Author’s Note: I’ve had this sitting around for a few years. After I wrote it (and for reasons I no longer remember), I decided to turn it into a piece of fiction, which I called “True Believers.” This is the original material behind that story. —————————————– Negev Manifesto my god my god why have i forsaken…
Originally written in 2013 but never published. I got an email from a guy named Bob recently. We went back and forth a bit over a couple of days, but basically he was asking if I thought God sent Jesus into this world specifically to die for our sins. Or did Jesus come to humanity in…
All the metaphysical questions remain alive within me, burning and roiling. They are my birthright and will not go away. The family of questions surrounding my physical reality in this culture and world have faded and finally become almost comical, like the old silent cartoons of cats and dogs, bobbing and grinning. There is an…
This is a somewhat early RLP piece, written when I was still anonymous. I’d guess it was 2003. I met Hugh Elliott, the man who writes Standing Room Only, by email back in December of 2002 when I began Real Live Preacher. Hugh sent encouraging messages and helped me figure out the software used by…
Not really on speaking terms. I don’t go to church anymore. That’s the down-and-dirty truth of it. I don’t. And I don’t plan to go back. I don’t plan not to go back. I just don’t plan. I don’t think about it one way or the other. So that’s what it’s come to. Real Live Preacher stopped…
It often begins with crazy people. They sense a deep movement, like animals feeling a coming tsunami. They howl and emote and act out. Their gibberish is like a dream. If you took the time to listen you’d find clues to the coming storm. Then we hear from the iconoclasts. They aren’t pure in heart.…
My final entry i think i killed real live preacher i didnt mean to i thought resigning as the pastor of covenant baptist church would be its own thing i thought it would remove something from my life that had become hard heavy too much i thought i could just cut that loose and then…
Sometimes it is a good thing to give away something that hurts. I have given two such gifts in the last decade. First, I sent the small New Testament that I studied from, read personally, and used in the pulpit to someone as a gift. I wore that Bible out. Battered, beat up, filled with…
Don’t we really already have a form of socialized medicine? Is the free market really what we have now? I don’t think so. I don’t think I choose my doctor and pay for my doctor and go to another doctor if I’m not happy. Those days are long gone. We pay a kind of…
So this is something I’m mulling over: Religion is far too dangerous a thing to be offered cheaply to the masses. It’s clear to anyone with any level of education about myth, archetype, and the human psyche, that religious traditions are not only inevitable, they are of the highest value to our species. And even…