Tarot, Philosophy, and Christian Mysticism
Can one be a Christian and also be a Zen Buddhist? One might think insofar as “Buddhism” and “Christianity” share a different set of doctrines and traditions that Christianity and Zen are mutually exclusive conceptual systems. However, Christianity and Zen actually have a lot in common which you strip Christianity of its doctrinal and liturgical … Read more
Many Christians are wondering: can you be a Christian and believe in astrology? In short, yes. You can be a Christian and believe in quite a number of things like astrology, Tarot, crystals, etc. But isn’t that pagan and against God? Doesn’t the Bible say things like divination and “sorcery” are forbidden? There are definitely … Read more
Life with Grace is a life of surrender. Grace cannot be merely received it must be surrendered into. It is freely given but cannot be claimed actively or passively. True surrender is not active or passive: it is active passivity and passive activity. It is like surrendering to gravity by diving off a cliff face … Read more
Philosophers and theologians often describe God as a kind of ultimate necessary being that undergirds the contingency of the world. And not a “being” as a kind of “entity.” God is not an entity. God is not an agent in the ordinary sense. If God is anything, they are beyond the limitations of that distinction. … Read more
How clever we humans are. But it is our great pride and vanity that stands in the way of recognizing our limitations as a species. And it is only when we fully confront the limitations of our knowledge that we in fact gain knowledge of deeper mysteries. But this knowledge gained is not propositional knowledge. … Read more
Humans are a part of Nature, and God is said to transcend Nature. But yet Christ is supposed to be within us always. So God is both within us and beyond us. She is us. But She is beyond us as She is beyond everything. But somehow also incarnated in everything. This makes ideas like … Read more
One of my biggest takeaways from spending so many years in the halls of professional academic philosophy is that when it comes to the big, meaty questions of existence: nobody knows what the hell they are talking about. And that’s a good thing. It keeps us humble. And so it is also with my gender: … Read more
I am in continued amazement that my life turned out so well. Why me? Why are things so good? Are they always easy? No. But overall, I am blessed. I am grateful. Beyond grateful. By any reasonable metric of global human success, I am rich. However, I’ve found myself lately calling myself a Christian, or … Read more
“The Bible.” Just that phrase is enough to invoke an involuntary gag on my part, slightly disgusted at all the baggage it inherits from the particularly noxious American (and Southern) brand of toxic, evangelical Christianity I grew up with. There are two basic approaches to “The Bible”: one is faith-based, the other is…more critical, for … Read more
I was lost but now I was found. I was in darkness but now I have come into the light. I was broken and now I am saved. These are all familiar metaphors of Christian “testimony,” that age-old genre overflowing with cliches and dead metaphors whereby former nonbelievers recount how terrible their lives were until … Read more