Unscripted thoughts that showed up uninvited and refused to leave. No agenda, no destination — just what crossed my mind and whatever it stirs up in yours.
Letters To Nobody
Nothing happened this morning. I want to say that up front, because I know how this is going to sound by the end. Nothing happened. Nobody would have written it down. I was loading the kids into the car for school. There are 3 boys still in this house and a girl, and the girl...
Letters To Nobody
I want to end this series with something that is not a complaint. Everything I have written in this second half has named something wrong. Fear as a control mechanism. Mistranslation as doctrine. The silencing of honest questions. The weaponization of scripture against the people it was supposed to free. Those things are real and...
Letters To Nobody
I want to tell you something that happened in a conversation I had with a minister. I am not going to name him. Not to protect him — to stay focused on the pattern rather than the person, because the pattern is what matters and the pattern is not unique to him. We were discussing...
Letters To Nobody
It does not happen all at once. Nobody announces that questions are no longer welcome. Nobody posts a sign that says — leave your honest doubts at the door. It happens gradually. Through a series of small corrections. A subtle shaming here. A side comment there. An eyebrow from the pulpit when someone pushes back....
Letters To Nobody
The question is the thing they are most afraid of. Not because the question is dangerous. Because the answer might be. If the congregation starts asking real questions the people who depend on the congregation not asking real questions have a problem. So the questions have to be managed. Discouraged. Framed as signs of weak...
Letters To Nobody
Words matter. Especially in translation. When you take a text written in Hebrew or Greek and move it into English something happens in the transition. Sometimes it is clean. The meaning carries across without significant loss. But sometimes — and this is where things get complicated — the translator makes a choice. A theological choice....
Letters To Nobody
I want to be careful here. I want to be precise. I am not talking about the church broadly. I am not making a sweeping indictment of every pastor, every congregation, every tradition. I am talking about something specific that I have seen enough times in enough places that I can no longer call it...