Pedro, grass, election, children, witches, Panera, grief

7 writings on this Substack you should check out

Each of the words in the title relate to the 7 pieces of writing I’m sharing today!

This newsletter, under a few different names and spanning two newsletter publishing platforms, has actually existed for about 4 years! Crazy, huh?

Over that time, I’ve managed to almost every week put out content. Which means there’s a lot of stuff I’ve written! So I thought it ideal to round-up some of my favorite pieces of writing. Each December, I try for a round-up of my most POPULAR posts. But now I’m just going to share some of my favorites. Seven of them. So it’s Biblical!

The following is my most popular article on my whole Substack and for good reason. It outlined a new mission I had in life. I realized I was being called to wake up the Church to her many distractions, overemphases, and straight up idolatry. I’ve definitely abandoned bringing up the four categories of control, achievement, pleasure, and autonomy as the overarching idols, but those categories are still useful. It’s just that now I see pretty much all modern idolatry come back to the need for control.

It's time to smash our idols

Also one of my most popular articles, this reflection on efficiency was my first working out of what I hope becomes a book soon. I’m convinced the world and the Church have put WAAAAY too much stock into efficiency. It’s not a neutral value though. It can easily lead us down a path to ignore what God really wants us to see.

The Gospel is inefficient

This one is a bit of a “confession” about a confusing incident from high school. But it’s also a pretty brief primer on my political theology. One of the recurring themes of Scripture is actually “don’t trust politicians!” Instead, we need to put all our hope in God, not greedy, prideful, power-hungry leaders!

I think I rigged an election

Humility is one of the core parts of my faith as I see it. Jesus’ repeated call to be like a child exemplifies this. This is foundational. This is where we have to start with all our theology.

If you've ever been a child

The other “center” of my theology is enemy-love. It’s radical. It’s insane. But loving our enemies is a command of Jesus and really shows if we’ve been changed by the Lord, or just like to toss his name around to get into certain parties.

We should mourn the Wicked

Speaking of love, I have to highlight my failure at a Panera Bread as a time when I didn’t show Christian love—which includes material sacrifice. I got this insight from Dr. Malcolm Foley in his book The Anti-Greed Gospel and it’s been REVOLUTIONARY.

Loving is sharing

More depressing than my typical humorous reflections, this personal essay on grief continues to top my own personal list of best things I’ve written. It’s raw, honest, but also filled with hope. I question common methods of getting through grief and offer the only bit of hope I can: that people will show you the love of God during a difficult time.

My grief, observed

I’m hope you’ll read, share, and comment on this stuff. Thanks for supporting my writing! Every bit helps. :D

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