Am I the Conservative Here?
This piece touches on current, politically charged events. Many of my readers may disagree with me – that is fine. My purpose here is not mainly to convince. Rather, I enjoy writing, and I think it is of great importance…
Faith as Re-Enactment
This piece will briefly overview the concept of re-enactments and then discuss how a concept of God could be understood in light of this phenomenon. It is often perplexing to watch those around us place themselves repeatedly back into the…
The Right Things
I’m not sure where I got the idea that therapy was magical. I had never really seen a therapist before. If I had, I’d probably have given up that idea. As I went to school to become a therapist, the…
“The Crowd Is Untruth”
One way of seeing things is that Jesus being crucified was a surprising event. That it was a real pity that the son of God should find himself rejected by the ones he came to. That this was a tragedy…
Changes Now
This post was written by Jackson Locke. Jackson and I both chose communication studies as our major at Toccoa Falls College – me a few years earlier. Reading some of his writing brings back a lot of my own memories…
Do These Times Call for More or Less Therapy?
I haven’t been a therapist for very long. In fact, I’m still in my internship. And this was written while my kiddo watched Bluey beside me. So there are your disclaimers. I had a thought recently: on a meta level…
The Long Lost Scripture
Here is a bit of humor – it is satire. — || In a long lost manuscript, another version of the gospel of Matthew is recounted. This newly found document contains many important details the other ones leave out. ||…
“The Fightin’ Side of Me”
In 1970, Merle Haggard released a song called “The Fightin’ Side of Me.” It had been 10 years since he’d been released from San Quentin Prison where he’d been an inmate when Johnny Cash played his famous concert. Haggard’s life…
The Way of Trump and the Way of Jesus
I recently wrote an article which I then took down, and I issued an apology. I want to be really clear why that was: I had worked to guess at the emotional experience of those really like Donald Trump. My…
Retraction; Apology
I recently published an article titled “Orange Man and the Juice.” Some of you may have read it here or maybe got an email in your inbox and read it there. Or maybe I decided to take it down before…
Black Light
Two Memories I’m fascinated by black light. When you turn off the everyday overhead light sources and turn on an ultraviolet, you see things you had know idea were there. In my senior year of college, I was recording a…
Nonviolent Communication
“There’s only two things that human beings are ever saying: please and thank you.” That line is from Marshall Rosenberg in one of his trainings on nonviolent communication. I have become very interested in his method, and I decided I…
Indirect Communication
It takes much discipline and restraint to care for a person while allowing them to make their own choice. The easier thing is to enter into an argument, to try and outmaneuver the other.
Attachment & Authenticity
Over the last few months, I’ve become interested in the reality that we have two needs as humans which are very central: the need for attachment and the need for authenticity. I think most of our pain and what makes…
The Gifts of My Childhood Church
On this Christmas evening, I am reflecting a bit on the church. Anyone who’s read much of anything I’ve written may now sigh at the inevitable forthcoming gloom, surly observations, vexation etc. But no! It is Christmas, and this is…
The Pastor & the Psychotherapist
Introduction One night, near the end of our class time, the professor had a pastor speak to us about bereavement and end of life care. After she signed off, the class discussed the roles of mental health counselors in conjunctions…
Deconstruction of Small Gods
*the use of the cover art for this piece was generously permitted by John Kennedy: www jedika.com A Funny Scene There’s a funny scene I imagine sometimes in which I get to the afterlife and meet God after a life…
Asking Jesus Into Your Mind
This is an attempt to ponder what might be happening from a psychological perspective when a very theologically oriented event takes place.
“Big Egos”
For as long as I can remember, I’ve had a real distaste for people who are arrogant and overly self-confident, or whom I perceive that way. It’s partly because I dislike and fear bullies and partly because most of my…
5 Calls for the Church
This is a condensed version of a piece I wrote one year ago yesterday. It was the conclusion of the 28 comic strips I posted in February of 2022 called “Fundamentals” which can be read here. (1.) Women must be…
The Etiology of Addiction
etiology – the study of causation or origination This paper was written as coursework for GCU’s CNL-527: Principles of Psychopharmacology Etiology of Addiction This paper will explore the etiology of addiction and provide insight into different models which explain addiction development. The…
Further Thoughts on Heaven & Hell
“He (a young child) may express much concern about the welfare of another and genuinely do all he can for that other. But, as anyone knows who has had experience of being ministered to by a young child, the results…
The Third Commandment
This post is part 7 in a 7 part series of reflections as I turn 25 years old. I’m convinced that to be human is to struggle and to struggle with God. This series serves to honor the difficult questions. I…
Right and Left Brain
This post is part 6 in a 7 part series of reflections as I turn 25 years old. I’m convinced that to be human is to struggle and to struggle with God. This series serves to honor the difficult questions. I…
Man Therapy and Anti-Racism
This post is part 5 in a 7 part series of reflections as I turn 25 years old. I’m convinced that to be human is to struggle and to struggle with God. This series serves to honor the difficult questions. I…
The Elements
This post is part 4 in a 7 part series of reflections as I turn 25 years old. I’m convinced that to be human is to struggle and to struggle with God. This series serves to honor the difficult questions.…
Psyche, Spirit, Body
This post is part 3 in a 7 part series of reflections as I turn 25 years old. I’m convinced that to be human is to struggle and to struggle with God. This series serves to honor the difficult questions.…
Tradition
This post is part 2 in a 7 part series of reflections as I turn 25 years old. I’m convinced that to be human is to struggle and to struggle with God. This series serves to honor the difficult questions. I…
Diffuculty of Hell & Ease of the Spiel
Introduction This post is part 1 in a 7 part series of reflections as I turn 25 years old. I’m convinced that to be human is to struggle and to struggle with God. This series serves to honor the difficult…
In the Dirt With the Angel: 7 Reflections on turning 25.
In Genesis 32, Jacob has just left his uncle Laban’s house where tensions were very high. He heads out and goes to meet his brother, Esau, who may very well kill him and take everything he owns. After sending gifts…
After the Jester: 5 Ideas for Women & Men in Church
In February, I published a comic strip. It was a satire project – this strip is what I imagine a conversation around gender roles might look like if the ideas we hold internally spoke to each other openly. In this…
My New Comic Strip – FUNDAMENTALS
The scoop: every day in the month of February, I’m publishing a comic strip I’ve drawn! I’ve never been much of an artist. I once decided to make a sketch everyday to improve my drawing skills – I think I…
Tell Yourself a Story
One of my goals is to become a counselor. That said, therapy, mental health, and counseling ideas are something I think and read about a good deal. This week, I came up with an idea for a way of helping…
Gender Roles in Church: Some Reflections
My wife, Aleisha, and I live in Phoenix, AZ and have just started attending a church a few blocks from our house. We’re beginning the work of making friends, getting connected, finding a place. Lately, I’ve been doing a lot…
To Be (Vaccinated) or Not To Be
Preface A few weeks ago I sat down with my friend to eat some Vietnamese food, and over my lemongrass dish I explained about a piece I’d starting writing – this piece about getting vaccinated. And my friend wasn’t convinced…
What’s the Weekend For?
This is a revised version my capstone paper for the communication studies program at TFC. The full paper can be found here. Workin’ Nine to Five The workweek is often viewed as a prerequisite to the weekend. This is to…
Three (Local Pastors Told Me Their Hopes for 2021)
There are two phrases that keep coming back to me. “It is what it is.” & “It’s not what it could be.” The new year is a new slate, symbolically anyways. The spike and then steep dive in gym memberships…
Three (Lies We Believed)
*A contributor who wishes to remain anonymous helped with this article. *There is a video version of this article at the bottom of the post. Three lies we have believed as Evangelicals. God have mercy. 1. We Believed Actions Were…
Examining the Let Us Worship Movement
This piece was written for a class in which we were to examine a cultural phenomenon and identify possible narratives and identities being created. A New Kind of Revival: Red Stripes in the Let Us Worship Movement COM 363: Media…
What I Learned Writing About Homosexuality (Part 4)
Taking Responsibility *This article does not necessarily reflect my current views on marriage and homosexuality. However, I am hesitant to edit its contents as it serves for me as an artifact of my movement to where I am. This is…
Homosexuality, the Bible, and the Church (Part 3)
Introduction In part 3, I’ll be looking at the chapter written by Megan K. DeFranza who offers the second affirming view in the four part book, Homosexuality, the Bible, and the Church. She received a PhD in religious studies from…
Homosexuality, The Bible, and the Church (Part 2)
Introduction The second argument I will examine is from Dr. William Loader. Loader is “widely regarded as the foremost scholar on sexuality in ancient Judaism and Christianity.” He received his doctorate in theology from Mainz, Germany and has contributed five…
Homosexuality, the Bible, and the Church (Part 1)
“Listening to the Past, Reflecting on the Present” I’m writing this series of essays as a way of processing Homosexuality, the Bible, and the Church, the book edited by Preston Sprinkle, published by Zondervan, and used in my Critical Issues…
Homosexuality, the Bible, and the Church (Introduction)
At the end of the semester, we have to decide and defend what we’ve come to believe. Let me explain. As a college student, there are classes I cannot wait to attend, and there are classes which require a considerable…
News Media – Why They Won’t “Give Us the Facts.”
I saw an advertisement yesterday heralding, “Unbiased News from a Christian Perspective.” In the comments, more than a few people pointed out the irony of that statement. It is the job of news media to make sense of the world.…
Trading Up
I recently read an article written earlier this month by Kristina Grob, a professor at South Carolina University, and published in America, the Jesuit Review. In it, she argues for the usefulness of philosophy degrees in the workforce – hence…
The Statues Can’t Speak
It’s becoming clear we’re in the throes of a national crisis. And the conversation surrounding race and racism has completely nullified all other conversations. It’s not in the spotlight – it is the spotlight. It’s the sociological filter of every…
curses of our fathers
Every time a murder happens which is touted as racially motivated, many of us re-enter the conversation about racial relations in America. Maybe it’s a conversation we should have more often – hopefully it doesn’t take killings to get us…
Impeachment Questions
I used to think of really smart people as walking encyclopedias. But I’ve come to believe that’s entirely wrong. Really brilliant people are more like very powerful calculators. They have the capacity to consider a question and produce a good…
lead me from the wire
*image by Lisa Kew In Communication Ethics, our final paper required us to evaluate a communication act within the church – I chose the mentoring relationship. I’m think this is the most time and energy I’ve ever put into a…
you are not enough
The crucible ended on Wednesday, or maybe on Thursday when the professors had to have our grades finalized. And finals week was mercifully over.Over the course of finals, I kept thinking about a billboard I drive past sometimes. It says…
The Internet Shapes Mindset
How does the internet change the way you think and process things? In the following six paragraph paper, I argue that as the context of our personal life changes, our behavior and goals will change as well. I also reflect…
the reason i write
I’ve written 85 WordPress blog posts over the course of about three years. And I’m finally starting to understand the point of it. In class, we’ve been discussing different approaches to communication as laid out by a guy named John Peters, a…
The Lord’s Day
After church, someone in the circle brought up the age-old question, “So what are we allowed to do on Sunday anyway?” Being a student requires me to read and to listen to lectures for many hours each week. What follows…
Donald Trump and Country Music
I like to think that I have logical, well developed reasons for liking and not liking the things around me. Yet when I really examined why I prefer what I do, the answer was not what I expected – it…
What Is “Old Town Road” About Anyway?
I recently became fascinated with “Old Town Road,” which has topped charts and become a sensation. I’d heard it played several times before I looked up the lyrics and was somewhat shocked. But the longer I thought about it, the…
The Unforgivable Sin
This is the last essay I wrote this past semester. I had been planning to write about Jesus’ proclamation “blessed are the poor,” but this seemed more exciting. The Professor said my sources were pretty irrelevant, and I should have examined…
my theory of everything
This is a story and my theory of everything – we all have one. This past weekend I went to Ohio for a wedding. After the singing, vowing, eating, and dancing were over, we went to The Book Loft in downtown…
a better place
When it comes time to go to a funeral, as we all must – life isn’t just weddings you know, what do you say? Do you say, “She’s in a better place now”? I’ve said that before, and today has…
Colin Kaepernick’s Protest (an essay)
The following paper represents many hours me being hunched over a table, squinting at a screen, books and papers splayed about – writing, reading, and re-writing. It was assigned as a paper about a current ‘social problem’ in society. In…
An Ode to the Unspoken Arts
There is such a great ruckus made about “the arts”, that celebrated pursuit of beauty. And rightly so. In another year I’ll have an associate’s degree in arts, whatever that means. There is music, dancing, poetry, painting, filming, flailing…and a…
The Philosopher King
This is an essay I wrote for philosophy class. We’ve just finished reading Plato’s Republic, which is basically Socrates and friends sitting around trying to figure out what justice looks like. It’s crazy to think that colleges are still teaching a…
Concerning Idols
This is a paper written for my Sociology 101 class after reading Francis Bacon’s essay The Four Idols. Bacon was a philosopher from the 16th century who became frustrated with the science of his day: namely how deduction was no longer…
When the Man Comes Around
Written in blue ink: 9/3/18 Revised: 9/23/18 I’ve had the tale of Revelations, and Johnny Cash’s song, in my mind lately. Cash says it like this: Whoever is unjust – let him be unjust still, Whoever is righteous – let…
Huck Finn – Just as They Come
I’ve been reading Huck Finn for English 202, and it’s a wonderful story, at least until Tom Sawyer gets involved. He’s aggravating and really drug the thing on longer than necessary. But since I’ve been reading a story through Huck’s…
The Handmaid’s Tale: A Book Review
This is an essay I wrote in Ms. Blank’s English 102 last semester on a book assigned to the class: The Handmaid’s Tale. The Handmaid’s Tale: A Dysfunctional Dystopia (3/29/18) Margaret Atwood wrote The Handmaid’s Tale with considerably limiting self-imposed constraints in…
Concerning Hobbits and Presidents
Several weeks ago one of my friends, who recently taught a short period of high school literature, said she was going do the essay she’d assigned her students and asked if I’d do it too. This is what came of…
Spin Us Round
“Shall I tell you the secret of the whole world? It is that we have only known the back of the world. We see everything from behind, and it looks brutal. That is not a tree, but the back of…
CRAZYTALK
CRAZYTALK – Mat Kearney When Mat Kearney gave us his fifth album, JUST KIDS, in February of 2015, it surprised me. I distinctly remember listening through the whole album on a long ride home from Pennsylvania in March. The sounds…
The Oil Rigs
*cover photo is not my own. Yesterday in English class our teacher asked us to think of a movie that we watched as a child and then re-watched later and interpreted differently. And no, she said, I don’t mean that…
Seven Wonders of Ancient Ideology
I’ve been listening to Stephen West’s podcast Philosophize This! some lately. In Western Civilization 101 we were tasked with writing a seven ish page essay describing our own picks for the seven wonders of the ancient world. I decided to pick…
The Girl From the Purple Hotel
I don’t write very many stories. But the other day I was riding down the rode and thought of this one. So here it is, a long rambling parable about what I’m not entirely sure. 1/18/18 10:24 p.m. Westminster, SC…
Watermen
In a rather unmemorable scene of a fairly unremarkable movie called “Chasing Mavericks”, Frosty tells the young man he is training to surf about watermen. These surfers, he says, are deeply acquainted with the ocean; they know that when a…
The Island
Javen Bear Professor Boyter English Composition 9/29/17 The Island We all have certain places that draw us back time and time again, or at least we ought to. These are the things in life that call us out of the…
The Man in Black
This is a research essay I wrote for Ms. Boyter during the final days of my first semester. The picture was taken with a 35mm film camera and a self timer. Javen Bear Professor Boyter English Composition 101 12 December,…
Time Takes Its Toll On Us
Ms. Boyter assigned us a cause and effect essay. Javen Bear Professor Boyter English Composition 1 10/11/17 Time Takes Its Toll On Us From essays to songs to cinematic dramatizations to social media, we are lovers of art and stories. It…
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