If you listen to contemporary conservative Christians who are opposed to gay marriage, you might get the idea that Christianity teaches that the only legitimate purpose for sex is procreation and that marriage exists to sanction sex. Whether you listen to quasi-Christian populists like Ralph Reed, James Dobson, or read...

In the mid-'90s I decided to take a break from college and work a while, do other things. The decision was part necessity, part lack of momentum. Things happened. I traveled a little -- moving from California to St. Louis to Huntington, W.Va., to Albuquerque to Lawrence, Kansas, Kansas City,...

This happened.

Twenty years ago I lived in my first studio apartment in southern California in a run-down neighborhood. The apartment had thin walls and cockroaches. I worked swing-shift by myself running a plastic blow-molding machine, making about 5000 poly-collars (some kind of plumbing device) per night. This was...

The principles of the Beatitudes are missing in the contemporary Church, regardless of affiliation, and in the world.

Maybe one of the problems is that the Beatitudes seem strange and even sappy to contemporary ears, or as small comforts to big problems. Another may be that few Christians, including...

The real battle over health care insurance, including the "Obamacare" version, is between civil rights and property rights. Or, to put it another way, human rights and privacy rights. It is the same basic conflict that has historically fueled battles over slavery and abortion-on-demand.

When the federal government intruded upon...

I do not know how many times I have read the Parable of the Fool in the Gospel of Luke. It's the one where the rich man has a huge harvest, a surplus, and he says to himself that in order to keep it all he will destroy his barns...

Marriage is a universal phenomenon across cultures, and existed before the Christian Church did. In fact, the early church merely blessed marriages that were civilly and socially constructed -- there was no ceremony for marriage itself in the Church. That blessing developed into the sacrament (or mystery) of marriage within...

The word "occupy" is a bit like the word "cleave," which, as Alan Watts was fond of pointing out, has two meanings, one of which is the precise opposite of the other. Two separate people according to the biblical terminology are to cleave to each other as one flesh, which...

In the prophetic books of the New Testament, the enemy of the Christian peacemaker is the Beast, who is empowered by the Dragon that we find in the book of Revelation and supported by the false prophet. The Christian peacemaker is a servant of the Lamb who is slain from...

The motif of the Christian mission expressed by the figure of a soldier may be found throughout the New Testament and in the prayers and life of the Orthodox Church, as well as outside of it. The social service organization, the Salvation Army, is more or less built on the...

One of Kierkegaard's famous lines is that "purity of heart is to will one thing." Purity for him has to do with extracting from the heart all of the elements that are contrary to the one thing we should will, which he named the Good.

In the Sermon on...

On Pascha, Orthodox Christians everywhere sing, "Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death, and upon those in the tombs bestowing life." We affirm boldly and with great joy our belief in Christ's real, historical resurrection from the dead, which is the basis for our faith and...

I admit I have a pretty simple understanding of what it means to be merciful. To be merciful is to give attention to another person without judgment, if necessary forgiving the other person, and helping to meet his needs as if they are my own.

The model is Christ,...

Jesus claims in the Sermon on the Mount that those who hunger and thirst for righteousness will be filled. When we consider this, we are no longer discussing ordinary hunger, but we are suddenly speaking on another level about human drives, desires, passions and appetites.

I think that at the...

There is a somewhat aging caricature of masculinity that turns weeping into a source of shame, as though someone who cries lacks courage or the integrity to hold himself together. On the other side of the gender line, the caricature is of the hysterical, emotional and irrational female, who weeps...

Jesus says "blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth."

I think one of the most moving stories in the Old Testament is the story of Joseph. He is an example of someone who is meek and who inherited much. Remember he is the scapegoat who is betrayed...

More than a decade ago, I had a job working in an office at a strip mall in southern California, and I spent most of my time there. After dark, I would turn out the lights and sit at my desk and write. Not knowing I was there in the...

Common depictions of the Christian doctrine of hell, perhaps borrowing images from classic literature and Dante, portray it as a place of literal fire, where tortured souls repose in anguish, a vision much used by itinerant evangelists and manipulative preachers.

A further degradation of this cartoon vision finds human...

We are living in a world of failed expectations, especially given the present economic crisis. Losing fortunes, billionaires kill themselves; others have their homes foreclosed; others lose their investments, their retirement funds, their life savings and their jobs. Would it be safe...

I lost my job in January of 2009, when economic collapse began to leak jobs nearly as badly as the well in the Gulf has been leaking oil.

According to current Republican wisdom, the closing of that door gave me a wonderful opportunity to live off the government on...