Geoffrey Holsclaw
We Must Wait Cover photo by Tom Morel on Unsplash In charismatic circles—especially around Pentecost—you’ll hear a lot about waiting on the Spirit. And of course this is a good thing. As “the wind blows where it pleases”, so too with the Spirit (John 3:8). We can’t control the Spirit. We only receive. We […]
Is Marxism a religion?What about capitalism?Is psychotherapy a religion?What about science?Is Critical Race Theory a religion? I’ve heard all of these. And more. But if all these are a “religion”, then has the word lost all meaning? Maybe it has. So we need a quick history. And that is what we are going […]
Did Jesus come to start a new religion? Is the Kingdom of God a religion?Did Jesus even think in that category? People on the right and the left might claim (for different reasons) that Christianity isn’t a religion. And last time I took the side that “Christianity ISN’T a Religion.” But there are flaws with […]
Jonathan Walton, in Twelve Lies that Hold America Captive and the Truth That Sets Us Free, delivers an honest—and many times, brutal—examination of the lies the American (Evangelical) Church has believed about America, and the disastrous place it has led us. Walton starts this way: Abraham Lincoln, Ronald Reagan, and Barack Obama claimed that the […]
And how it leads to real growth Do you find your spiritual life disappointing? We are promised new life, abundant life, eternal life. But all you’re feeling is the humdrum of ordinary life. All that “love, joy, and peace”, all that spiritual fruit stuff doesn’t seem to be growing in you. Maybe your spiritual life […]
Is Jesus’s death on the cross a substitution for our death? And if so, is it a penal substitution, where Jesus takes the punishment demanded by God? These are the kinds of issues at stake when we think of the typical evangelical preaching of the cross. And few books have been more influential than Leon […]
What is the “social construction” of reality? Is everything just relative and subjective? Is everything just made up? Or could the social construction of reality have something to do with being made in God’s image? This is what I’m thinking about as I finish up Lisa Feldman Barrett’s new book, Seven and a […]
Why do we experience culture shock? Why do people process the same event so differently? Why is code-switching so exhausting? It’s because different people, especially from different cultures, have different minds—and shifting between them is taxing. This is the main point of Lisa Feldman Barrett’s 6th lesson. I’m continuing with Barrett’s new book, Seven and a […]
What does it really mean to say that humans are social beings? How does it really affect us that we are embedded in our relationship? And what does this mean for discipleship? I’m continuing with Barrett’s new book, Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain (I’m working through chapters as part of the […]