Jesus vs. America

Americans are obsessed with size, the bigger the better.  In this episode,  we examine how this value seeps into the American church and influences the way we approach our faith.  We may not even notice how often we rely on size to make decisions or to determine the value of those things we engage with.  And when it comes to the church, while we can critique elements of both large and small churches, our main point is that we shoul...

Ten days before the 2024 election, we sat down to predict who would win the presidential race and why we came to that conclusion. Now that the results are known, listen in as we discuss our thought process and the implications for both the country and the church.  As we head into the new year, we will be recording more episodes that examine how this election will impact the church and the spiritual lives of young adults, while this...

Do American Christians worship the idol of safety?  In this episode, we look at how the value we place on safety starts to inform and shape our Christian practices in ways that may be counter to the way of Jesus.  Many of our cultural values, like safety, come from well intentioned desires. But when we place them as the ultimate value around which every other value is oriented, we end up with a compromised version of Christianity t...

The popularity of short term missions continues to increase year after year, and for many it has become a regular part of our Christian practice.  And yet, there are so many ways in which our efforts can cause harm, not only to those with whom we visit, but even to the team that is making the effort.  In this episode we focus on the reasons why short term mission trips can be harmful and question whether the practice should continu...

In this episode, we answer a viewer’s question about what the work of Bible translation involves, and whether God would allow the scriptures to be inaccurately translated. Our conversation begins with an acknowledgement that even the most conservative views on the inerrancy and infallibility of scripture affirm that these views only apply to the original manuscripts, and not to translations, and those original manuscripts are no lo...

As followers of Jesus, we are to steward every gift that God has given us for the sake of Jesus as citizens of His kingdom. Jesus and the apostles did not have the right to vote, but we live in a country where we do have that right.  How are we to steward the privilege of voting for the sake of Jesus and His kingdom?  In this episode we explore the difference between voting and rooting, and how we can know which one we are doing.  ...

Many of us are aware from our own experience that young people who grew up in the faith appear to be leaving the church in greater numbers.  In this episode, we look at some of the top reasons cited by researchers who survey young adults about why they are leaving the church, and sometimes also leaving the faith.  We talk about the impact that parents have on the faith of their young adult children, how the church’s elevation of po...

Christians are not known for stewarding the earth.  Instead, the majority of Christians appear to care very little about the planet and are often more concerned about discrediting any view that human activity is a factor in the changing climate. What is behind the refusal of so many Christians to work toward the scriptural mandate to care for the earth?  Do political views end up having more of an influence on our action or inactio...

We may not even be aware how our attitudes about the flag and its display in houses of worship conflates our faith with our positive feelings about the country.  One of the ways we can assess our own hearts on this issue comes when we consider what happens when we relocate the flag or remove it altogether.  In this episode, we examine how the flag becomes commingled with our Christian faith, often representing a belief that God has...

We respond to a listener’s question and wrestle with the fact that the Old Testament did not abolish slavery, but actually endorsed the slavery of foreigners. While most of the slavery described in the Old Testament was debt-servanthood, and the Old Testament law provided protections and limitations around the practice that included the forgiveness of all debts and the six-year redemption of those in bond servanthood, the Old Testa...

Americans are known for their rugged individualism.  But our value of individualism and wanting to be at the center of every narrative can derail our efforts to follow Jesus.  In this episode, we examine the ways that our culture – and even our churches – have reinforced the idea that we are the main character in our worship and in our reading of the biblical narrative.  We discuss how this focus on ourselves shows up in subtle and...

We respond to a viewer’s question about whether the verses we commonly cite from the New Testament to address homosexuality are properly translated, and whether the issue was a significant concern for the biblical authors. We look at some of the passages where the issue is addressed and review the work of several scholars to conclude that while homosexuality is addressed, this treatment comes as part of a much broader context that ...

The title of our episode is one of the most frequently asked questions that pastors hear from their congregations and a topic that is often discussed in online forums.  While there is room to debate the answer, the way we approach this question – and the way we treat those who might come to a different conclusion – says more about us than it does about Jesus or the question itself.  Why has this become such a litmus test of orthodo...

Studies are mixed on whether people of faith are less intelligent than the average person in the general public, or even those that have no faith at all.  Regardless, it does seem that Christians go out of their way to believe the strangest things that are not only entirely unrelated to the Christian faith, but which are demonstrably false. 

Our thesis is simple: if people can easily see that our beliefs are verifiably false about t...

In this episode, we respond to one of your comments about why we believe that Jesus’s life and teachings are accurately recorded in the New Testament biographies and the letters authored by his apostles.  While acknowledging that there is no way to adequately answer this question in a short episode, our goal is to provide some of the reasons that our faith confidently rests on the answers available from scholarly resources that hav...

Many of us have heard that faith in Jesus requires either blind faith or certainty, but it turns out that both are incompatible with the Christian faith.  Whether our perception from the outside is that belief in God requires magical thinking, or whether we have seen faith communities who shut down all questions and all doubts in favor of a blind faith, the Bible instead commends a faith that is closely examined and based on the ev...

As we work to untangle the influence of the American culture from the Christian faith, we respond to a listener’s question about our culture’s belief that love can never be wrong. Before we work our way toward more difficult topics about love and sexuality, we have to first determine whether we are going to prioritize the teachings of our faith or the desires of our heart whenever they don’t line up the way we expect. Knowing which...