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The  shoes pictures above arrived just before Christmas but they were not a Christmas present. They do, however, have something in common with John the Baptist. The reason I received the shoes goes back to October. I was walk/running at the City of Trees Half-Marathon.  It was the first of four half-marathons in the Run 4 Heaven’s Gate, to raise money for HIV/AIDS orphans in India. My primary reason for doing that many runs is to raise money for the kids , but whenever I’m competing in anything, I want to do my best. Let’s be honest for a second. I am a plodding andRead More →

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photo credit: Riccardo Palazzani – Italy Presepe 2013 via photopin (license) A popular meme at Christmas states “One Unplanned Pregnancy Saved us All.” The intended point is true enough, however let’s make that lovely point in a theologically accurate way. To start with, due to what people usually mean by “unplanned pregnancy,” calling Christ the product of one implies Mary had either been raped or had slept with Joseph, accidentally got pregnant, and lied about Christ being God’s child and herself being still a virgin. To fix the issue, I propose a slight rephrasing, the title of this post, “One Inconvenient Pregnancy Saved us All.”Read More →

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In this world today, I see a phenomena, a human behavior I will call “the competition of suffering.” In the competition of suffering, sufferers with this mindset behave like they must compete with other sufferers to win a prize for having suffered the most. They fight each other for resources viewed as limited, that sometimes truly are scarce in the world–resources like compassion, caring, and help of all sorts. Competitive sufferers dismiss and minimize other sufferers’ pain while seeking more sympathy, comfort, etc. for themselves. Indeed, some competitive sufferers will go so far as to claim someone else’s suffering is not only inferior to theirsRead More →