To be fair, the last big false rapture debacle was that one guy in 2012 with billboards in NYC and all that. I'll say now what I said then: I hope he's right but I doubt it.

Me last week: "Dear Jesus, I don't care if WVU loses all the other games this year, just give us a win over Pitt please." ::Monkey's Paw in the corner of the room overhearing my prayer curls::

The James Juke: using a handful of verses from the back of the Bible to prove that your preferred social program, moral value, or good work is somehow the exception to the idea that we are saved by grace through faith.

Let's Go Mountaineers!!! #BackyardBrawl #WVU (Wasn't sure it would happen after last week's debacle but beating Pitt means the season isn't a total loss.)

WVU losing today has really set me back. Unexpectedly so. I had high hopes for the RichRod era, but man, we're off to a rocky start. There goes gameday for next week in Morgantown too, which I would have loved to see.

Not happy that sports socials are going to be posting gifs of one athlete spitting on another for the next three days. Gross.

I'm excited for a day when we can have extended ethical conversations without resorting to Stephen A Smith levels of faux indignation. I'm also excited for a day when we can talk #NFL and not get into an extended conversation about projectile saliva.

I can't get the Eagles/Cowboys game streaming, so I thought I'd check in on reddit and see how things are going. Penalties, punches, spitting, fighting, and a weather delay. A disappointing way to start the season, but on the bright side, GP is the Cowboy's problem now.

Are we done pretending tiny homes are a thing yet? Lmk.

"Despair is guilt with no place to go." DZ, The Big Relief, Pg. 94

Just checked in on a beloved bishop in my tradition, Fitz Allison in South Carolina. He's 98 now, a year and a half away from the honorific "centenarian." His book "Cruelty of Heresy" remains a favorite, as does his immortal quip "Jesus isn't just some catfish in the Mississippi 'rivah.'"

"I was dumbfounded by my own judgmental uselessness. It felt like heaven put me in a dunce cap and sat me in the corner for a while." Sarah condon is one of Mockingbird's great patients, so free that she can tattle on herself in the most relatable ways. mbird.com/suffering/re...

Took the family to see the Savannah Bananas last night. In a word: exhausting. Maybe even manic. We had a great time but it was like living in a real TikTok for 3 hours, with new distractions every fifteen seconds. It's entertainment for an online world, but what if your world isn't online?

The only people who watch Disney's The Little Mermaid are preschoolers and parents of preschoolers. But man, it is a gorgeous film.

::looks left, looks right:: Salvation by works is a Jean Baudrillard simulacrum.

I played outside everyday on a playground between the ages of five and eleven. It's wild to me that I barely remember any of it.

Like... the Christian perfectionism of Charles Finney as an expression of the same wave of thinking as the Utopian experiments of the era? Or the social movements of that era? Or the apocalyptic cults of that era? No wonder half of New York got burnt out on the idea of moral achievement!

I hadn't spent much time thinking about The Burned-Over District since my middle school US History course. Wild to revisit that season of American history and seeing that dynamic play itself out in the hearts of so many in 2025.

How in the world did the original 1964 Addams Family show get made? And also, the franchise started as a New Yorker cartoon?

Hi. I'm a 38 year old man who just realized that NBA players wearing slip ons and socks is not a fashion statement of comfort, but of utility to keep their actual shoes nice for the basketball court. It's just something to wear around before the good shoes are required.

What's the statute of limitations for reusing a sermon illustration? 3 years so you don't use it twice on the same lectionary reading? 5 years just to give it more time to be forgotten?

When the weather related post on your social feeds is four days old but you don't see it and you think you're getting rain, followed by disappointment and an adjustment to your garden's auto watering device. 👎

Parks and Rec proving prophetic...

Something I've noticed using an open source podcast player, and not a player like Spotify, Apple Music, or Youtube - none of the major advert algorithms understand my specific wants and needs and feed me relevant adverts and suggestions.

I have changed my mind about something recently. It wasn't that long ago that I said "nobody ever changed their mind by getting into an argument online." It's not that people are necessarily changing their mind, but they are changing the intensity of their established convictions.

I agree with this to a degree, but spirituality and sociology make me think that it will be the condemnation of the righteous that eventually turns society around. Fewer things elicit the wrath of tyrants like good men because integrity is the mirror that shows a despot what they lack.

Looking for a word that describes the sort of totalizing alarmism that demands moral attention. The sort of person who declares "if you're not alarmed by what I am alarmed about, then you're either stupid, ignorant, or morally deficient."

Sick to my stomach reading this. What a terrifying and loveless and sadistic and gutless practice. We owe each other better. www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc...

Celebrate with me! I am no longer making payments on my MDiv.

"If only all funerals were unhappy and filled with tears, we might intuit that there was actually more love in the world than meets the eye." mbird.com/the-magazine...

The conscientiousness article in the FT is fascinating. I 100% belive it and disbelieve it at the same time.

This little segnment from this week's @theresthistory.bsky.social podcast shook me to the core. No joke, I've been thinking about it all day. Lincoln as a man of genuine character, unimpeachable to the modern ethical deconstruction project, immune to mythical revision, the absolute real deal.

Just throwing it out there that Tony Hale would be a great SNL host for this fall. He could be a blast to write sketches for!

"Why were the humanities the first thing the AI evangelists came for? If they had cured diseases, ended poverty, solved the housing crisis or food deserts or mental illness … But they started their world-changing project with the things that make us most human." mbird.com/film/sketche...

Fun game! Had to pull up a map and think about it. N: Vancouver, BC. E: Boston, MA. W: Quinghai, China S: Big Island, HI

Seeing bad discourse across the internet hating on the 2010's Stomp, Clap, Hey genre of music, and I will not stand for it. It's not just great, but we need more of it.

This was a fun episode to record with my co-host Cali, whose ghosting text message is brilliance in Gen-Z packaging. Come for the assurance that you're probably not grieving the Holy Spirit. Stay for the confessions of teenage romantic shenanigans.

My current spiritual discipline is praying through my anger that my local grocery store already has Halloween Candy for sale. It's August 1. Halloween is literally three months away. School is still out. People are still on vacation. Why must a market economy insist upon itself so much?

I want to congratulate the Evangelical think-piece industrial complex for not taking the bait and writing about Ozzy or Hulk Hogan these past weeks. I am pleasantly surprised that nobody had some sort of vauge "Christ and culture" essay to share about them.

Confession: as an act of digital hygiene, when Facebook tells me it's someone's birthday, and if I don't recognize the person, or if I know I won't see that person again this side of the Jordan, I will unfriend them.

I watched the first 15 minutes of The Bear and was so anxious and sick to my stomach I had to turn it off. Too real, I guess? Not enough escapism for someone trying to pay the bills in real life?

Drove down Monument Ave in Richmond for the first time in years today. The monuments are all officially gone. That's good and for the best, but it's also odd to call it Monument Ave if there aren't any monuments anymore. mbird.com/religion/chu...

"As a Christian I write against optimization because I write against despair. I aspire to write in defense of hope, and hope does not include delusions about self-salvation." www.plough.com/en/topics/li...

Yesterday I was privileged to see a local teenager ride her horse through the Taco Bell drive through and it confirmed to me small town life is as good as it gets this side of the heavenly kingdom.

Whenver someone talks about public policy through the lens of IQ, I immediately tune out the rest of the conversation. There remains zero coorelation between general intelligence and high caracter or happy living. It's dead on arrival as an organizing principle. mbird.com/social-scien...

Yesterday, my kids built a pillow fort on me. Not around me, but on me. My legs and chest were the foundation. The couch cushions were the walls. My shoulders were their seats from which they could watch the world, protected by upholstery and throw pillows.

Big news! Mockingbird's Terrible Parables, Season Two, is here to be the soundtrack of your summer! My good friends Todd Brewer and Cali Yee and I do a deep dive into six Bible passages that are kryptonite for anxious Christians, and explain how they're not nearly as "terrible" a they seem.

Every excited to announce that I got tickets to see the Savannah Bananas when they come to Pittsburgh this August. It's one of the first times I have spent money to see an "internet thing" happen in real life. It feels like I have crossed a bridge.

Maybe my new favorite meme? "When the fundamentalist tries to convince me there were dinosaurs on Noah's ark..."