My media subscriptions, circa fall 2025

They say if you’re not paying for the product, you are the product. Every time I review my media subscriptions I feel a little bit sheepish about how many I have; on the other hand, when I go to weed them out I feel like I’m getting value out of them and, specifically in the case of the solo writers, that I want to support what they’re doing. So, as of today, here’s all the media sites where I have a paid subscription.

News

  • The Cedar Rapids Gazette (print + online). Having an independent local newspaper is a community privilege that needs to be supported.

  • Wall Street Journal digital subscription. The opinion sidebar usually makes me want to throw things, but the news reporting is very solid. I signed up for the introductory rate here, and will keep the sub probably as long as I can keep that rate. $4/month feels worth it. $30/month would be ridiculous.

  • New York Times digital subscription. I have the family subscription here, mostly because we all like to play the games. But their news reporting is also voluminous and solid.

  • The Guardian digital subscription. A nice alternative to the WSJ and NYT, feels like it balances things out some.

Reporting / Opinion

  • Talking Points Memo I love the consistent writing that editor Josh Marshall does for this one. Am I really getting the yearly value out of it? I don’t know. But feels like a site worth supporting.

  • Defector Sort of half sports writing, half political opinion. Just picked this sub up recently. Not sure I’ll renew. But I enjoy some of the writing, and they do some bigger pieces that I don’t think you’d get from a corporate journalism shop.

Newsletters

  • Public Notice This is my most recent subscription. The reporting and opinion here is consistent and well done. This one sticks around.

  • Law Dork Can’t say enough good about this one. Chris Geidner is a solo shop, but nearly every day he’s reporting on Federal and Supreme Court proceedings in a way that’s digestible for the average reader. Essential reading these days.

  • Men Yell At Me Lyz Lenz is a local acquaintance and an acerbic writer. She probably falls into the “people I know who I want to support” at this point.

  • Andrew Osenga Andrew needs a catchy title for his site, I guess. I’ve supported Andrew’s work since his early days as a singer/songwriter. As life has taken him into being a writer and podcast host, I’ve followed right along. He’ll continue to get my support wherever the road takes him.

  • The Book of Common Words Aaron Smith is a guy I know online from years back. Us exvangelical theological wanderers gotta stick together.

  • Jeffrey Overstreet Jeffrey has been writing about music and movies for a long time. He just moved off Substack and to his own self-branded site… another guy that I’ll support wherever the road goes.

Podcasts

  • Accidental Tech Podcast I’ve listened to these guys forever, and I subscribe both because I want to support them and because I love the raw bootleg feed.

  • Filmspotting The only podcast I’ve listened to longer than ATP. Love listening to these guys talk about film. Always have more that I’m interested in than I have time to watch, but I’ve learned so much listening over the past 15+ years… well worth it.

  • Gravity Commons This subscription is sort of podcast + online community… Matt & Ben hold a special place in my own spiritual journey and I am thankful for them and happy to support their work as I see them shepherding a bunch of people with similar journeys.

More subscriptions?

I’m not even gonna go into the online video streaming stuff here. I’m sure there’s more than I really like to pay for, but every time I do a family survey to see who’s watching what, everybody’s watching stuff on the various services. So for now I’ll live with it.

A Meditation on the Mulberry Bush and the Mustard Seed (Luke 17)

I had the privilege last night to give the meditation during the evening service at my church (Christ Episcopal in Cedar Rapids, IA) on the text Luke 17:5-10. I’ll share the text of it here, and update with the Youtube link once that is available.

The apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith!” The Lord replied, “If you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you.

“Who among you would say to your slave who has just come in from plowing or tending sheep in the field, ‘Come here at once and take your place at the table’? Would you not rather say to him, ‘Prepare supper for me; put on your apron and serve me while I eat and drink; later you may eat and drink’? Do you thank the slave for doing what was commanded? So you also, when you have done all that you were ordered to do, say, ‘We are worthless slaves; we have done only what we ought to have done!’ ”

Luke 17:5-10, NRSVUE

I have never cast a mulberry bush into the sea.

I have heard endless sermons and inspirational messages about the mustard seed. How powerful this faith is! How just a little bit of it could do amazing things. How a mustard seed grows from a tiny seed into a much bigger plant. And how, somehow, the message usually told me, this little bit of powerful faith would allow me to do amazing things for God if I just did what I needed to for that faith to grow. Usually, the lessons told me, that was to do things like reading my Bible more, praying more, talking to more people about God. Get to work! Grow that faith!

I’m sure the messages were well-intended. But instead of inspiring some sort of amazing godliness in me, they caused other feelings: inadequacy. Fear. Failure. I wasn’t doing great things for God. I was struggling to just keep it together most days. And that led me to question what was wrong with my faith. I wasn’t moving trees.

It’s a funny hypothetical for Jesus to use here. Casting a mulberry tree into the sea. Not just casting it, but commanding it to cast itself into the sea! Maybe Jesus and the disciples were standing on a hill, in the shade of the tree, and looking out across the Sea of Galilee, and it was a convenient example. It’s obviously a little bit hyperbolic. You don’t read in the Acts of the Apostles about them going and commanding the shrubbery around.


Back in 2020 I got far more experience than I wanted to moving trees. The derecho took out three big trees in our yard and left us without power for 11 days. And pretty much each of those days consisted of the same work: taking my small chainsaw and some hand trimmers and slowly chopping up those big trees into small enough pieces that we could pile them up at the curb for the city to take away. Splitting up the bigger chunks into firewood, throwing it in the wagon, and stacking it by the wood pile. The day of the storm, the job looked immense and overwhelming. But I learned over those two weeks that even that overwhelming job, when taken piece by piece, was possible to complete.

There are days when I would’ve been very happy for a magic mustard seed of faith that would’ve let me command the trees to head to the curb themselves so that I could just sit and rest. But I worked away at the problem a little bit at a time, and a few weeks later things were fairly well cleaned up.

I don’t think that the faith that Jesus was talking about or that the disciples wanted was for the purpose of getting a hard job done with less effort. There are bigger challenges than cleaning up fallen trees.


In the verses right before our Gospel reading tonight starts, Jesus has been talking about the need to forgive people. “If another disciple sins, you must rebuke the offender, and if there is repentance, you must forgive. And if the same person sins against you seven times a day, and turns back to you seven times and says ‘I repent’, you must forgive.”

Suddenly the disciples’ plea for Jesus to increase their faith takes on a new color.

Because I’ve been there, and I think we’ve all been there. Someone does me wrong. Not just someone who is an enemy or an unknown, someone who I might expect to wrong me. This is another disciple, Jesus says. Someone who should know better. Who does know better. And who repeatedly, consistently, persistently is doing wrong. And that wrongdoing is damaging them, damaging me, damaging others. It’s causing me frustration and heartache and making me wonder where it’s coming from. Is that how a disciple of Jesus behaves?

And now, Jesus says I need to forgive that person? Over and over and over again? I quickly find myself making the same plea the disciples did: “Lord, increase my faith!”


Two weeks after the derecho all the downed trees had been cleaned up and carted off. A couple months later we had done landscaping and planted some new trees. Five years later those trees are as tall as our house and you’d never know the lawn had been a disaster zone. The days without power, with aching limbs and blistered hands taking apart those trees a branch at a time, today are just a memory.

But the challenges of a disciple who knows better wronging you over and over again? To forgive that person, to hold out hope for restoration of relationships - that may not be the work of just weeks and months. That may be the work of a lifetime. A work of patience, and trust. Not something that if I just try a little harder, work a little more consistently, that I can fix it.

But Jesus says this is the mark of his disciples: love for one another. And that the children of God are peacemakers. And that our future is not division, but reconciliation. And so the faith I need is not for the purpose of landscaping or topiary. It’s the faith to forgive, to restore, to hope all things for people when I am tempted to write them off.

How in the world do I do that?

After Jesus talks about the mustard seed faith and the mulberry tree he says some fairly cryptic things about how a person would treat their slave and also how a person would respond if they were a slave. And it’s fairly confusing for me listening. Am I the master? Am I the slave? Am I both at different times? Am I supposed to be ok with the idea that I’m the master and expecting my slave to both work in my field and then come in and serve me dinner?

There’s a couple things I think we can take away from this odd little parable. First, as one commentator I read put it: there are no merit badges for forgiving people. It’s just what is expected of Jesus followers. You’re not going to get an “achievement unlocked” when you forgive 7 times or 70 times 7 times or whatever.

And second, there’s a sense in which the people Jesus describes here are content to fulfill their roles, to do what is appropriate for their role, for their lot in life. To not worry about what is going on with everyone else, but being content to just say “hey, just doing what I’m supposed to be doing here”. So maybe we can take away from this that part of the way our faith is built so that we can keep forgiving, so that we can do the work of reconciliation, is to trust that God is at work in ways we don’t see. That I can learn to be content knowing that it’s not on me to fix everything. I have done my part to forgive and reconcile, and that the rest is up to God.

So the real work of the kingdom of God isn’t relocating trees, whether by chainsaws and wagons or by a magical faith command. The real work of the kingdom is forgiveness and reconciliation. It is powered by love - love that hopes all things, endures all things, believes all things - a hope that is always for the best. A hope for reconciliation and not for judgment.

That’s hard work, tiring work. And so for that purpose we, with the disciples, ask Jesus: increase our faith. Amen.

A few belated thoughts on Charlie Kirk

It’s been not even three weeks yet since Charlie Kirk was assassinated in Utah. It’s been an eternity in news cycles, though. Once the mega-(maga)-political-rally-memorial-service was held, the focus has moved on to other political news. And, sadly, several other shootings.

In the immediate aftermath of Kirk’s death I saw a big split in reactions between the evangelical world I grew up in and the more liberal world I now inhabit. And while my personal goal is for people to not have to defend things I say with “well, if you look at it in context, what he said was actually ok”, with a little distance and time to think about it I understand a little better, I think, why and how this split exists.

I didn’t follow Charlie Kirk closely. But as I have watched some of his videos in the past few weeks, one primary thought strikes me: that Kirk was the perfect distillation of the evangelical Christian apologist that the Evangelical system has been trying to produce since at least as far back as the 1980s. Watch his videos and you’ll see a familiar persuasive approach, aggressively encouraging “debate”, but in a format designed not to carefully engage debate partners in thoughtful discourse, but to quickly score points, make his opponents look foolish, and have a punchy sound bite that can go on social media.

He was by no means the first

I’m reminded of being shown hours of Ken Ham “creation science” videos at church when I was in middle school and high school. In similar style, Ham, a man with only a Bachelors’ degree in applied science, blithely disregards and ignores reams of actual scientific study, packaging his “proofs” of a young earth in sound bites that don’t hold up to extended scrutiny. He doesn’t intend them to! Instead, he brings his silver bullet question for any dispute about origins: “were you there?” It’s a silly, rhetorical question. Of course his debate partner wasn’t present at the origin of the universe. Neither was Ham. But then Ham follows up with the comeback designed to win points not with his scientific debate partner, but with the evangelicals in the audience: “well, I know someone who was there and who wrote down what happened in a book”.

Boom. Debate me, bro. Prove me wrong.

Intentionally pushing aside centuries of scientific study and Biblical scholarship, Ham achieves his goal (locking in his evangelical Christian audience and getting them to buy his books and visit the Ark Encounter) while making a case that looks frightfully flimsy to anyone who isn’t already bought into his religious and philosophical presuppositions. Ham famously debated Bill Nye back in 2014 and used those exact tactics. It wasn’t pretty. Or persuasive to anyone who didn’t already agree with him.

Ken Ham is but one example of this evangelical approach. Josh McDowell kicked off a long authoring career with his bestseller Evidence That Demands a Verdict, piecing together fragmentary “evidence” in ways that serious scholars found troubling but that were gobbled up by Evangelicals and fundamentalists who wanted some self-justification that their fundamentalist Christian beliefs weren’t stupid, no matter what the scholars said.

McDowell extended his audience down to the youth back when I was in high school. His book Don’t Check Your Brains At The Door addressed 42 questions in a slim 200 pages to help assure evangelical Christian youth that their high school teachers and college professors were dreadfully off base if they disagreed with Christian beliefs. Careful study and thoughtful, careful engagement? Who needs it? 3-4 paperback pages of talking points will provide the armor to defend against any professor’s “facts” and “science”.

The purpose of a system is what it does

So in one sense I don’t want to blame Charlie Kirk much for turning out in the style he did. He’s the product of a system that’s been encouraging this approach for generations now. I grew up in it, too. I saw the appeal. I can only imagine the rush of being really good at it, of having the tools to package it for social media, to gain a huge following so quickly. I can only wish that he would’ve had more years and the opportunity to learn the value of slower, loving, thoughtful engagement. Of discussions packaged not for social media likes but for actual learning and growth and intellectual honesty. To find a gospel engagement more meaningful than “boom, roasted! hey, turn to Jesus”. Because there is a more excellent way.

Now what?

I am forty-eight years old. I have a successful career as an engineer, a happy marriage, three lovely children who are plowing successfully through high school and college, and a peaceful life in suburban Iowa. Having hit this point in my life I find myself asking a question that I naively find unexpected: Now what?

As the busy summer turns into fall, the remaining at-home child’s schedule busy with school pursuits that require little parental involvement, I reached this Friday afternoon home from work without much on my agenda for the weekend. Somehow the weekend’s empty agenda was more pressing for its urgency. I finished not one but two books on Friday afternoon. I watched the Iowa football game. Saturday morning I got up and we went to the Farmers Market. And by 8:30 Saturday morning I was asking the same question, albeit in a more temporary perspective: Now what?

There’s Always Another Book

Because really, my brain can only absorb so many hours of reading in a weekend. And so much televised sports. My beloved next-door neighbor is 96, retired since the 1980s, and a widower these past five years. He is barely mobile now, and his daily activity rotation sounds similar enough to my own suggestions there that it frightens me a bit. Read a book. Surf the web. Watch TV. Sleep. Repeat. I won’t survive 50 years of that. Now what?

Well, one might ask, what were your for-fun interests before you got busy with kids? And that’s a good question. I got married before I was done with college, so I didn’t have a lot of life as a single person where I was figuring that out. And as a married person: I spent a lot of time keeping up with a home, doing church stuff, and playing music. So where does that leave me?

The home stuff has blessedly slowed down some. The house is (finally) paid for; we’ve replaced nearly everything there is that could be replaced on it over the 22 years we’ve owned it, and we hopefully have a few years before the replacements hit round two. And my wife is the one who loves to mow and do landscaping! (I won’t complain on that one.)

Community

Church stuff has been in flux. We left our evangelical world five years ago, and with it most of the heavy church responsibilities (and most of the music - more on that later). We are enjoying our new church, and I am slowly learning the various service roles there. I’m on Vestry, which meets one evening a month; I occasionally serve at the altar during the Sunday service. A few of us are knocking around the idea of a church podcast, which I have volunteered to help with. That could take up a bit more time if it takes off, but as of today it’s no more than some initial interview questions and a pile of production equipment waiting to be employed.

Music

So, then, music. What about music? If there’s one thing I miss the most from my life in evangelicalism, it’s the chance to play and sing music with others. As much as I love my Episcopal church now, the music isn’t the same. I guess I can become the old guy who gets a bunch of expensive gear and finds a few other old guys to play tunes with at lonely venues, but that’s not quite my thing. I have considered trying to join the local theater’s pit band for their musical productions, but I’m nervous whether my work schedule would allow me the necessary flexibility. And so… now what?

Study

My other big love is study and theology. I’ve had people ask me over time if I’ve considered the pastorate or the priesthood. And yeah, I’ve considered it. If I’m being honest I’ve considered it off and on ever since high school. But every pastor and priest I’ve known advises ‘if there’s anything else you can see yourself doing, do it instead’. And by golly I love my engineering work. And while I would love a role that let me study, teach, and preside at the altar, the priesthood comes with a larger, more important set of responsibilities: shepherding a parish through day-to-day life. And I would be terrible at that part. So maybe if I could dedicate years to theological study and become a parish theologian? But as much as I am sure I could fill a need as a priest, I don’t think I’d be good at it. Now what?

Old Dog, New Tricks are Hard

As I near 50 I come to the resigned realization that neither my body nor my brain have the strength or elasticity to chase the dreams of my youth. I will not have a second career as a baseball umpire. As much as I want to learn jazz piano, it will probably never now come to my fingers as natively as the classical and pop harmonies I’ve been playing since childhood. The running I’ve taken up the past few years will help keep me active, but my joints won’t support a push for marathoning. Now what?

I’m certain I’m not the first middle-aged man to hit this age and ask these questions. I don’t see any particular appeal in medicating the mid-life crisis with an expensive sports car. And so I sit here on a Sunday night, writing a blog post that might be more usefully a conversation with my therapist, asking you, my long suffering reader: Now what?

Beyond Justification: Campbell and DePue with a lovely new read of Romans

I don’t even remember where I found the recommendation for Douglas Campbell & Jon DePue’s book Beyond Justification, but first it languished for a while on my Amazon wish list, and then it languished for a while on my to-read bookshelf. But now that I’ve finished it, I’m wondering why in the world it took me so long to pick it up. Campbell, a professor of New Testament at Duke Divinity School, and DePue, an educator and former student of Campbell’s, team up here to write a very accessible theological work that is a revelation when it comes to justification theory as addressed by Paul.

In Beyond Justification, Campbell and DePue start by outlining their view of the story of salvation: of being “in Christ” (a phrase they say Paul uses nearly 160 times in the NT), of a God who loves humanity and wants to be reconciled. Then, in chapter 4, they recognize what they call the “great conundrum” of justification theory in the sense set out by people like John Piper. (Piper’s position is used as the debating partner throughout the book.) The conundrum, they say, is that for about 90% of what Paul writes, we get from him the view of God and salvation in the loving, reconciliatory vein they describe up front. But in the other 10% of Paul we get language that tempts us toward Piper’s interpretation: God as primarily holy, angry against sin, and salvation through judicial satisfaction via Jesus’ unmerited death. How do we reconcile these?

They spend the rest of the book first by examining different 20th century approaches to this problem, including chapters devoted to E. P. Sanders, J. D. G. Dunn, and N. T. Wright. (What is it with all these theologians going with their initials?) Then, one chapter at a time, they do analysis on each of the first three chapters of Romans and then Romans 10.

Why is this such good news?

There’s way too much to try to sum up in a blog post, but the key interpretive move they make here (which makes a lot of sense to me) is suggesting that Romans 1-3 consists not of one long Pauline excursus, but rather a hypothetical conversation between Paul and a Jewish Christian teacher whose teaching Paul is opposing. This Q&A format was a common Greek discussion pattern, and while it’s not easily discernible in the text, the authors suggest that this conversation between Paul and the Teacher would’ve been performed by the messenger who brought Paul’s letter to its audience and read it to them.

As proposed here, the Teacher’s argument is that salvation must come through the law, and that unbelievers and Gentiles have a natural understanding of their own sin and need for God’s forgiveness, but that they reject God and therefore are deserving of judgment. Paul objects, saying that no one can be saved by the law, but that salvation is by being in Christ at the mercy of a loving God.

The Conversation

Here’s a taste of how it lays out:

Paul: “I am not ashamed of the gospel; it is God’s saving power for everyone who believes, for the Jew first and also for the Greek. For in it the deliverance of God is revealed through faith for faith, as it is written, ‘The Righteous One through faith will live.’” (Rom 1:16-17)

The Teacher: “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all the ungodliness and injustice of those who by their injustice suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them… So they are without excuse, for though they knew God they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him…” (Rom 1:18ff, they suggest The Teacher’s discourse goes all the way through verse 32)

Paul: “Therefore, oh man, you, along with all who are judging, are without excuse! For in passing judgment on one another you condemn yourself, because you, the judge, are doing the very same things… For a person is not a Jew who is one outwardly, nor is circumcision something external and physical. Rather, a person is a Jew who is one inwardly, and circumcision is a matter of the heart, by the Spirit, not the written code. (All of Romans 2)”

Then Paul interrogates The Teacher’s view that salvation comes through following the Jewish law.

Paul: Then what advantage has the Jew? Or what is the value of circumcision?

Teacher: Much, in every way. For in the first place, the Jews were entrusted with the oracles of God.”

Paul: What if some were unfaithful? Will their faithlessness nullify the faithfulness of God?

Teacher: By no means! Although every human is a liar, let God be proved true, as it is written, “So that you may be justified in your words and you will prevail when you go to trial.”

Paul: But if our injustice services to confirm the justice of God, what should we say? That God is unjust to inflict wrath on us? (I speak in a human way.)

Teacher: By no means! For then how could God judge the world?

Paul: But if through my falsehood God’s truthfulness abounds to his glory, why am I still being judged as a sinner? And why not say (as some people slander us by saying that we say), “Let us do evil so that good may come”?

Teacher: Their judgement is deserved!

Paul: What then? Are we any better off?

Teacher: No, not in every respect…

Paul: We charge that all, both Jews and Greeks, are under the power of sin… Now we know that, whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be silenced and the whole world may be held accountable to God. For no human will be justified before him by deeds prescribed by the law, for through the law comes the knowledge of sin.

If you’ve gotten this far in the post, just go read the book.

I mean, seriously, it’s worth a read. Campbell and DePue carefully explain how they see each part of Paul’s argument working out in Romans 1-3 and Romans 10, and put the pieces together to demonstrate how, in this interpretation, the judgmental “10%” texts in Romans don’t need to cause anyone hesitation; that we can rely fully on the 90% of Paul that tells us of a loving reconciliation through the power of Jesus’ resurrection.

The lectionary readings were just some real bangers today

When the Lectionary readings seem ever so timely… First up, from Jeremiah 23:

I have heard what the prophets have said who prophesy lies in my name, saying, “I have dreamed, I have dreamed!” How long? Will the hearts of the prophets ever turn back—those who prophesy lies, and who prophesy the deceit of their own heart? They plan to make my people forget my name by their dreams that they tell one another, just as their ancestors forgot my name for Baal. Let the prophet who has a dream tell the dream, but let the one who has my word speak my word faithfully.

Substitute “American evangelical preachers” here for “the prophets” and the word still burns with fire.

Then comes Psalm 82, which includes:

Save the weak and the orphan;
  defend the humble and needy;
Rescue the weak and the poor;
  deliver them from the power of the wicked.

So say we all.

The ‘great cloud of witnesses’ reading from Hebrews is a banger on its own - mocking, flogging, frigging sawn in two, but the bit that stuck out at me this morning was this verse, right before the big “therefore”:

Yet all these, though they were commended for their faith, did not receive what was promised, since God had provided something better so that they would not, apart from us, be made perfect.

So all these heroes of the faith still did not get everything that was promised. “WTF?” the reader may rightly ask. Why not?

Because, the author of Hebrews says, they need all of us with them to be complete, to reach fulness. Wowza.

And then there’s the Gospel

I will quote it in full (from Luke 12):

Jesus said, “I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled! I have a baptism with which to be baptized, and what stress I am under until it is completed! Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division! From now on five in one household will be divided, three against two and two against three; they will be divided: father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.”

He also said to the crowds, “When you see a cloud rising in the west, you immediately say, ‘It is going to rain’; and so it happens. And when you see the south wind blowing, you say, ‘There will be scorching heat’; and it happens. You hypocrites! You know how to interpret the appearance of earth and sky, but why do you not know how to interpret the present time?”

Our priest this morning called to note the specific generational nature of the conflict that Jesus brings. And which among us has not felt that conflict this past decade? So many of us had and continue to have painful disagreements with parents about what it looks like to follow Jesus. We can read the clouds and see the storm brewing. We’re already feeling the wind gusts. We need to buckle in and hold tight. This may well be the time when we make up what is lacking in Christ’s suffering, as we build toward the completeness of the faithfulness of the people of God.

I’m a longtime Overcast user, but I’m giving Castro a try

I’m an avid podcast listener on the iOS platform. For the last umpteen years I’ve defaulted to using Marco Arment’s Overcast app.

I listen to podcasts in spurts. I’ll subscribe to an old one (I’m looking at you, The History of Rome), listen to a hundred episodes, slowly burn out, and then listen to an occasional one in the backlog. There are very few that I listen to religiously on an every week basis. I also have several podcast subscriptions where I sort of pick through the episodes, find some I want to listen to, and discard the rest. Overcast has worked fine for this, though I do need to remember to go in and weed out episodes in that last category often enough to not auto-delete episodes I really want to listen to.

I’m a Marco fan. I’ve listened to his podcasts since back before ATP was a thing. I have been a Day 1 purchaser of his podcast app, his very short lived adblocker app, and was a big Instapaper fan back in the day. So Overcast was a no-brainer. And on the whole it’s worked well for me for years now. I like the Smart Speed audio processing quite a lot.

But then this summer I started running in earnest again, and wanted to be able to put podcast episodes on my Apple Watch so I could listen to them while running without having to carry my phone. And it turns out that Overcast’s sync to watch functionality is pretty limited, and the features that do exist don’t actually work very consistently. So I’ve been juggling between Overcast and Outcast, an app that exists exclusively to push podcast episodes to the Apple Watch. Which is clunky when I want to start listening to a podcast while running and then finish it in the car (I’m looking at you, Sean Carroll’s Mindscape Episode 323, a 3.5-hour long discussion with Jacob Barandes on Indivisible Stochastic Quantum Mechanics) and I have to check where I’m at on my watch, open Overcast, and drag the slider forward to that timestamp.

This morning somebody on my micro.blog feed mentioned that they had picked up Castro and found it pretty useful, and that it had a podcast Inbox function where you could sort through new episodes and decide which ones you wanted to enqueue and which ones you wanted to ignore. That Inbox function made me curious. I had downloaded Castro back years ago when it was initially released back in 2013, played with it for a few days, decided it wasn’t competition for Overcast, and never gave it another thought. But today I downloaded it again and decided to give it another look.

And here’s my first reaction: Castro is actually really good. It stepped me through importing my subscriptions from Overcast, grabbed them all, gave me an inbox to sort through, and was ready to start playing. It has nice iOS widgets, has a watch sync that appears to actually work, and, maybe most surprisingly, the Apple CarPlay app responsiveness seems far better than Overcast’s.

I’ve got a week of free trial before Castro wants me to pay for a yearly subscription, and I’m gonna give it a go for that week. I’m sure it has some foibles of its own, but it might just be a welcome change from a long-time app that’s gotten kind of stale.

A fresh perspective on Romans 8:28

In the journey of deconstructing my evangelical faith, it’s astonishing how many times a better reading of a Biblical text is right there just waiting to be embraced once someone points it out. And it’s so refreshing to realize that this can mean you don’t have to discard the Biblical text to hold a different viewpoint - you only have to be willing to think about another possible interpretation.

This morning’s example comes from Brad Jersak’s latest newsletter where he answers the question “Does Romans 8:28 teach that God is in control?”

We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose. (Rom. 8:28, NRSV)

As an evangelical, Romans 8:28 was trotted out as a sort of determinist get-out-of-jail-free card to deal with theodicy. “If we have an omnipotent, omniscient God”, one might reasonably ask, “why do bad things happen to good/innocent people?” “Well, we can’t know”, comes the answer, “but we can trust that Romans 8:28 is true and that God is orchestrating behind the scenes somehow for our good.”

It’s an unsatisfying answer, one that manipulates the recipient into blind acceptance of the evil circumstance and shames them for a lack of faith if they despair in it. But the words are right there. What else could they possibly mean?

Oh, blessed context

Rather than cherry pick this single verse, says Jersak, let’s look at the flow of the whole chapter.

Romans 8 tells us that all of creation is groaning under the catastrophe of human sin. And when the love of God fills our hearts, we begin to mourn too. We don’t even know how to pray. But the Holy Spirit in us cries out with ‘groans too deep for words’ and ‘we cry, ABBA!’ It appears that all is lost. It seems like evil reigns and death has defeated us.

Then he quotes verses 19-23:

19 For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God; 20 for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope 21 that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. 22 We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labour pains until now; 23 and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies.

Then he interprets:

Creation is groaning and waiting for God’s children to ‘be revealed’ or ‘manifest’ – to ‘show up’ and participate in ‘your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.’ It’s waiting for us to step into our calling now through the labor pains of history, even as we await our final resurrection. The wholeness and freedom of eternity that we await begins now as healing and redemption. Here. In this life.

Even before we get to v. 28, I find this such a helpful interpretation of v. 19-23. Verse 19 in particular was always opaque to me - what event of “revelation” is creation waiting for? Something eschatological? But no, this reading is much more sensible: creation is waiting to see which people will be revealed to be the children of God by how they go about doing God’s work of healing and redemption. Yes.

Then we get to v. 28. Back to Jersak [bold emphasis mine]:

“All things work together” is NOT “everything works out.” Rather, “all things” refers to the whole of creation that is groaning and waiting for us. When we, as Christ’s royal priesthood, step into our vocation, we will discover “all things working together” – cooperating, participating, serving with us in the cause of redemption. We can’t manipulate (force, control) our circumstances to serve our ends. But when we live as God’s beloved children, serving divine love in this world, it’s amazing how ‘all things’ start diving in to help.

I love this so much. That v. 28 isn’t a call to just shut up and try to trust that God is magically working things out in unseen ways. Rather, it’s a call to start God’s work as God’s representatives here in the world, with the encouragement that the rest of creation will be working with us toward ultimate reconciliation and redemption.

That’s a beautiful, hopeful picture that both encourages and motivates me when I consider all our current groaning and waiting.

Cultivating Natural Community, or, Making Friends Outside of Church

It’s been a couple weeks since I first read this piece but want to make sure I don’t forget it. Kenneth B. on Substack wrote “Another Bible Study Night Will Fix It… Really????”, and boy did it ring true to me.

Why is Christian community in America so often based on church meetings? Have you ever noticed that churches tend to organize social life around structured gatherings, rather than around the kinds of unplanned, natural friendships that unfold throughout the ordinary rhythms of daily life?

Here is a sample of recurring meetings I’ve seen in various churches: “Bible Study,” “Men’s Group,” “Women’s Group,” “Young Married Couples’ Group,” “Sunday School,” “Vacation Bible School,” “Youth Group,” “Promise Keepers,” “Wednesday Night Service,” “Divorce Recovery Group,” “Alcoholics Anonymous,” “College and Career Group.”

The list is virtually endless. And while there is nothing inherently wrong with organizing groups like these, there is something telling about our need to program fellowship so meticulously.

During my adult years in evangelicalism I was so deep in this I hardly noticed it. It was the water we were swimming in. All of our community interactions were centered around church activities. The furthest we got out of that stream was an occasional lunch or coffee invite - usually initiated by me, and almost never reciprocated. I still haven’t figured out why this was such a struggle.

In my youth this was a thing our family and community seemed to do a lot better. We seemingly constantly had friends over in our home or were over at their homes; youth hangouts were frequent, families would come over for an evening meal… maybe it’s larger in my memory than it was in reality, but it was definitely more frequent than it has been in my adult life. (Was this a product of having a very outgoing father who initiated these meetups? Maybe that’s the difference?)

One of the big consequences in adulthood of having all of our friendships and community built around church activities is that when we left the church, the community (such as it was) went away as well. As in, we left the church and never heard from almost any of them again. Ever.

Kenneth has a vision for what it could look like instead:

This is not meant to be an indictment of the entire Church in America. There are wonderful communities doing beautiful work. But it is an invitation to all of us—myself included—to rethink what we mean when we say we want to “make disciples.” Are we imagining coffee shops, mentorship books, and curriculum? Or are we imagining homes with open doors, unglamorous errands, shared laughter, and long nights of prayer?

I would love to have more friends where the relationship was built around just… being friends. To have around for whatever is going around in our lives. Saturday work project? Sure, let me come over and help for a few hours. Slow weekday evening? Come over for some food and let’s hang out. No event required. Eventually I’d like to be comfortable enough friends that I’m comfortable having you visit without feeling like I have to clean house for an hour beforehand. (Now there’s the true test of a friendship!)

“Normal” Friendships Look Different

Another voice popped into the discussion in my inbox today via Stephanie Jo Warren’s slightly more aggressive post “The Myth of Christian Community”.

If you’ve never been part of a fundamentalist Christian church, here’s what you should know: We were raised to believe that connection was made through confession and that love was shown through pain. Jesus expressed his love by dying on the cross for us, and God demonstrated his love by watching in anguish as his son Jesus was crucified. Because of this, it was natural for us to associate love with pain.

We were told, “They’ll know we are Christians by our love,” but in practice, that love often appeared as emotional monitoring. Oversharing was seen as a sign of holiness, boundaries were regarded as selfish, and privacy was interpreted as hiding something sinful. As for friendship, it was unconditional; everyone in the church was considered a brother or sister. Yet, in reality, no one truly was.

Now that I’ve left the movement, I’m still learning how to be a person, let alone how to be a friend.

This also rings true to my experience. Emotional monitoring. Oversharing as a sign of holiness. Boundaries regarded as selfishness. She goes on:

There is a distinctive longing experienced by former evangelicals, ex-cult members, and those raised in environments where control replaced genuine connection. It’s a craving for friendships that don’t come with religious or spiritual expectations, for love that isn’t contingent on loyalty tests, and for invitations extended simply because someone enjoys your company- not because they’re trying to ‘pour into your life.”

It’s the pain of realizing that everything you believed about outsiders was wrong. Surprisingly, those who were meant to love you, your church community, were often the ones causing the most harm. Meanwhile, the perceived “enemy” out there can be much safer than the person sitting next to you in the pew.

I resonate with this, too. The past five years outside of Evangelicalism have been a real adventure in learning what it looks like to build relationships - can we use easier terminology here? - to make friends outside of the facilitation of church activities. Unsurprisingly, but jarringly, this only happened when we started getting involved in activities that weren’t church activities. (We never had time for those before!)

Going Forward

My kids have had to learn this post-church friend-making sort of mid-stream in their childhoods. I am happy to see them slowly figuring out how it works and finding their own communities at high school and college. My wife and I are now just a couple years from becoming empty nesters, which means the challenge of community morphs yet again as we work out what our lives look like when they’re not largely structured around kids at home.

Whatever community we find and whatever friends we make, I hope that we can end up eventually with friends who are friends to spend normal time with, doing normal life things. (The evangelical phrase “do life together” came naturally to my mind but the experience of decades puts the lie to it.) Humans need community, need friends to thrive. I hope I’ve still got some years of thriving ahead of me.

A little music nerdery: 'God of our Fathers' and 'O Canada'

This morning before church I was listening to the organist practice, and while I knew from reading the bulletin ahead of time that the processional was God of our Fathers, when I heard the organ music my brain wanted to run with it instead as O Canada. At the time I was puzzled why, but then when I actually sang the hymn while processing, I realized what it is: the second line of both songs is nearly identical in melody and harmonic progression.

I dug up sheet music for both of them in the same key just to belabor the illustration. Here’s God of our Fathers:

And here’s O Canada:

My music theory is rusty, but in the second line (“Leads forth in beauty all the starry band” and “True patriot love in all of us command”, respectively), they start on the I, hit the iii, and then the V - V/V - V cadence with almost the same melody. The Canadian anthem does sneak a transitional V/iii chord in as some passing snazziness, but on the whole: I will forgive my brain for mentally continuing on “with glowing hearts we see…” rather than “of shining worlds in splendor…”.

Thus endeth the music nerdery.

(“Thanks be to God!”)