The Transforming Power of Grace Exemplified: The Case of Antoinette Tuff

A few months ago I offered the following remarks in a blog post, in answer to what Christians should think of Wayne LaPierre's idea that a good guy with a gun is the only thing that can stop a bad guy with one:

If there’s a common theme in Jesus’ ministry and message, it’s about a different way of responding to evil, to injustice, to violence, than the traditional human response of fighting fire with fire. Jesus’ life and death were a testament to this divine Third Way—a way that refuses to identify sin with sinners, evil with evil-doers, that insists on the possibility of redemption and seeks to transform a violent situation not by a final lethal stroke of violence, but by a creative act of love—even, if necessary, love that suffers unto death.  

As a response to evil, there’s an unbridgeable gulf between picking up a cross and picking up a gun.

Sardines, Beondegi, and Not-My-Kind-of-Sex: The Irrelevance of Gag Reflexes

A recent essay at the Gospel Coalition, by Thabiti Anyabwile (Senior Pastor of First Baptist Church of Grand Cayman in the Grand Cayman Islands), has garnered quite a bit of reactions from more progressive Christian writers.

This is not surprising. The essay, "The Importance of Your Gag Reflex When Discussing Homosexuality and 'Gay Marriage'", is striking in what it advocates. One might even say shocking. Anyabwile, with obvious sincerity and a sense of moral conviction, argues that conservative Christians should make more use of the following strategy when debating homosexuality and same sex marriage:

They should try harder to fire up and channel visceral disgust against same-sex activity. 

Family History

I'm in my childhood home for a few days, walking among the memories, the familiar paintings and photographs and objects laden with personal and family history. I'm here, perhaps, for the last time. My mother has decided it's time to move into a smaller space, into one of those independent living communities that's paired with a nursing home. We'll be looking at some of the options today.

Last night my mother shared some family history. I've heard pieces of it before, but as I lay in bed last night those pieces fell together in a new way, forming a story that dovetailed with a mood defined by my awareness of both history and impermanence.

Zimmerman's Acquittal is not Ours

On the day that George Zimmerman was acquitted of homicide in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin, I wrote the following words on my facebook page:

I was not in the courtroom. I did not see and hear the evidence and the testimony. I cannot speak to this verdict based on the evidence. What I can say is that if my son were black, then tonight as I looked in on his sleeping face nestled into his beddings, I would feel an adrenal rush of fear, a heightened anxiety for his future. Because he is an unthreatening shade of pink, I feel instead the shame of my own relief.

And then I fell silent. I didn't rush to this blog, as I sometimes do, to elaborate--and not just because I've been deliberately neglecting this blog this summer to focus on other priorities.

I fell silent because I didn't know what else to say. I didn't know what my perspective could add, what I could say that wasn't already being said better by others or wasn't already expressed in my earlier post in the wake of the shooting. I didn't know how to answer the question that burns for so many in this country:

What now? What do we do to move forward, to help heal the social fault-lines highlighted by this tragedy and its aftermath (including the trial and subsequent acquittal)?

Salvation for Atheists: Is the Pope an Anonymous Lutheran?

Because I have been neglecting this blog for the past month to focus on other things, there is a post I started writing when it was timely (in the journalistic sense of piggybacking on current news) that I didn't get around to finishing until this morning, when it is no longer timely (in that journalistic sense). But since the main points are timeless in a deeper sense, I post it now.

Pope Francis made something of a splash recently when, during a homily, he asserted that through Christ God has redeemed all of humanity, even atheists. More precisely, he offered the following words, which are enough to make any Christian universalist (and perhaps a few atheists) flap about in barely suppressed delight:

The Lord has redeemed all of us, all of us, with the Blood of Christ: all of us, not just Catholics. Everyone! ‘Father, the atheists?’ Even the atheists. Everyone!

But despite how delightfully these words ring in the ears of a Christian universalist like me, I wasn't about to run around shouting that Pope Francis has come out as a universalist.

A Thought on DOMA's Demise and the Christian Discussion to Follow

Today, the Supreme Court of the United States of America struck down the Defense of Marriage Act, or DOMA, which has blocked federal benefits to married same-sex couples. They also let stand a lower-court ruling that overthrew California's Prop 8 (which would have banned same-sex marriage in that state).

They didn't assert a fundamental right of same-sex couples to be married, but the momentum here is unambiguous and, I think, inevitable. Given the generational divide on this issue--the broad and growing acceptance of homosexual couples and relationships among young Americans--we are seeing an accelerating move towards the normalization of same-sex relationships. The traditional categorical condemnation of same-sex romantic and sexual intimacy is steadily being cast off.

Conservative Christians are likely to see this as a tragic cultural shift away from the teachings of God, and will thus double down in their opposition, calling with renewed urgency for Christians to resist being sucked in by cultural "permissiveness." But these conservative voices, while still strong in most branches of Christianity, are confronting growing opposition from within. More and more Christians are adopting a progressive stance on the topic of homosexuality and same-sex marriage.

There has been a long tendency for conservative Christians to paint these internal critics of the traditional view as nothing but sell-outs to secular culture.

Is It Child Abuse to Raise Children in a Religious Tradition?

There's a claim made by some recent atheist critics of religion--including Richard Dawkins--that I haven't taken up on this blog. Specifically, some argue that it amounts to something like child abuse to raise children as “Catholics” or “Southern Baptists” or “Hindus,” to encourage them to think of themselves in these terms before they have reached a level of intellectual maturity necessary for reflecting critically on the content of the belief systems correlated with these labels.

It turns out that some time ago I started a post on this topic but then never finished it. Given how little time I have this month to devote to this blog, I thought this would be a good time to finish up that essay and post it here. So, here it is--a post on what we should make of the claim that raising one's child in a religious tradition amounts to child abuse.

The claim matters to me in a very obvious way. I have children. I'm raising them in a religious tradition. Am I thereby being abusive?

Eclectic Orthodoxy explains the "Reitan Maneuver"

I mentioned in connection with my recent interview with Randal Rauser that I would devote some space on this blog to a topic that wasn't explored in that interview: the relationship between universalism and free will. Unfortunately, I'm teaching an intensive three-week course right now and so have little time to fulfill this promise. Fortunately, Fr Aidan Kimel, on his blog Eclectic Orthodoxy, has recently posted a reflection on universalism that takes up this issue--including a concise and accessible overview of some of my main thoughts on the matter.

Specifically, he focuses on the line of argument that I first developed in my contribution to Universal Salvation? The Current Debate--an argument which John Kronen and I expand on and situate into a broader  line of argument in God's Final Victory. Kimel also considers Tom Talbott's thinking on the subject, locating his reflections within his own broadly (eclectically) Orthodox context. He sums up his reactions as follows:

I confess that I am reluctant to speak of a guarantee of universal salvation, as Reitan does; but Talbott’s and Reitan’s arguments should encourage us in a confident and robust hope for the salvation of every human being. God does not need to force anyone to repent of his sins and embrace heaven. Precisely because we are created for him, all he needs to do is to allow us to experience the hell that we think we want. Suffering, divine grace, and the prayers of the Church will do the rest.

The whole piece is nicely done and worth reading for anyone interested in the topic.

Universalism Interview on Randal Rauser's Blog

The prolific theologian, Randal Rauser, has been interviewing me on the topic of universalism on and off over the last couple of months. Mostly off--I'm sure he was starting to lose patience with me, since I answered his thoughtful questions in sporadic bursts (squeezed into the gaps left by other things).

In any event, the results of that interview are now posted on his blog under the heading, "When it comes to the question of universal salvation: An interview with Eric Reitan." We didn't get to the topic of free will and universalism--a topic of no small interest and importance. This is a topic that John and I address at length in God's Final Victory (devoting two substantive chapters to the issue). I've also explored it in various articles--most accessibly in my contribution to Universal Salvation? The Current Debate. And I've addressed it in various ways on this blog.

However, it does seems appropriate to take it up here in a more direct way over the next few weeks.Unfortunately I've just started teaching a three week intensive intercession course in ethics, which leaves me limited time to do other things. So I'll have to "squeeze it into the gaps" once again.

Once More: Storytelling Animals

This past weekend I had the pleasure of participating in the annual conference of the Oklahoma Writers' Federation, Inc. Our keynote speaker was the hugely talented Patrick Rothfuss--who, in addition to writing engrossingly brilliant fantasy novels, also founded Worldbuilders, a geek-powered charity that raises money for Heifer International (an organization I have a fair bit of fondness for myself).

During his keynote, in addition to showing off his enviable beard and reading his not-for-toddlers picture book The Adventures of the Princess and Mr. Whiffle, Rothfuss made the case that what distinguishes human beings most meaningfully from other animals may be our irresistible desire to tell stories--to see the world through the lens of storytelling, to make sense of it all in narrative forms.

Hence, I thought this might be a good occasion to revisit my own exploration of this idea--from a post last year. The entire post is reprinted below. What do people think? Is "storytelling animals" a better definition of humanity than the classic "rational animals"?