Thoughts on Prayers

Sep 22, 2025 | ,

Do you think people against gun control would advocate thoughts and prayers after a mass shooting if they knew those prayers would lead to more gun control? Of course not. They are tacitly acknowledging that prayer really doesn’t do anything, or at least nothing that they don’t want to happen.

If the church were truly praying in faith for you to get a job, they’d have no problem specifying that if it didn’t work within a year, the church would give you a 20-hour-per-week job. If they wouldn’t do this, why not? If they were truly praying in faith, the fail-safe wouldn’t phase them because they would know it would never have to be used.

Who would you kick an addiction for

Sep 28, 2016 |

A pretty profound question is, “who or what would you kick an addiction for”.  Now people religious enough will give Sunday School answers like God or Jesus.  But for the rest of us this is a good question because the way our culture is addictions are so easy to fall into (alcohol, drugs, porn, internet, video games, food, etc..).  And because of social breakdown we have less or no people we are intimate with.  Some of us (like me) have nothing or no one we’d give up an addiction for.  This idea is the backbone of the twelve step program.  No matter what your feelings about the 12 step program who or what you’d kick an addiction for is an important question to ask—often without an answer.

Question: Trust in God

Oct 29, 2011 |

Christians like to say you can trust God completely—more so than a person.  My question is sometimes a person has to betray your trust for your own good (like if you tell them you plan to kill yourself).  Is the fact that God doesn’t do this point to him as being less trustworthy than he is made out to be?

Question: Self-Harm vs Chronic Pain

Jul 12, 2011 | ,

Why do people get all up in arms about people who cut themselves while all but ignoring people in chronic pain?  Is there something about someone having control over their pain that freaks people out?  Is there something about the pain leaving a visible mark that is unnerving (cuts verses chronic pain that is usually internal)?

Question: Disability and Prayer

Nov 12, 2010 | ,

It has been my experience that Christians treat people with disabilities (and especially mental illnesses) as bad or worse than their secular counterparts. People with temporary illnesses or injuries don’t get the same hostile treatment. If people actually prayed in faith for individuals with disabilities then, by that fact, they would believe these people were having temporary illnesses and thus would treat them better. Why don’t they?

Question: Doubt

Oct 2, 2010 | ,

David Bazan made a gripping album about his break with Christianity and it was lauded by Christianity Today.  There is this current within evangelicalism of viewing doubt as a form of spiritual maturity.   Why would doubt—something that often ultimately leads to apostasy—be viewed as such a positive?  Why would milling around the edge of the cliff be held in high esteem while actually going over the edge is met with such scorn?

Question: Knowing God

Sep 19, 2010 | ,

Why is knowing God so much better than knowing about him? How could you possibly know him without profound changes in your knowledge about him? What happens when your knowledge of God leads you away from the things you were supposed to know about him?  And if so isn’t the initial statement just a rhetorical trick because sound doctrine always trumps religious experience?

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