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The Prosperity Gospel’s roots go deep.
The term prosperity gospel is most likely a familiar term to most readers. This term is an umbrella term which encompasses a number of ideas that equate sincerity/vitality of one’s Christian faith and associated actions with material, career, life, relationship, and health success. Most people think of Joel Olsteen, his private jet, and his calls…
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Our concept of Satan comes from where? (part 1)
The more I read and think about our modern idea of Satan, the less sense what I read in the bible makes. I thought I’d lay out some interesting notes on this Satan that we think of today. Let’s start with the word Satan itself. It’s translated from the Hebrew śāṭān. Which means “The Adversary”…
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Embracing Doubt: A lesson in hope from Job
Lesley Hazleton (RIP), a self described “accidental theologist”, has a wonderful ted talk on “Doubt is essential to faith“. I saw it for the first time around ten years ago. This was pre-deconstruction, however the message still rang true in my head. Even though I hadn’t started to strongly doubt yet, I was beginning to…
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The Failed Prophecy and the False Choice
I remember as a mid 20’s engineer, fresh in my first “real” engineering job, being given a document by an angsty coworker. This document was a huge list of grievances against SDA, Ellen White, and just general biblical failures. I went through and attempted to answer each one but there were a few I simply…
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Reconstruction: Out of the ashes
According to ancient legend, the phoenix is an immortal mythical bird. One day it grew bored of living in paradise and wished to travel to the mortal world. Not long after arrival, the Phoenix became aware of its immortality and wanted to renew himself. He built a nest and waited for the sun god Ra…
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Creation: An Exploration of Issues
The Bible has a particular way it conveys creation. Well actually it has several ways it does this. Sometimes they don’t agree. In any case, a plain reading of the text can leave the reader, the curious scientifically minded reader at least, with a number of questions. To set the stage, let’s establish the traditional…
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The sound of silence…when God doesn’t speak.
There is a room at the University of Nebraska – Lincoln, called an anechoic (Anechoic means “without echo”) chamber. As a student, I had the opportunity to experience what being in this room was like. I was led into the room by the research grad in charge there. He explained to me how this room…
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The exodus. Big, small, or not at all?
The Exodus is a fascinating story. A real underdog escape from a great evil. From an early age, I often pondered how such a large group of people could manage to stay organized well enough to leave simultaneously, stay in formation, and manage to not leave some indelible mark on Egyptian history. As stated in…
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Is God a God of deceit?
It wasn’t until around a year into my deconstruction journey that I stumbled into an unsettling realization. If I were to hold true to the original interpretations of some OT stories (and the explanations given me by their proponents), I would have no choice but to accept that God was a God of deception. Let’s…
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Long term, is the conservative evangelical church doomed?
Pyrrhus, the king of Epirus suffered heavy losses after defeating the Romans at the Battle of Asculum in 279 B.C.E. After the battle, Pyrrhus is said to have exclaimed, “One more such victory and we are lost“ Our conservative evangelical churches got what they wanted yesterday in the U.S.A. They got the power they craved.…
Space For Doubt 