Gone Fishin'
By Aaron Boerst
05/20/25
9mins

Gone Fishin'

Forgiveness from Jesus is always surprising to us.
On Pornography, Hunger, and Holy Rescue
Donavon Riley
Donavon Riley
05/19/25

On Pornography, Hunger, and Holy Rescue

The Christ who rescues does not wait for you to be clean. He comes to clean you. He does not need your strength. He brings his own.
How to Remember Your Baptism
Ryan Couch
Ryan Couch
05/16/25

How to Remember Your Baptism

When you remember your baptism, you're not recalling a ritual. You're standing under a current of divine action that has not ceased to flow since the moment those baptismal waters hit your skin.

All Articles

Chad Bird
Chad Bird
03/27/14

Scandalous, Damnable Divine Love: Jonah Takes God to Task

I hoped like mad they’d spit in my face and laugh me all the way out of town. I wouldn’t have even cared if a mob of them had beat me to death in a back alley. But heavens no, I couldn’t be that lucky.
Chad Bird
Chad Bird
03/05/14

The Wife Who Gave Up: Mrs. Job’s Beautifully Untrue Words

Of all the words this woman ever spoke, these alone are chiseled forever into the stone of holy writ, and into the church’s memory. Mrs. Job becomes the patron saint of quick-tongued women.
Chad Bird
Chad Bird
02/24/14

Smut and Smug: Secret Religious Delight in Society’s Moral Degradation

I think the chief reason that a faction within me welcomes the disintegration of the American ethos is this: it makes me feel so much better about myself. The smut makes me quite smug.
Chad Bird
Chad Bird
02/19/14

Tripping Helen Keller

Why, given all the things we wish God had told us, but didn’t, does he “waste our time” by stating the patently obvious? Was there, in Moses’ day, an outbreak of violence against the disabled?
Chad Bird
Chad Bird
01/27/14

A Tale of Two Sodoms: The Difficulty of Escaping from Our Past

It shows the extent to which an environment of iniquity can seep into the souls of believers, transforming them from the inside out, so that even when they “flee to the mountains,” like Lot and his girls, they take Sodom with them.
Chad Bird
Chad Bird
01/03/14

Your Own Personal Jesus

Hell is just as happy with those who believe in a fake Jesus, as with those who believe in no Jesus at all. For there is no difference.
Chad Bird
Chad Bird
01/02/14

I've Spent the Better Part of My Life Trying to Kill a Man

If I had hated him even while a child, in his late teens I grew to loathe him as the very antithesis of the man I wanted to be.
Chad Bird
Chad Bird
12/31/13

Unlearning Evil: Why I Don’t Make New Year’s Resolutions

“Let’s face it,” my mom once told me, while delivering a lecture on making the right moral decisions in high school, “sinning is fun.”
Chad Bird
Chad Bird
12/19/13

"I Would Have Surrendered My Bethlehem Hotel Room to Mary and Joseph" and Other Self-Serving Fantasies

But when I let my mind go there, in truth all I’m doing is this: bellying up to the bar of sentimentality to drink my fill of falsehoods that leave me intoxicated with feelings of saintly superiority.
Chad Bird
Chad Bird
12/09/13

The Uncivilized Baptist: Why John Beckons Us to the Wilderness

Why does John make you uncomfortable? You know. It’s not just the clothing; it’s not only the hair; it’s not even really the diet. John the Baptist is uncivilized—that’s the problem.
Chad Bird
Chad Bird
11/26/13

God Doesn't Celebrate Thanksgiving: A Turkey Day Reflection

Eat, yes, but season your turkey with the ashes of repentance as it preaches just how little your faith is, just how little you trust God, just how little you believe the Father is good to you.
Chad Bird
Chad Bird
11/22/13

Norman Rockwell's Nightmare: The Screwed Up Biblical Family

There is no whitewashing of evil within the biblical family. The sheer fact that it is recorded, that of all the events in these people’s lives, these were chosen to be chiseled into the stone of the church’s remembrance, tells us something.
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