

I guess it took. A couple of years later, I was pastoring two UCC congregations near Waco, Texas while enrolled in grad school at Baylor University, the flagship school of Southern Baptist non-seminary higher education. Obviously, unbeknownst to me, I was in transition from evangelism to ecumenism, although Baylor was still a good fit for me at the time.

The story I like to tell about this time in my life was the day I called my mom to tell her I had been called to a church. (“Called” is just a fancy churchy way of saying someone hired us.) She asked if it is a Baptist church. I said, “No, it’s a UCC church.” “What’s a UCC church?” she asked. “United Church of Christ,” I answered. She shot back with a hint of hysteria: “You’re a Church of Christ preacher now?” I said, “No, mom, it’s the United Church of Christ.” After a pregnant pause, she asked, “Is that a cult?”

By the way, although both Southern Baptists and Church of Christ folks are evangelical, they are different enough in their theology (especially concerning the role of baptism) that my mother couldn’t imagine me making a jump from the Southern Baptists to the Church of Christ. She would soon learn that I took an even longer jump to the UCC.

Christian evangelicalism has a difficult time seeing authenticity in groups other than their own. In fairness to my mom, however, she was never taught how to be ecumenically-minded. But what about you, dear reader. Have you ever asked yourself: Am I evangelical or ecumenical?

Let’s take a step back for a moment . . . There are somewhere between 4,000 and 10,000 religions worldwide, although 75% of the religiously-oriented population belong to one of the four largest belief systems: Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism.

Around the globe there are approximately 45,000 to 49,000 Christian denominations or sects, and in America alone there are over 200 distinct Christian denominations, a number that rises to about 1500 when broadening the definition of “denomination”.

Despite those numbers, I’m convinced there are really only two flavors of religionists: evangelical and ecumenical. While I am happily living and working in a mainline Protestant Christian milieu that has been deemed “the flagship denomination of the ecumenical movement,” I suggest that the question, “Am I evangelical or ecumenical?” can apply to every religion known to the human species.

Non-humans, especially those who live in the wild, are more apt to ask, “Am I a predator or prey?” This means they are evangelical only, which I will explain below.

The word “religionist” is often used to refer to a zealot, but for our purposes, I will use it to describe anyone who adheres to any particular religious tradition on any level. And what do most, if not all, religious traditions have in common? Pardon my redundancy, but what they all have in common is that there are evangelicals and ecumenists among them.

Even if, on occasion, one discovers some overlap between the two, some (if not most) lean heavily to the evangelical side, while others (probably much fewer) have more of an ecumenical flavor.

Let’s take another step back for a moment . . . What do I mean by “evangelical” and “ecumenical” religion?

Evangelical religion is relatively closed and narrowly defined. Regardless of the religious tradition, it focuses more on personal rather than social conversion (which often translates into social conservatism), is less likely to be open to the holy texts of other groups, and insists on spreading its “good news” (which is part of the definition of the word “evangelical”) to those who adhere to other religious traditions or none at all. There is less doctrinal wiggle room in evangelical religion and it is typically not all that interested in unity and cooperation with those who differ or stray from their version of orthodoxy (hence, my mom’s reaction to my calling). Evangelicalism is more concerned with orthodoxy (correct doctrine) than orthopraxis (correct practice).

Ecumenism, on the other hand, is relatively open and more broadly defined. It is open to other traditions in terms of cooperation, unity, shared missions, and theological conversations. It places more emphasis on social transformation than individual transformation (which often translates into social progressivism). It is more open to learning and gleaning wisdom from the holy texts of others, and is less likely to insist on converting others to their own tradition. There is certainly more wiggle room, theologically speaking, in ecumenism than in evangelicalism. While orthodoxy is not a major concern, orthopraxis is.

Of course, evangelicalism and ecumenism are not necessarily mutually exclusive categories. Many religionists embody both impulses. A religious institution or individual may be deeply committed to evangelism and active in ecumenical partnerships. An evangelical may value unity but insist it must be grounded in shared core beliefs. An ecumenist may hold evangelical convictions but prioritize collaboration.

All of this can happen, but only if evangelicalism’s predator (evangelist) and prey (lost, saved, unorthodox) model of ministry is curtailed and replaced with ecumenism’s best instincts, as portrayed in Isaiah’s vision of cohabitating wolves and lambs.

My analysis that there are primarily two religious flavors in the human species might not hold up to rigorous scrutiny. It certainly falls into the fallacy of excessive binary thinking, and yet I believe we would serve ourselves well to consider which one is more likely to create peace in a world of opposition, conflict, and violence. I think I know the answer.

Years ago, as I was entering my post-midlife crisis era, and as our culture’s focus on identity had moved from courteous politeness to empathetic political correctness to justice-oriented wokeness, I began to apply a signature to all my outgoing emails with my name and the following moniker: “male, pale, and stale.” Why? Because, well, I love playing with words.

By accident of birth, I happen to be a cisgender non-Hispanic Caucasian older male. For purposes of clarity, I later added the word “straight” at the end of my email signature—“male, pale, stale, and straight.” I’ve never understood why people use the word “straight.” After all, it implies that those who are not strictly heterosexual are “crooked,” which seems derogatory at best. “Straight” doesn’t rhyme with the other three adjectives on my list, but it does employ the literary tool of alliteration, which, according to my listening audience on Sunday mornings, is more important to me than theological orthodoxy or even a smooth running worship service.

At a time when expressing our preferred pronouns became a necessary activity if one wanted to prove (or improve) their progressive chops, I doubted anyone would ever question what my pronouns are. I would never propose a “don’t ask, don’t tell” compromise, yet I failed to see how my gender identity needed to be a topic of conversation or even a footnote. I’m not the manliest of men in terms of physical appearance, but other than the fact that years ago a young woman at the Baptist University we attended asked me if I am a “feminist”—due to something I uttered in class—I don’t think my gender identity is very important. (Note: She meant that as a compliment.)

As a “white” (another odd word that obviously carries a not-so-subtle hint of superiority) cisgender male Baby Boomer, there was little chance I would ever adequately absorb the wider cultural concerns about gender into my mental bloodstream. At best, I could just go with the flow, tell everyone who found it interesting or necessary that I see myself as biologically, chemically, psychologically—if not pathologically—male, and then move on to whatever topic our Zoom meeting proposed to cover.

After a while, I enhanced my email signature with a list of preferred nouns, verbs, and adjectives. I don’t know if I wanted to be more precise about my identity or because I wanted to provoke the pronouners. Sometimes we are the last to understand our own underlying subconscious motives. If I was just being provocative, then I sincerely apologize for allowing my impolite, politically incorrect, and insufficiently woke side to emerge from the side of my personality that is often more playful and mischievous than it ought to be for someone my age.

As my bio indicates, I am a long-time pastor in the United Church of Christ. My roots are West Texas Southern Baptist with a charismatic detour before I re-enrolled in college with an eye toward ministry. I did this at the age of 25, when my pre-frontal cortex finally decided to thaw out from its hibernation. It didn’t take long for my former evangelical self to discover the ecumenical and socially relevant mainline Protestant arena, for which I am eternally grateful.

But also frustrated.

At first, as I occupied the skin of a white cisgender male with an ordination certificate and a PhD, the world was my oyster. I felt like I had unlimited potential. There were no glass ceilings for me to shatter. All I had to do to land in a cushy pulpit or lectern at a university or seminary was to send a copy of my CV and a picture. I made exceptional grades in graduate school, so all I needed to do was lean on my privileged position in the horse race of life and, if the track wasn’t too slippery that day, I would win by at least a nose. I had the inside track. Or so I thought.

Before I continue, let me say this: There is nothing more awkward than being a male, pale, stale, and straight pastor in a progressive denomination that values identity more than anything else, especially when you, the male, pale, stale, and straight pastor, also value these frontline social justice issues.

Of course, awkwardness is not exactly a deal breaker. Realizing that my particular demographic slot is no longer as trusted, valued, or sought after as it once was is an understandable cultural shift considering our history of relegating entire categories of people to the sidelines of leadership in our institutions. The awareness of what was happening, however, hit me like a glass of cold water splashed in my face. It was both startling and refreshing, and yes, it “woke” me up.

As a delegate for the United Church of Christ’s General Synod in 2005, my vote helped pass a resolution in support of marriage equality. We were the first mainline American denomination to flip that switch. Two years later, I was serving my second term as a delegate at General Synod. At one point, I got the attention of a male colleague sitting next to me by saying, “I just realized, if you are a straight white male, unless you are the President and General Minister of the UCC, you aren’t getting up on that podium.” We chuckled and settled back into our chairs.

In case you are curious, I did not exactly win in the horse race of life. Yet, like awkwardness, not winning is not exactly a deal breaker either. You want to be on the right side of history, even if the tides of history sweep you aside. I did not land a cushy pulpit or lectern in a seminary or university. Is that only because I’m a cisgender non-Hispanic Caucasian male? Probably not, but it sure didn’t help.

To answer your next question: Yes, I kept trying to break through this newly crystalized glass ceiling. I continued to send my application to congregations, denominational offices, and institutions of higher learning. They made it clear to me, however, that they wanted to hire someone who checked the “equal opportunity” box. Even with a PhD and years of experience, there were no interviews to be had.

At one point in the mid-2010s, I had written several devotionals for the national United Church of Christ website. I wrote about once a month, submitted them to the curator, and was readily accepted. This went on for the better part of a year. Suddenly, after the election of a President and General Minister who was all in on identity issues, the acceptance of my devotionals disappeared faster than a Snapchat. My follow-up emails were not answered. Finally, the office manager in the congregation where I served as pastor made contact with the curator and was told that I am the wrong demographic. Being male, pale, stale, and straight from a fly-over state did not match their criteria for a devotional writer.

Something felt a little off to me about this historic effort to “right the ship,” so to speak. Others felt the same way, but for reasons one might not expect. Soon after I was given the proverbial pink slip from my denomination’s devotional writing ranks, I attended an Emergence Christianity Conference in Memphis, Tennessee. My wife and I walked around the large gathering meeting people, attending workshops, and listening to keynote speakers. Most of the attendees were Generation X or below. My wife and I are early Boomers. Although this was considered to be a “progressive” gathering of Christians (mostly former evangelicals like me), there was a noticeable difference between these theologically avant-garde Christians and those I encountered at the UCC’s General Synod. For starters, there were no workshops or speakers that mentioned anything at all about identity issues. I asked one of the participants why there was no mention of anything of the sort, and he shot back with a question, “Why are y’all still talking about that?”

As much as I agree that there are many other things we should be talking about under the Christian umbrella, I also know that conversations about things that matter to people will continue to matter and, most importantly, the conversations can only begin and end with those who are most affected by the conversation. That doesn’t include me.

(Note: Emergence Christianity is no longer a “thing,” so there’s that.)

As frustrating as my journey has been, there is no way I can ever justify the claim that I have been affected by the vicissitudes of our cultural history more than folks who have different pronouns or ethnic heritages. At this point in my life—retirement age—I am more of an on-looker than an in-looker. I can sit back and do little more than chuckle at what has happened, but also be grateful that even as history took a few swipes at me, at least I got to be part of it.

We’ve all done it. I’ve done it. You’ve done it. I’m talking about participating in the most subtle yet significant symbolic act of the COVID and post-COVID era: the bookshelf as backdrop.

We’ve all been on virtual meetings with our bookshelves displayed behind us as a disheveled or tidy backsplash. If the latter, congratulations for harnessing your OCD in productive ways. If the former, do the disheveled shelves mean anything other than a lack of attention to detail or a messy lifestyle? Are we trying to say we are too busy to make sure our books are ordered, categorized, and dusted, or are we trying to self-snub our snobbery? Are we trying to demonstrate our demureness?

Why do we present ourselves with what others might suspect could be an overinflated statement about how much our habitats are dominated by our habit of opening a bound book? As I strain to read the titles of the talking heads’ selections for display, I wonder why people don’t check their egos at the camera lens and surround themselves with non-distracting, bland blank walls. Are we afraid people will not see us for who we really are? Furthermore, why not exhibit our favorite wall art? Why not beam in an AI-generated interpretation of the world’s most beautiful landscape or our favorite vacation spot?

Some folks succumb even further to their latent hubris and go straight to the intended message—“I am an educated if not well-heeled citizen”—by meticulously lining up their precious and hard fought diplomas in the eye path of the viewers. The assumption is that this will lend credibility to the speaker. However, the potential backlash to this particular backsplash is an accusation of even more self-aggrandizement. While dozens of books strategically located behind the Zoomer’s bobbing head is no guarantee of a formal education, doesn’t an impressive array of diplomas and awards suggest an even greater and more precarious risk of privilege and pride?

Are we afraid that if we do not give the online looker at least a peak at the Zoomer’s bona fides, the host of the meeting will eternally replace us with those who disingenuously and guilefully prop up their most provocative reading list (whether they have read the items or not) for all the world to see and admire? Are we afraid of being culturally erased by the blatant narcissism of our fellow intellectuals under the guise of humility if not outright humiliation?

Now that our COVID days are merely a whisper of what they once were, I rarely appear on a virtual screen—with or without my pronouns—which is another culturally significant symbolic act worthy of study. I have to admit, however, that if the opportunity arises again, I will take a gander less at my gender and more at my growing collection of nonfiction books and determine which ones need to stand upright at attention or submissively rest on their side as they accompany me on my unconscious journey to impress my peers.

It’s not just what a person reads that is being showcased; it’s that a person reads. Readers have books, and serious readers have bookshelves devoted to books that are placed strategically.

If all this seems much ado about nothing, it might be, but for me it comes from a place of regret, nostalgia, and the need to identity myself more adequately than a brief list of obvious pronouns. In an era of hyper-identity concerns, the bookshelf as backdrop has become our most impressive and common go-to identity marker. Practically speaking, titles of dozens, if not hundreds of volumes, say much more than “he, him, and his” ever could. The book marker becomes our most zeroed in identity marker.

A few years ago, I had an opportunity to move to a new position at a church in Texas, my home state. Moving has become a consistent, habitual, and meaningful ritual in my vocational odyssey, so I enthusiastically went about the task of packing my office.

Soon it became clear to me that I had too many books to pack and move—the budget for my move wouldn’t allow it. I had to make the most heart-wrenching choices I have ever made: Which books would I value enough to justify spending my new congregation’s money on their transport across state lines? The task was made more difficult due to the fact that I was also racing against the clock. I couldn’t linger on the fate of each book for long. I had to make almost split-second, “blink” decisions. Sadly, I let go of about two-thirds of my book collection.

As I began to reflect on what I was doing, I sensed there were deeper, wider, and longer forces at work than just trying to get our moving expenses “under budget.” I recalled my return to college in my mid-20s after a season of aimless wandering. My uncle Kenny knew how important my reading habits had become and would likely evolve in the next couple of years as I sought to complete my undergraduate degree. (My two year goal for graduation turned into nine more years of higher education and two more degrees, which I will gladly display to the world on future Zoom meetings.)

Kenny put together a beautifully crafted bookcase with staggered shelves. For many years after that, I proudly filled it up with nonfiction books on theology, philosophy, and the social sciences. When the shelves were full to overflowing I would create more space for my growing collection, including the unbudgeted purchase of a barrister bookcase to store an impressive array of antique religious and philosophical volumes that I collected in the 1990s.

Most of the readers of this Substack can surely relate to the enthusiasm and purposefulness of a life filled with books, regardless of the genre. Without exaggeration, I believe I can honestly say that I would rather people know about my reading habits than any other identity marker that more easily draws me into the culture wars of contemporary society. These are important conversations to have, without question, and there are, yes, thousands of books out there that explore these topics.

The bookshelf as backdrop also accomplishes something that we seek daily, to separate ourselves from the demands of our screens. Ironically, it reminds the one looking at a screen that the talking head is not just a digitized two-dimensional slave to algorithms. There is perhaps incalculable depth to this person, a depth not only measured in pages, but in the wisdom, knowledge, and insight of the books that cry out for our attention, begging to be kidnapped for a season, to be poured over, perused, and used. Without saying a word, the books are the words, and the words become flesh as they dwell among us.

Yes, this is religion in its most basic, life-affirming sense: that which is bound together binds us together in subtle, yet significant and symbolic ways. We are people of the books. May our disheveled shelves become an accurate portrayal of our true selves.

“From there he moved on to the hill country on the east of Bethel, and pitched his tent, with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east; and there he built an altar to the LORD and invoked the name of the LORD.” (Genesis 12:8)

Genesis 12:8 gives us a surprisingly modern stage set: Abram pitches his tent between Bethel and Ai, builds an altar, and “calls on the name of the Lord.” It’s an almost cinematic image—one foot toward Bethel (the “house of God”), the other toward Ai. Today, with a wink of typographical providence, we might read Ai as AI—and suddenly Abram looks less like an ancient wanderer and more like a prototype for the modern thinker, camped squarely between revelation and computation.*

Bethel—religion—offers a narrative home. It says: the universe has meaning, direction, a voice that can be called upon. AI—science, technology, the relentless decoding of reality—offers a different sort of dwelling: less a “house of God,” more a “warehouse of data.” If Bethel is where we look upward for answers, AI is where we look downward into the circuitry, convinced that meaning might be reverse-engineered if we just gather enough variables.

And Abram? He does not choose one and bulldoze the other. He camps between them, which is either admirably balanced or deeply uncomfortable, depending on your temperament.

From Bethel’s perspective, AI can look like a rival priesthood—omniscient (on a good day), oracular, quick with answers, and increasingly consulted for life guidance. “Why pray,” one might half-joke, “when you can prompt?” The altar risks becoming a touchscreen; invocation becomes input.

From AI’s perspective, Bethel can look like a charming but unnecessary legacy system—full of poetry, yes, but not particularly scalable in an era of empirical verification. Why appeal to mystery when you can measure, model, and simulate?

Yet Genesis quietly subverts this mutual suspicion. Abram doesn’t dismantle Bethel in favor of Ai, nor does he retreat fully into piety and abandon the surrounding terrain. Instead, he builds an altar in the middle. The act of worship is not a rejection of the landscape but a response within it.

That’s the witty (and perhaps unsettling) implication for our own moment: the tension between religion and science may be less a war to be won and more a campsite to be inhabited. We are all, in some sense, pitched between Bethel and AI—refreshing our feeds while occasionally gazing at the sky, running algorithms by day and asking ultimate questions by night.

What’s more, the names themselves hint at a quiet irony. “Bethel” promises a house—stability, shelter, belonging. AI, by contrast, despite all its predictive power, feels oddly homeless: everywhere and nowhere, a kind of omnipresent intelligence that cannot say “I dwell here.” Meanwhile, religion, often accused of being outdated, continues to offer what the most advanced systems cannot quite generate: a sense of presence that is not merely processed but encountered.

Abram’s altar, then, becomes a kind of third space—a place where neither Bethel nor AI fully dominates. It suggests that meaning might not emerge from choosing between transcendence and technology, but from refusing to collapse one into the other. Religion without science risks becoming insulated; science without something like Bethel risks becoming unmoored, fluent in mechanism but silent on purpose.

So perhaps the enduring insight of Genesis 12:8 is this: the human condition has always been about negotiating horizons. Today’s “AI vs. religion” debate is just the latest version of an ancient geography. The trick is not to flee to one city and declare the other irrelevant, but to learn how to live in the tension—building altars where we can, asking questions we can’t fully answer, and occasionally admitting that neither Bethel nor AI, on its own, quite satisfies the restless traveler.

Abram, after all, keeps moving. Even the space between Bethel and Ai is not his final destination—just a place where, for a moment, he remembers to look up before pressing on.+

*In the ancient Hebrew, Ai (pronounced “eye”) is a proper noun that translates literally to “the heap of ruins.” It refers to an ancient royal Canaanite city. You may read into that in a conspiratorial way if you are prone to that sort of thing.

+The omniscient-like intelligence of AI is largely responsible for this article . . . with a little help from the spiritual insights of the human keypuncher.

Today is Trinity Sunday on the Christian calendar. It’s a little bit of a circus. This is the Sunday when Christians from all over the world string up their metaphorical high wire and do their very best to walk across it with a balancing pole. Unfortunately, the pole consists of three ends, which makes a careful theologically balanced walk next to impossible. Fortunately, due to centuries of heretical failure trying to articulate a comprehensible doctrine, along with the safety valve called “the Enlightenment,” not to mention the subtle bailout of postmodern theology, the inevitable fall will land “softly and tenderly,” as the old hymn suggests. No one will be executed or exiled for using improver Trinitarian analogies.

As any Christian who has ever tried to balance monotheism with trinitarianism knows, the deep breath and gritty smile one takes as they say something “orthodox,” such as “the Trinity is the central Christian doctrine that one God exists as three distinct, co-equal, and co-eternal ‘persons’” sounds like holy hogwash to those who prefer to apply Occam’s razor to any and all theological conundrums.

Even as the faithful attempt a theological game that resembles a bag of warm and flexible pretzels playing Twister, there seems to be no relief from the arbitrarily desired end result of the most popular single digit number: three.

We are obsessed with three’s, not just on a basketball court, but in popular culture in general, probably because memorizing three points is exponentially easier than four or more.

The doctrine of the Trinity was first formulated among the early Christians as they attempted to decode the relationship between God and God’s anointed one/messiah, Jesus of Nazareth. Other than the obvious questions about the identity of the entity Jesus was praying to in the Garden of Gethsemane, and the identity of the entity who he accused of forsaking him on the cross, infusing a flesh-and-blood person with a full cup of divinity and humanity simultaneously was a common “new math” solution in the ancient world. Later in the evolution of Christian deifications, the Holy Spirit is rightly awarded with the “God tag” as well, as s/he comes off the bench to relieve Jesus of Nazareth of his omniscient responsibilities.

The drift away from monotheism certainly becomes a problem, especially among the crowd of ecumenically-minded religionists who want to maintain a thread of connection with Judaism, the faith tradition of Jesus, and the tradition that allows room for the “Spirit of the Lord” to fly around and do magic tricks/miracles among the children of Abraham.

If one steps back and takes a broader peek at what is happening through these twisting and turning theological adventures, one might conclude that the whole thing took a wrong turn somewhere. Where that wrong turn occurred, is anyone’s guess.

One could argue that Jesus should have maintained a full cup of humanity and remained content to be God’s non-divine Messiah, followed by his followers expanding his obviously superior ethical and theological teachings to the gentiles. That might have kept the blasphemy charge to a minimum so that the Temple elites and Roman peacekeepers may have excused the young Nazarene’s table-turning activities as mere youthful idealism. In this scenario, the early church could have limited the personalities in the Godhead to two: God the Father/Creator and the Holy Spirit, which could be interpreted as God’s energy, activity, and movement. Just like the wind, which is linguistically connected to “spirit.” The only daylight between God and the Holy Spirit is language, not substance.

This is not what happened, of course, and now that we are 2,000 years in, we can put a more positive spin on the Trinity and suggest that it teaches us that a zero-sum game is antithetical to the purposes and plans of the Creator. God has enough divinity to spread around. The Trinity is the doctrine, then, that teaches us to see God wherever God is, whether as

1. The World-builder of the Creation myth

2. The Word of God of John 1, who was in the beginning with God (and was God), and who helped the World-builder in his Habitat for Humanity/Creation project

3. The Wind from God seen swirling around the chaotic pre-World in Genesis 1:1 and the nascent pre-Church in the Upper Room of Acts 2.

If we can convince ourselves that there is nothing magical about the number three, we can also add a fourth fairly full cup of divinity to the Lady Wisdom of Proverbs 8, who was created at the beginning of God’s Habitat for Humanity project—God’s “first act”. Lady Wisdom, also known as Woman Wisdom or, my favorite, Dame Wisdom, no doubt kept God “the Father” company in those early days of primordial soup sunsets.

All of this is to say that mere mortals should be careful not to overthink such things. Not that God will throw a hissy fit and use us as twigs in an early autumn bonfire, yet whoever or whatever God is, God is not concerned about our feeble attempts at mental gymnastics. If I’m wrong about this, then I will fully accept my punishment, but if there is indeed even a pre-school time-out level of punishment for thinking the Trinity is more symbol than substance, more about meaning than math, then I will eat as much raw crow as I can find.

Here’s where I land on all this: The Trinity is meant to trigger something within us. It is meant to flip a switch in our faith, to ignite our passion about transcendence. It is meant to be clouded in mystery rather than mastered in clarity. Yes, it is a high wire act for those who feel they must create a perfect balance between the three Persons of the Trinity, but as for me, I’m eating popcorn in the stands.

Our tribal instincts are strong. We all want to belong to a group that distinguishes itself from the pack, but not so much that we feel ostracized from our species. We want to be marked as special without being mocked as too weird. We want to be head and shoulders above the rest, but we don’t want to stick out like a sore thumb. We want to be in a class of our own, but we don’t want to be the only one in class. We want to be in solidarity with our own without being snubbed by others. We want to shine without being shunned.

These instincts keep us in perpetual tension with our inner selves and in relation to others. Sometimes our natural impulse to assimilate to the wider society by mirroring the behaviors, norms, and standards of the general populace butts up against our deep-seated urge to carry on the distinctive traditions, customs, and practices of our ancestors and/or the group to which we have become psychologically and spiritually attached.

From this swirling tug-of-war emerges specialized groups with specialized thoughts and behaviors. One such group are those who have inherited and/or adopted a specific practice under the wide umbrella of Christianity, called glossolalia. If one wants to rise above the rest of the Christ-followers in a way that is impossible to ignore, then praying in the Spirit, popularly known as “speaking in tongues,” is your ticket to paradise.

My introduction to this weirdly exotic Christian practice took place in a nondenominational charismatic church in San Angelo, Texas in the early 1980s. Because of my nonchalant and uninspired Southern Baptist background and my relative youthfulness and lack of experience in the wider church, I was not aware at the time of this growing, sprouting, exploding expression of Christianity that is characterized by an energetic mixture of conservative evangelical theology and contemporary worship. “Conservative and contemporary” are not always adjectives that roll off the tongue together as smoothly as the most polished practitioners of glossolalia express their repetitive utterances, but as a pairing they have grown steadily upward in demographics and influence in the American Christian scene.

I knew next to nothing about this verbal phenomenon until a fluke-like event occurred in my life that forever changed the trajectory of my future educational and vocational journey. As a former college drop-out and pothead (two phrases that mix together much more frequently than “conservative” and “contemporary” ever could), I had a job on the road for about six months, effectively cutting off my steady supply of cannabis. As a person in their early 20s is apt to do, I quit my job out of boredom, moved back home, and went to see my former dealer.

It turns out that he and his girlfriend had decided in that six-month time frame to turn in their marijuana scout badges for one that focuses on the son of Mary. When I rang the doorbell and took a step back, the door opened as the familiar and friendly deep voice of a professional disc jockey said, “Praise the Lord! It’s Jimmy!”

It turns out that my desire to “fit in” overcame my lust for that familiar former state of mellowness, so I joined the tribe of Our Savior’s Nondenominational Church and began a multi-year journey through a jungle of claimed “miracles,” “healings,” “exorcisms,” and “the gifts of the Spirit,” which—let’s be honest—is all about the tongues.

The charismatic movement was still in its infancy in that day. Literally. In addition to its “oral fixation” on tongue-talking, worship consisted of nothing more sophisticated than simple drumbeats, rhythmic guitars, uplifted arms (such as a toddler begging for a parent to pick them up), and repetitive lyrics, an adult version of relying on a limited vocabulary. This church was still in its diapers. It was a pre-school/nursery expression of Christianity that had ignored the potty-trained and maturing Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant brands. Ironically, the non-denoms had thrown the proverbial baby out with the bathwater and decided to have another baby. It’s like a family putting their older kids up for adoption and bringing another one into the world.

In my youthful ignorance I was hooked. If this stuff could be smoked or injected, I was in. One day I was invited to a fellow congregant’s apartment for a “tongue-out,” which I thought might be some form of kinky spiritual hanky-panky. As a young man in his early 20s, this would have wooed me in as well. (I can see how cults so easily navigate among young adults who have certain physiological urges.) There were about twenty of us in a dimly lit room. After a few moments of silence, someone began to “pray in tongues,” followed by one after another. No one perfectly copied anyone else in speech patterns, but they all blended in as an eerily orchestrated cacophony of sounds. It was like overly excited birds chirping and tweeting and making variations of whistling (aka mating) sounds, to an almost symphonic performance. That’s what a room full of tongue-talkers sounds like.

Of course, I didn’t want to be left behind (not knowing that a rapture was expected at any moment among these young adults engaged in their own rapturous, quasi-sexual, behavior), so I did my best to chirp in. Years later, at a gift shop in Indiana, I would be taught that the best way to make inroads into the world of glossolalia is to begin with the phrase, “I bought a Hyundai, shoulda boughta KIA”—and build on that.

I’ll skip to the end of the story. Years later, I went back to school, which was a fortuitous result of that fated knock on the door of my former pot-dealer-turned-charismatic Christian friend. I changed my major to religion. The first research paper I wrote was about speaking or praying in tongues, which I distinguish from one another. The former is what happens on the Day of Pentecost where folks are sharing the story of Jesus’ Resurrection in a chirping multitude of indigenous languages and dialects. The latter is what happens when people close their eyes, turn down the lights, and let loose their lips in an attempt to reach a spiritually ecstatic high without the help of a little pill, rolled joint, or needle injection.

My research, experience, and intuition all led me to believe that praying in tongues is nothing more (and nothing less) than “verbal nonsensical meditation.” That’s not how millions of Pentecostals and charismatics interpret it. They see it as a “second blessing,” and in some corners it is a non-refutable sign of salvation.

Yet, at the end of the day it is also a form of tribalism on steroids. It is a way to help some Christ-followers feel spiritually superior to others, specifically the non-tongue-talkers. It is way to justify their claim that they are “full Gospel” Christians, which is a not-so-subtle-backhanded-slap-in-the-face of other Christians who have read the manual, immersed themselves in theological studies, taken a deep dive into church history, and yes, changed their diapers when the smell of naivety mixed with spiritual hubris consumes the room.

To be a sinner was also to belong, by default, to the wrong crowd. And Jesus knew that choosing a crowd—choosing a side—was unavoidable. The social landscape of his world contained more factions than a modern high‑school cafeteria, yet the pressure felt binary: align with the “haves” or the “have‑nots,” the respectable or the suspect.

In that world, table fellowship was a declaration. Eating together signaled one’s social loyalties, aspirations, and identity. A person’s dining companions revealed their place in the community. Jesus’ choice to share meals with the marginalized was not accidental; it was a public, embodied claim about who he was and where he stood.

The elites saw something unusual in him—charisma, authority, a spark of divine presence—and they expected him to rise above his origins. In their eyes, someone with his gifts should have abandoned the “bottom feeders” and joined the ranks of the worthy. Respectability required distance. Holiness required separation. If he wanted their approval, he needed to stop eating with people who washed neither their hands nor their reputations.

What they missed was the importance of his biographical identity. Jesus consistently reminded his listeners where he came from and what shaped him. His parables, especially those of lostness, were not abstract moral tales; they were windows into his own spiritual journey—from isolation to incarnation, from wandering to homecoming, from obscurity to vocation. The Gospel writers, uncomfortable with the implications, reframed these stories as theological metaphors rather than autobiographical confession. As I argue in Big Jesus, “The autobiographical nature of the parables of lost‑ness is apparent to anyone who can bring the Christ of faith down from the pernicious pedestal his followers created for him after his untimely death.”

What the evangelists softened, we can now name plainly:
Jesus was the lost sheep, not the shepherd.
He was the misplaced coin, not the woman sweeping the floor.
He was the prodigal son, not the waiting father.

To see this is to enter a theological wilderness—one where Jesus’ humanity is not a threat to his significance but the very ground of it.

Imagine Jesus offering the following version of the Prodigal Son, one that Luke or his editors may have avoided to protect a doctrine of sinlessness that developed long after Jesus’ death:

My father, Joseph, had many children, sons he cherished deeply. But I never felt fully rooted in that household. Questions about my origins lingered, and a quiet restlessness grew within me.

As a boy, I once wandered from my family and found myself in the temple, captivated by teachers who spoke of God’s kingdom. Something awakened in me that day. Years later, that same longing pushed me to leave home again.

With what little I could gather, I set out to discover who I was. I spent unwisely, lived impulsively, and soon found myself with nothing. Too ashamed to return home, I drifted through a land struck by famine. Hungry and alone, I took work feeding pigs—creatures my people avoided. Even they ate better than I did.

In that low place, clarity came. I longed for home—not for status, but for belonging. So I returned to Galilee.

Joseph had died. My eldest brother now led the household. They let me stay, but I sensed their disappointment. Yet even in their distance, I felt God’s nearness. I realized that divine acceptance had met me long before my family could.

My joy unsettled my brother. He accused me of wasting my life, my years, my resources. Perhaps he was right. But I had learned something he had not yet discovered: once I was lost, and now I am found.

Reading Jesus’ parables as autobiographical does not diminish him; it humanizes him. It reveals a life shaped by displacement, longing, discovery, and return. His ministry to the lost was not condescension—it was solidarity. His compassion flowed not from superiority but from shared experience.

These parables trace his own arc:
from lost to found,
from rejection to acceptance,
from exile to homecoming.

And in telling his story, he illuminated ours.

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Faculty, families, friends, and future seekers of AI-resistant jobs — welcome to the “baccalaureate,” a ceremony so fancy that half of us only learned how to pronounce it last week. And even then, we weren’t very confident.

Let’s be honest: if this were a spelling bee, most of us would’ve tapped out somewhere around the third “a.” Also, I hope no one came here tonight thinking they would be auditioning for The Bachelorette.

I write a brief weekly column in the Weimar Mercury titled “A Word with Watson,” where I offer a whimsical commentary on a particular word or phrase. So, when I was asked to deliver the baccalaureate speech this evening, the first question that popped into my head out of sheer habit was, “What does baccalaureate even mean?”

I looked it up. It comes from the Medieval Latin baccalaureatus, which says to me that our English ancestors spent maybe five minutes trying to find a substitute word that is easier to say and spell.

I also learned that the word literally means “laurel berry,” a small, shiny black fruit from the Mediterranean bay laurel tree — the oil of which is used to make something called Aleppo soap. Now, I’m not sure what that has to do with high school graduation, but if any of you receive a laurel wreath tonight or when you graduate, at least you’ll smell nice.

In ancient times, laurel wreaths were given to scholars and athletic champions. I’m sure we’ve all seen the wreath-adorned naked statues from Greco-Roman culture. The “Games,” as they were called then—the “Olympic Games” in modern times—began in 776 BC as a religious festival honoring Zeus. (Any Zeus followers in here tonight? If so, just know that everyone is welcome.)

Some eight centuries later, in the time of Jesus and his contemporaries, there were still folks who worshipped the Greco-Roman gods and enjoyed competitive events such as running, boxing, and wrestling. The winners received a crown in the form of a laurel wreath.

This imagery is used in the New Testament to characterize a life of persistent and victorious faith. The Apostle Paul, a Roman citizen as well as a Jewish religious leader, who later converted to Christianity and became its greatest missionary of the first century, reflected on his life in the following way, as recorded in 2 Timothy 4:7-8:

“I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. From now on there is reserved for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will give me on that day, and not only to me but also to all who have longed for his appearing.”

He said all this with the Games in mind as well as the immense contributions of Greek philosophers—the scholars. The Christian life, Paul is saying, is not a competition against others; it is a competition within our self.

Just like our educational journeys. We don’t compete primarily against others for academic, athletic, or artistic success; we compete with our self. And guess what? If we end up with that piece of paper that is marked “graduate,” we are winners. We deserve a crown.

Beyond the interesting symbolism and connection to a long-ago past, the real meaning of baccalaureate is this: it’s the moment right before graduation when everyone gathers to reflect on and celebrate all those years of hard studying . . . or hardly studying, whichever describes you best.

This is the moment when we pause to thank God for blessing us with life, liberty, and learning. This is basically the academic equivalent of the “Are you sure you want to continue?” pop‑up on a computer. And like all of us, the answer is: “Yes… probably… I think so… let’s just click OK and trust that God has our back.” At least no one is asking you to verify you are human. Not yet anyway.

The baccalaureate reminds us that learning is a lifelong journey (more than a competitive race) — which is comforting, because it means you’re not expected to have everything figured out today. Or tomorrow. Or possibly ever. But that’s fine. Join the crowd. Despite my gray hair, I haven’t figured out much at all.

Tonight is also a reminder that none of you got here alone. You were shaped by teachers who believed in you, families who supported you, friends who helped you survive group projects, team sports, band practice, etc., and you were also shaped by faith communities that prayed for you even when you weren’t aware.

Perhaps a laurel wreath should be offered to every person who made you get out of bed in the morning, every person who helped turn your frowns upside down, and every person who talked you out of dropping out when that math test was so confusing it looked like alien scribble.

As you stand here in this moment — this beautifully named, impossible‑to‑spell moment — wear your invisible laurel wreaths proudly. Not because you know exactly what comes next, but because you’ve earned the right to step into an unknown future with curiosity, confidence and creativity, and maybe a slightly better vocabulary.

Congratulations, Class of 2026. May your futures be bright, your challenges be conquerable, your prayers be answered, and your spell‑check always turned on.

In grad school in the mid-90s, I took a course on Postmodern Theology. It was very confusing to me at the time. I remember asking the professor, “What is this course about?” “Exactly,” he answered.

Postmodern theology rejects absolute, rational foundations in theology. It replaces objective knowledge with subjective experience, relies heavily on narratives rather than propositions, and is more sensitive to specific cultural norms rather than universal truth claims. It is grounded in a “hermeneutic of suspicion” and a posture of deconstruction, which is assumed in its post-foundational or “weak” foundational stance.

Applied to Christianity, any sense that a solid foundation can be built is foolish thinking. It’s like fool’s gold, fool’s paradise, and a fool’s errand, all rolled into one. And yet, despite the nagging tug and nudge of postmodernism, our intuition tells us that a solid foundation is needed for a lasting theological structure.

This truism is gleaned from the physical act of building solid structures. Foundations are important if one wants to stop the walls from collapsing.

I confess that I’ve never built an actual foundation myself. I’ve done some remodeling, but nothing from the ground up. In eighth‑grade shop class I built a doghouse for my beloved German Shepherd, but her standards were far higher than my carpentry skills. I failed to include a floor for the doghouse because I assumed that dirt or grass would do the trick, but without a floor serving as a foundation, the doghouse began to lean as aggressively as my dog’s demeanor.

Applied to theology, without a solid foundation we will experience some leaning and wobbling. I know this from personal experience. Years ago, a former pastor attended my services and sat in the front row observing his watch as I preached. Very disconcerting. I heard through the grapevine that he couldn’t discern a theological system or foundation attached to my sermons. Fair enough. I’m not exactly a locked-in and loaded kind of guy.

But I do agree that we are all theological architects. The question is whether our theological structure is sturdy enough to withstand the earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes, and floods that will contribute to the erosion of our institutional and/or individual expressions of faith. If not, we may need to revisit the blueprint or go back to the drawing board. A spiritual shop class might be in order.

In the Christian faith, we really only have one choice for even a scintilla of foundationalism: the person of Jesus. Of course, just as there are many ways to design or construct a foundation, floor, or walls, we will never all agree on exactly what “Jesus as the foundation” means.

In 1 Peter 2:5, an unknown author writing with the authority of the name of Peter, a.k.a. “the Rock,” (a foundational word if there ever was one) refers to Christians as “living stones . . . built into a spiritual house,” suggesting that our presence in the church isn’t just decorative; it’s structural. We’re not merely the drywall of the church; we’re the stones that give it shape and strength. Without people, Christianity becomes an empty, boarded‑up building—weathered, hollow, leaning, wobbly, and without a future.

1 Peter recognizes that even “living stones” (a great concept to explore through the scientific lens of evolution) need a cornerstone. In ancient construction, the cornerstone was the first stone laid, the reference point for the entire structure. It set the alignment, the orientation, and the stability of everything else. If the cornerstone was off, the whole building was off.

As the chief cornerstone, Jesus connects two “dry walls” that once stood apart: Jews and Gentiles. I suggest that 1 Peter’s characterization of Jesus as the cornerstone was an early attempt to make God’s house large enough to include everyone who desires to inhabit space in a house with “many dwelling places” (John 14:2).

This is the general idea that blossomed into the 20^th century ecumenical movement (originally meant to include dialogue primarily between different Christian denominations), which, in turn, has given birth to something more expansive, an often overlooked and underappreciated (if not criticized or despised) project known as “interfaith” or “interreligious” dialogue. Some are now referring to this postmodern (post-foundational) phenomena as “interbelief” or “interpath.”

For these conversations to build relationships that last, a deconstruction of theology is probably a good first step. So, let’s bring out our crowbars and sledge hammers for deconstructive purpose, along with our reconstructive hammers and nails.

Christian deconstruction has one primary “blueprint” to revisit, the notion of Jesus as the cornerstone. On the drawing board, this looks divisive, as if our two-millennium prioritized project is to build a structure that automatically excludes those who reject Jesus as the chief cornerstone. Dogmatism is the dog house in which we dwell.

However, we could use a crowbar to extract the exclusionary part of our theological structure and focus more on how Jesus connects rather than disconnects, especially among those who inhabit the world’s great monotheistic expressions of faith.

I might be going out on a limb here, or shall we say, hanging out of a second story window, but I think we can make the case that Jesus can be, if theologized with sensitivity and expanding walls, a point of connection—a cornerstone.

Jesus was Jewish. So, there’s that, even if Judaism proper doesn’t recognize him as the Messiah and, because of strict monotheistic tendencies, will not allow for his divine nature. Christianity, which began as a Jewish sect, proclaims him as the Jewish Messiah and adds an element of divinity to his resume. And for their part, Islam doesn’t accept the divinity part either, but nevertheless reveres Jesus as a prophet and even calls him Messiah.

The differences are real—real enough for people to feel the need to persecute and kill one another in times past, but the shared history and theology, with Jesus (or at least his ancestors and contemporary community), somewhere in the mix, is an opportunity to hold hands on a search for meaning, purpose, and humanitarian advancement. Beyond these three traditions, Jesus is honored in the Baha’i faith, in certain Hindu and Buddhist traditions, and in the Druze community as a prophet, enlightened teacher, or spiritual master.

In other words, Jesus is already functioning as a cornerstone (if not one among many) across the religious landscape of the world. The question is whether we (I’m speaking primarily to Christians) will build on that foundation to seek connection rather than separation. Can we see Jesus, in other words, as a reconciling figure rather than a divisive figure? Can we refuse to weaponize his name in the pursuit of an elusive truth (which postmodernism warns against), and can we utilize his teachings as a foundation for shalom?

Whether postmodernism is ironically built to last or not, surely the pursuit of a good foundation for theology is crucial if not ultimately elusive. But don’t we claim that the journey is more meaningful than the destination? It’s not the foundation that is important; it is the design, construction, deconstruction, and reconstruction of all foundations that keep the crowbars and hammers busy.

At the end of the day, the reason my German Shepherd refused to confine herself to a wobbly, leaning handmade doghouse is she wanted to be free to roam, to follow her scent. Likewise, to claim that Jesus is our foundation or cornerstone does not mean we have to remain in the theological houses we have constructed without ever the possibility of redecorating, remodeling, or even reconstructing when our house begins to lean too much or become too wobbly. When that happens, a little fresh air is needed. At the very least, we can all meet outside.

The writer of Psalm 23 longed for God to “lead us beside still waters,” but still waters are rare in the human experience. Most of the time, life looks a lot more like the Mighty Mississippi—mysterious, swirling, and muddy. Christianity is no exception. From the moment Peter preached his first sermon at Pentecost, the Church has been wading through disagreements, debates, conflicts, and the occasional regrettable act of violence. Two thousand years later, nothing has changed except the costumes.

Ironically, the sacrament that uses water—baptism—has muddied the waters of our faith as much as anything else. Christians can’t seem to swim in the same pool when it comes to how we understand or practice it.

I’m a good example of that. I’ve been baptized three times. Not once in three names—three separate baptisms. My life has zigzagged across states, towns, jobs, universities, and denominations. I’ve preached in more pulpits than I can remember. My story has meandered like the Colorado River here in Texas, and my baptismal history reflects that same winding path.

Baptism #1: Fear

My first baptism happened when I was nine, in the Southern Baptist church of my childhood. A revival preacher came through and designated Wednesday night as “Scare the Bejesus Out of the Kids Night.” It worked. By the end of the week, my friends and I were all baptized—less out of devotion and more out of terror of eternal fire.

Baptism #2: Fanaticism

My second baptism came at twenty-one, during my brief but enthusiastic detour into charismatic Christianity. This was the early days of guitars, drums, and overhead projectors in worship—catnip for a young rock-and-roller. The group convinced me that my childhood baptism was too tame, so we headed to a swimming pool for a raucous afternoon of baptisms followed by a pool party.
Fanaticism, like fear, burns hot and burns out. That baptism didn’t stick either.

Baptism #3: Faith (Sort Of)

My third baptism happened at twenty-eight, during an archaeological dig in Israel. A group of us decided it would be meaningful—and refreshing—to be baptized in the Sea of Galilee. It was sincere, but in hindsight, it was also a formality wrapped in a fun experience.

So yes, I’ve muddied the waters of baptism almost to the point of absurdity. And becoming a pastor only made the water cloudier. I began in a tradition that dunks; now I’m in one that sprinkles or pours (aspersion and affusion, if you want to impress your friends). I started in a tradition that baptizes only believers old enough to understand what they’re doing; now I serve in one that baptizes infants who understand only their need to poop.

Churches have split over baptism—especially the mode. Is it washing? Is it symbolic death and resurrection? Is it covenant? Is it initiation? Is it grace? Is it obedience?
Ask ten Christians and you’ll get twelve answers.

There’s a famous story about Sam Houston, the first president of the Republic of Texas. After being baptized late in life, the preacher told him, “Sam, all your sins have been washed away.” Houston replied, “If that’s the case, God help the poor bastards downstream.”
That’s baptism: beautiful, meaningful, and a little messy.

The Mud Is the Point

We often treat muddiness as a problem to be solved. But maybe muddiness is a gift. Maybe baptism is supposed to stir things up.

If you’ve ever switched denominations and been told you need to be re-baptized, you know how quickly the water gets cloudy. But perhaps the best approach is to let the mud settle and accept every baptism from every stream of the Church. Many of us already apply this principle to communion, welcoming all to the table. Why not do the same with the font?

Here’s the point I’ve been circling: muddiness is good.
A faith that never gets stirred up isn’t doing much. It’s like standing at the edge of a river, dipping in a toe, and calling it swimming. Baptism—whether as a baby or a believer—should inspire us to jump in, splash around, and make waves.

Still waters may be peaceful, but muddy waters are alive. They move. They shape. They change.
And maybe that’s exactly what baptism is meant to do—shake us loose, stir us up, and send us splashing into a deeper, more vibrant life with God.