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When God Can’t, We Must

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What Open and Relational Theology Tells Us About Social Justice Recently, I took part in a virtual conference discussing works in the field of Open and Relational Theology (ORT). When my friend Mason found out that I had been invited, his response was “I didn’t know you were in the ORT world.” It is honestly something I don’t talk about much. I was first introduced to ORT through Dr. Thomas Jay Oord and his book God Can’t, which attempts to explain why there is persistent evil in the world. Ultimately, in his conclusion, it comes down to the fact that God’s love … Read more

Solidarity with the “Non-Human”

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“What’s it like to develop an entire identity around the sexual sin you desire…” – Dave from Twitter. I’ve often thought about what it means to be human and stepping into the person I’ve been created to be. However, we often don’t think about what it means to be non-human. This is where the quote above comes into play. In just a few short words, Dave was able to take my entire identity as a full human and reduce it to a simple ideology that he could express into a simple idea. It doesn’t bother me much when this happens, … Read more

Salvation Versus Liberation: Where is the Focus?

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A few weeks ago, I made this tweet and it sparked a lot of debate. In some ways it was too simplistic, not every instance of “soteria” should be translated “liberation,” but that wasn’t the point. The point was to critique the way that our English translations use theologically saturated words that no longer reflect the original meaning. The word “salvation,” although technically an accurate translation, has come to mean spiritual salvation from hell and is only occasionally used metaphorically for physical salvation. However, the use of “soteria” in the Bible is rarely (if ever) actually about the afterlife. This … Read more