art blog(derogatory)
⁂
dirt enthusiast
RMH
Xuebing Du
we're not kids anymore.
almost home
DEAR READER
taylor price
Claire Keane
styofa doing anything
Not today Justin
wallacepolsom
No title available
tannertan36
will byers stan first human second
No title available
oozey mess
#extradirty
todays bird
seen from Belgium
seen from United Kingdom
seen from Belgium
seen from Malaysia
seen from Türkiye
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Türkiye
seen from United States
seen from Japan
seen from Australia
seen from United States
seen from Singapore
seen from Canada
seen from United States
seen from India
seen from Bangladesh
seen from United States
@gospelborn
Sex Is About a Face, Not a Body
There is a “bikini barista” coffee hut down the street from my church. I pass it daily on my way into the office. It is next to a main road, easily visible by all, yet always has cars (pick-up trucks, to be precise) in the drive-thru. Sometimes I wonder what would compel a girl to work such a job. But I am more curious about the men who pull into the establishment, guilelessly announcing to…
The End of Sex
Utopian Sex Each new mornNew widows howl, new orphans cry, new sorrowsStrike heaven on the face1 What if they didn’t? Imagine a new morn where… No cries from abused children drift up.No soldiers bleed into the black soil.No sewer waste or plastic rings that strangle sea turtles float in the streams.No parents telling their kids about the impending divorce.No pastors resigning in disgrace.No…
Reject Despair; Embrace Folly
In a letter to an editor, J.R.R. Tolkien explained that while there are similarities one can draw between the gospels and his work, his work was far more limited in its scope: The Incarnation of God is an infinitely greater thing than anything I would dare to write. Here I am only concerned with Death as part of the nature, physical and spiritual, of Man, and with Hope without…
View On WordPress
The Habits of a Reluctant Convert
Augustine’s Confessions detail approximately a 15-year-long struggle with God. His journey wanders through Manicheism, skepticism, and neoplatonism, before seriously considering the Christianity his mother taught him at a young age. After meeting regularly with the bishop, Ambrose, and attending church, Augustine’s intellectual arguments against Christianity (and the Bible) fade. He becomes…
The Work Is Mysterious and Important
This is a review of a television show with a TV-MA rating because of profanity. Many Christians may feel like they ought not to watch media like this. Please abide by your conscience. If you aren’t sure about what content is permissible to consume, you can read this guide I wrote up, or this one from Brett McCracken. A woman lies unconscious on a coffin-shaped conference table. She is dressed…
Voting in 2024 (Pt. 2)
This article is the second installment. Here is the first. Recap: Living in a democracy during an election means that all of us play some part in election process—even if we vote third party—all of us cast a vote, which means all of us must be prepared to make compromises. How do we know which compromises to make? We must heed our consciences, even as we seek to shape our conscience with God’s…
Voting in 2024
Casting Votes You may hate that we have a two-party system in America. You may despise the two candidates—most Americans do. But the reality is that come November, either the Republican candidate (Trump) or the Democratic candidate (Harris) will be made president. George Washington is the only president who became (and remained) president with no party affiliation. Third-party candidates, apart…
What's Your Problem?
Sometimes, when we read the Bible or study theology, we are left confused. I’ve found that being able to categorize the specific type of problem helps bring some clarity on the best way to approach it, and to triage its level of importance. Exegetical Problems Think of a part of the Bible that is hard to understand. Let’s take Paul’s comment in 1 Corinthians 11:10, “That is why a wife ought to…
You Aren't Your Feelings
In Jerry Sittser’s painful memoir, A Grace Disguised, he recounts how suffering can grow your soul. And his words carry a certain heft because he writes from overwhelming firsthand experience. A drunk-driver killed his wife, his mother, and his four-year-old daughter in one tragic accident. The book is an expansive meditation on his own grief, and how he persevered in his own faith despite it…
12 Brief Thoughts on Church Buildings
The church is not a building but a people—but the church is a people who must gather. Thus, for a church to exist, it must have a location to gather in. And since meeting outdoors limits the gathering (weather, sound, distractions, etc.), this usually means some kind of building. More pragmatically, as many young church plants can testify, often the wider community won’t take you very seriously…
Are You a Victim or Villain?
When I lived in Kentucky, our next door neighbor was a woman in her eighties who had raised her children, raised her grandchildren, and was now in the process of raising her great-grandchildren, two scrappy boys; eight and ten-years-old. Their faces were often covered with Cheetos dust; her’s were lined with decades of care and woes. The rope of her family had frayed through the successive…
Holy Hatred
For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven…a time to love, and a time to hate. – Ecclesiastes 3:1, 8 When I sat down to speak with a young, confused teenage girl about following Christ, she opened up a veritable fountain of questions, statements, and beliefs that all veered hither and thither. Some people, while speaking with a pastor about spiritual things, are…
An Unusual Response to the Problem of Evil
Again I saw all the oppressions that are done under the sun. And behold, the tears of the oppressed, and they had no one to comfort them! On the side of their oppressors there was power, and there was no one to comfort them. And I thought the dead who are already dead more fortunate than the living who are still alive. But better than both is he who has not yet been and has not seen the evil…
Leo Tolstoy: A Modern Ecclesiastes
A traveller walking through the desert suddenly finds himself encountering a raging beast. In a panic, the traveller leaps into a nearby dried-up well to hide. He hangs onto a small bush that grows out of the crevice till the coast is clear. He is safe, for now. But, to his horror, the man hears a snort and the snapping of jaws coming from below him. A dragon sits at the bottom of this well,…
Self-Destruction (1 Cor 10:1-14)
Sometimes experience is the best teacher. How many times did our parents tell us, “If you do X life will be so hard for you.” And yet, when X presents itself, our parents’ words no longer hold any weight. So, good parents–when your child is young—discipline them with consequences to teach them, to give them a little taste of what the pain of disobedience so they learn early on and are spared from…
Can Christians Commit Suicide?
Note: This article is not intended to provide the kind of counsel needed for those contemplating suicide. This is intended to consider the issue theologically and biblically. If you or someone you love is contemplating suicide, please seek out a trusted friend, counselor, or pastor to speak to. When Rome was sacked by the Goths in 410 AD, it left many Christians wondering: Where is God? The…
A Servant to All (1 Cor 9:19-27)
In Angela Duckworth’s book, Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance, the professor of psychology and MacArthur Fellow argues that hard work and doggedness, in contrast with raw talent, plays a vastly more important role in being successful in life. We tend to assume that successful people are born with innate abilities that average people lack—which is sometimes true. But less true than we…