A blog about our lives as strangers in this world
A Traveling Theology
What if this world is not our home? What if we are tourists, visitors, travelers on a long journey towards our true home, Heaven?
These are the basic questions that this blog explores, inspired by Philippians 3:20-21 and Psalm 90. These verses, among others (e.g. John 17, Ephesians 2:17-22, Romans 12, Hebrews 11:13-16…) will appear many times. In A Traveling Theology, I explore through Scripture, the Church Fathers, and personal experiences what it means for us to live life as a long voyage. I consider how lessons from long-term travel can help sustain us on this journey now.
Every metaphor has its limits – and Christians have historically focused on our lives as one of exile in this world. This is just one way of imagining the Christian life. But this exploration takes seriously this one theme in Scripture, through exegesis, travel stories, and historical research.
E Komo Mai, and los geht’s!
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Humanity’s First and Worst Journey:
The Life of Adam and Eve 🍎 Genesis’s account of what happens to Adam and Eve directly after they are cursed for eating forbidden fruit is tantalizingly sparse. Genesis 3:20 – 24, the entire section between the curse and the conception of Cain, already east of Eden, reads: 20 The man named his wife Eve…
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Banality of Evil: Israel and Palestine
When people think of the Holocaust, one man comes to mind: Adolf Hitler. But, as Hannah Arendt argues in her 1963 Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil, the Final Solution was not just orchestrated by Hitler or the Nazi Party. It relied on the compliancy and lack of resistance by citizens…
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The Gospel for the World:
*Dwight L. Moody and Jacob of Serugh* In The Rise and Fall of Dispensationalism, Daniel G. Hummel lucidly explains the difficult topic of American end-times theology. And, as Hummel shows, before there was Left Behind, particular beliefs about end-times theology were popularized by the incredibly influential revivalist of the Reconstruction, Dwight L. Moody (d.…
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Our Darkness is not Dark to You
Advent, Week 1 in LA: In Isaiah 64, we read about a people yearning for God: 1O that you would tear open the heavens and come down, so that the mountains would quake at your presence—2]as when fire kindles brushwood and the fire causes water to boil—to make your name known to your adversaries, so that the nations…
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Proto-Incel Biology:
John Chrysostom on Women’s Hair in 1 Corinthians 11 There are a few similarities between the modern group known as incels and ancient Christian monks. John Chrysostom (d.407) , Homily 9 on 1 Timothy trans. Schaff: Anonymous Incels on the Internet[1] If it be asked, what has this to do with women of the present…
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Hospitality to God?
*Longing to Welcome God and Symeon the New Theologian* Anyone who knows me, knows that I love hospitality. I love hosting guests, and I love being a guest – whether it’s for a meal, a night, a week, six weeks, I love visiting and being visited. This semester, I will have five guests stay with…
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“By Discovering a Death for Death”:
Maximus the Confessor Ambigua X.29 and A Clockwork Orange… Every voyage must and should end. This life meant to be temporary – and, if we believe Maximus the Confessor (d. 662), this is not the same life originally given by God to humanity. There is another life, which the saints see, “divine and unchanging, which…
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A Clash of Calendars
Anyone who know me knows I love to schedule things. At the end of the week, I write out a schedule for the next week on a piece of paper, detailing my goals for each day. Then I schedule calls to friends, visits to the gym, fun activities. Sometimes I accomplish more than I imagined…
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To Fit-in or To Turn-up-your-Nose? An Honest Tourist Dilemma
We often like to think of ourselves as adaptable and accepting of other places and other cultures. Sometimes, as much as none of us really want to admit it, that means sort of minimizing cultures down into intelligible symbols we understand rather than trying to understand them on their own terms. Sometimes, it means in…
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A Feeling of Fragility
Jesus warns us that heaven and earth will pass away (Matt 24:35) but there is a way in which life here makes that feel distant. Paul adds his voice, warning us that “the present form (σχῆμα, ‘appearance’) of this world is passing away”. Jesus and Paul both urge us to invest in eternal, unseen heavenly…
All Bible citations are in the NRSV unless otherwise noted.
Thoughts? Responses?