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The Great Open Dance
The Great Open Dance's Journal
The Great Open Dance's Journal
May 26, 2026
Bad theology produces Religious Trauma Syndrome (RTS). Alice Walker is a queer black woman who grew up in a homophobic, racist, misogynistic culture. But her faith empowered her to declare, “I am an expression of the divine, just like a peach is, just like a fish is. I have a right to be this way.”
Alice Walker’s statement is an act of healing for herself and others. She was wounded by unholy forces that told her she was not enough, that she was inherently distorted because she was Black, female, and a lesbian. But she reclaimed her identity as a blessing, then shared that blessing with others, helping them to reclaim their own identities.
Tragically, many of the psychic wounds that people receive are from bad theology promulgated in churches. Bad theology threatens believers with this-worldly condemnation and next-worldly damnation, causing “religious trauma syndrome” (RTS)—fear, anxiety, hatred, and self-loathing.
This debilitating spirituality is produced by religious ideologies of control. High-control church leaders who want parishioners to be puppets teach that God is a puppeteer and that the leaders are the strings. To disobey is to malfunction. Fearful that freedom will cause people to stray from the straight and narrow path, authoritarian churches erect high walls along that path so parishioners can’t peek over the top and see other options for life.
Children should be nurtured not condemned. I had a friend in seminary who grew up in rural Texas in the 1980s. In the fifth grade he was at an all-male sleepover party with friends, and they all started looking at pictures of women in underwear in a Sears catalog. They went a few pages past the women’s section into the men’s section, which my friend was much more interested in. He noticed that no one else was interested in the pictures of men in underwear and realized that he was gay. His family went to a fundamentalist Baptist church, and the people there were (otherwise) very nice, but they taught that being gay was sick and sinful, so he thought that he was sick and sinful. He kept his orientation a secret, in shame.
I have another friend who was told as a child, by otherwise very nice people, that Jesus was coming back soon and would take all the Christians (Bible believing, born again) to heaven and send everyone else to hell. He went to bed every night in terror, praying for his non-Christian and semi-Christian friends.
And so it continues. Beautiful children are told that they are sinful in the eyes of God. Adolescents are made to feel guilty for the natural sexual drives developing within. Women are told that their gender is responsible for the fall of all “mankind,” being morally blamed even as they are linguistically excluded. Suffering church members are asked what they did to offend God to warrant this punishment. Patients on their deathbeds are questioned about their wrongdoings and offered expiation so they won’t go to hell. Bad theology obsesses over sin, guilt, purity, and damnation, turning an already difficult life into fully accomplished hell by anticipation.
Good theology produces flourishing. Faith reveals that women, men, trans, nonbinary, Black, Brown, White, Asian, able, disabled, rich, poor, middle-class persons and more are all equal. They are equally created by God, infinitely loved by God, and universally called to lives of meaning, purpose, and joy. Recognizing this truth, churches must model egalitarianism—equality in thought and practice—to the world.
Egalitarian community makes use of all members’ talents and places them in service of the common good. In contrast, patriarchal and heterosexist communities waste the talents of many members by denying them full access to leadership positions, limiting both personal and institutional flourishing.
As egalitarian, churches are also universalist—universally valuing all persons, inside and outside the church, especially those persons devalued by society. This universalism is the mission of the church. Since all are children of God and inseparable from one another, ethics becomes universalist—all are treated equally (Matthew 5:43–48). Since Abba is the divine mother who births all creation (Job 38:29; Isaiah 66
; etc.), and no mother rejects her sinful child, salvation is universal (1 Timothy 2:3–4).
In a lethally tribal world, universalism provides the church with a healing mission—resistance to fear, anger, and hatred through the ministry of faith, hope, and love. Assigning the church this mission, Jesus states that his followers should be kind to all, even as God makes it rain on the just and unjust (Matthew 5:45). Thus, the church does not prefer Christians to non-Christians, or men to women, or rich to poor. We are all permeated by implicit biases and tribal identities, but joining a church begins a journey of resistance to these traditional loyalties. Through this journey, we learn to value all persons, of every nationality, race, religion, class, orientation, and gender.
In allegiance to the cosmic God rather than our tribal god, the church replaces natural loyalties with a universal family. Jesus states, “Who is my mother? Who are my kin?” Then, pointing to the disciples, Jesus said, “This is my family. Whoever does the will of Abba God in heaven is my sibling and parent” (Matthew 12:48–50).
Following Jesus produces counter-cultural communities. Egalitarian, universalist churches practice social resurrection, defying accepted norms in witness to the universal God. In the late 1960s, Anne Moody and other civil rights activists tried to racially integrate southern churches. On the Sunday of one such action, White churches met the Black activists with armed policemen, paddy wagons, and dogs. A few Whites protested, saying that the Blacks should be let in, but they were outnumbered.
Having been rejected from several White churches, Anne and her friend went to pick up two activists who were trying to integrate an Episcopal church. When they got there, the friends were nowhere to be seen, so Anne got nervous. But after circling the church a few times, the thought occurred to her: “What if they got in?” Anne and her friend walked up the steps to the church, which were miraculously free of armed policemen and dogs. They entered the church, where worship had already started. Two ushers approached them, asking, “May we help you?” “Yes,” Anne said, “We would like to worship with you today.” “Will you sign the guest list, please, and we will show you to your seats,” said the White ushers. Anne and her friend were seated with the other two Black activists, and four Black women worshiped in an all-White church. Anne remembers, “When the services were over the minister invited us to visit again. He said it as if he meant it, and I began to have a little hope.”
That was a White church in a White supremacist culture hosting four Black women. Some churches immerse themselves in the gospel but absorb it no better than a rock absorbs water. Other churches immerse themselves in the gospel and absorb it like a sponge, recognizing that Abba loves all, that Jesus represents the agapic love of God, and that Sophia counsels love without boundaries. These churches practice the gospel to transform society, thereby revealing the universalism of God, rejecting the exclusivism of their society, and implementing Revelation’s vision of the saved community, which is a community of difference: “After that, I saw before me an immense crowd without number, from every nation, tribe, people, and language. They stood in front of the throne and the Lamb, dressed in long white robes and holding palm branches. And they cried out in a loud voice, ‘Salvation is of our God, who sits on the throne, and of the Lamb!’” (Revelation 7
).
The Gospels relate Jesus’s radical inclusivity in his story of the prodigal son (inclusion of the sinful), his choice of a Samaritan as hero-protagonist (inclusion of the religious outsider), his decision to dine with Simon the leper (inclusion of the scripturally excluded), his decision to dine with Zacchaeus the tax collector (inclusion of the hated powerful), his decision to converse with the Canaanite woman (inclusion of the marginalized female), and his protection of the woman framed for adultery (inclusion of the socially expendable). In the imitation of Christ, inspired by the Spirit, we are given the vocation of enacting the Sustainer’s imagination. This activity is our meaning and purpose. Without it we are lost. (adapted from Jon Paul Sydnor, The Great Open Dance: A Progressive Christian Theology, pages 221-224)
*****
For further reading, please see:
Moody, Anne. Coming of Age in Mississippi: The Classic Autobiography of Growing Up Poor and Black in the Rural South. New York: Random House, 2011.
Walker, Alice. The World Has Changed: Conversations with Alice Walker. New York: New Press, 2010.
Bad theology produces suffering. Good theology produces flourishing.
Bad theology produces Religious Trauma Syndrome (RTS). Alice Walker is a queer black woman who grew up in a homophobic, racist, misogynistic culture. But her faith empowered her to declare, “I am an expression of the divine, just like a peach is, just like a fish is. I have a right to be this way.”
Alice Walker’s statement is an act of healing for herself and others. She was wounded by unholy forces that told her she was not enough, that she was inherently distorted because she was Black, female, and a lesbian. But she reclaimed her identity as a blessing, then shared that blessing with others, helping them to reclaim their own identities.
Tragically, many of the psychic wounds that people receive are from bad theology promulgated in churches. Bad theology threatens believers with this-worldly condemnation and next-worldly damnation, causing “religious trauma syndrome” (RTS)—fear, anxiety, hatred, and self-loathing.
This debilitating spirituality is produced by religious ideologies of control. High-control church leaders who want parishioners to be puppets teach that God is a puppeteer and that the leaders are the strings. To disobey is to malfunction. Fearful that freedom will cause people to stray from the straight and narrow path, authoritarian churches erect high walls along that path so parishioners can’t peek over the top and see other options for life.
Children should be nurtured not condemned. I had a friend in seminary who grew up in rural Texas in the 1980s. In the fifth grade he was at an all-male sleepover party with friends, and they all started looking at pictures of women in underwear in a Sears catalog. They went a few pages past the women’s section into the men’s section, which my friend was much more interested in. He noticed that no one else was interested in the pictures of men in underwear and realized that he was gay. His family went to a fundamentalist Baptist church, and the people there were (otherwise) very nice, but they taught that being gay was sick and sinful, so he thought that he was sick and sinful. He kept his orientation a secret, in shame.
I have another friend who was told as a child, by otherwise very nice people, that Jesus was coming back soon and would take all the Christians (Bible believing, born again) to heaven and send everyone else to hell. He went to bed every night in terror, praying for his non-Christian and semi-Christian friends.
And so it continues. Beautiful children are told that they are sinful in the eyes of God. Adolescents are made to feel guilty for the natural sexual drives developing within. Women are told that their gender is responsible for the fall of all “mankind,” being morally blamed even as they are linguistically excluded. Suffering church members are asked what they did to offend God to warrant this punishment. Patients on their deathbeds are questioned about their wrongdoings and offered expiation so they won’t go to hell. Bad theology obsesses over sin, guilt, purity, and damnation, turning an already difficult life into fully accomplished hell by anticipation.
Good theology produces flourishing. Faith reveals that women, men, trans, nonbinary, Black, Brown, White, Asian, able, disabled, rich, poor, middle-class persons and more are all equal. They are equally created by God, infinitely loved by God, and universally called to lives of meaning, purpose, and joy. Recognizing this truth, churches must model egalitarianism—equality in thought and practice—to the world.
Egalitarian community makes use of all members’ talents and places them in service of the common good. In contrast, patriarchal and heterosexist communities waste the talents of many members by denying them full access to leadership positions, limiting both personal and institutional flourishing.
As egalitarian, churches are also universalist—universally valuing all persons, inside and outside the church, especially those persons devalued by society. This universalism is the mission of the church. Since all are children of God and inseparable from one another, ethics becomes universalist—all are treated equally (Matthew 5:43–48). Since Abba is the divine mother who births all creation (Job 38:29; Isaiah 66
; etc.), and no mother rejects her sinful child, salvation is universal (1 Timothy 2:3–4).
In a lethally tribal world, universalism provides the church with a healing mission—resistance to fear, anger, and hatred through the ministry of faith, hope, and love. Assigning the church this mission, Jesus states that his followers should be kind to all, even as God makes it rain on the just and unjust (Matthew 5:45). Thus, the church does not prefer Christians to non-Christians, or men to women, or rich to poor. We are all permeated by implicit biases and tribal identities, but joining a church begins a journey of resistance to these traditional loyalties. Through this journey, we learn to value all persons, of every nationality, race, religion, class, orientation, and gender.
In allegiance to the cosmic God rather than our tribal god, the church replaces natural loyalties with a universal family. Jesus states, “Who is my mother? Who are my kin?” Then, pointing to the disciples, Jesus said, “This is my family. Whoever does the will of Abba God in heaven is my sibling and parent” (Matthew 12:48–50).
Following Jesus produces counter-cultural communities. Egalitarian, universalist churches practice social resurrection, defying accepted norms in witness to the universal God. In the late 1960s, Anne Moody and other civil rights activists tried to racially integrate southern churches. On the Sunday of one such action, White churches met the Black activists with armed policemen, paddy wagons, and dogs. A few Whites protested, saying that the Blacks should be let in, but they were outnumbered.
Having been rejected from several White churches, Anne and her friend went to pick up two activists who were trying to integrate an Episcopal church. When they got there, the friends were nowhere to be seen, so Anne got nervous. But after circling the church a few times, the thought occurred to her: “What if they got in?” Anne and her friend walked up the steps to the church, which were miraculously free of armed policemen and dogs. They entered the church, where worship had already started. Two ushers approached them, asking, “May we help you?” “Yes,” Anne said, “We would like to worship with you today.” “Will you sign the guest list, please, and we will show you to your seats,” said the White ushers. Anne and her friend were seated with the other two Black activists, and four Black women worshiped in an all-White church. Anne remembers, “When the services were over the minister invited us to visit again. He said it as if he meant it, and I began to have a little hope.”
That was a White church in a White supremacist culture hosting four Black women. Some churches immerse themselves in the gospel but absorb it no better than a rock absorbs water. Other churches immerse themselves in the gospel and absorb it like a sponge, recognizing that Abba loves all, that Jesus represents the agapic love of God, and that Sophia counsels love without boundaries. These churches practice the gospel to transform society, thereby revealing the universalism of God, rejecting the exclusivism of their society, and implementing Revelation’s vision of the saved community, which is a community of difference: “After that, I saw before me an immense crowd without number, from every nation, tribe, people, and language. They stood in front of the throne and the Lamb, dressed in long white robes and holding palm branches. And they cried out in a loud voice, ‘Salvation is of our God, who sits on the throne, and of the Lamb!’” (Revelation 7
).
The Gospels relate Jesus’s radical inclusivity in his story of the prodigal son (inclusion of the sinful), his choice of a Samaritan as hero-protagonist (inclusion of the religious outsider), his decision to dine with Simon the leper (inclusion of the scripturally excluded), his decision to dine with Zacchaeus the tax collector (inclusion of the hated powerful), his decision to converse with the Canaanite woman (inclusion of the marginalized female), and his protection of the woman framed for adultery (inclusion of the socially expendable). In the imitation of Christ, inspired by the Spirit, we are given the vocation of enacting the Sustainer’s imagination. This activity is our meaning and purpose. Without it we are lost. (adapted from Jon Paul Sydnor, The Great Open Dance: A Progressive Christian Theology, pages 221-224)
*****
For further reading, please see:
Moody, Anne. Coming of Age in Mississippi: The Classic Autobiography of Growing Up Poor and Black in the Rural South. New York: Random House, 2011.
Walker, Alice. The World Has Changed: Conversations with Alice Walker. New York: New Press, 2010.
May 12, 2026
Because God is authentic community, and authenticity demands freedom, authentic churches are low social control groups. They don’t demand that you subordinate your self to an ideal. Instead, they nurture your ideal self, helping you bring it to full expression.
A low social control church respects members’ uniqueness, trusting that cohesion will emerge from diversity, as it does within God. Some churches deny the possibility of unity-in-diversity and become high social control groups, subjecting members to shame, shunning, denial of sacraments, and threats of damnation if they fail to be who the church wants them to be.
These churches demand that members subordinate their God-given uniqueness to a church-generated stereotype, hiding their authentic self within a conformist shell.
In high control churches, where members are opaque to one another, secrets are kept. But, as it is said, where there are secrets, there is shame.
Authentic churches celebrate their LGBTQ+ members. In God-centered community, we must trust one another’s self-revelation. We must practice interpersonal honesty or, in philosophical language, intersubjectivity. For decades, most churches have denied the self-revelation of their gay and lesbian members. These members are telling their churches that they can find emotional intimacy only with members of the same sex, they are telling their churches that this disposition cannot be changed, and they are telling their churches that this disposition does not need to be changed, that they feel blessed in the loving relationships they are in.
At the same time, most churches are denying the self-revelation of their trans and nonbinary members, who are telling them that they do not identify with the sex they were assigned at birth, that their interior experience is of the opposite gender, or both genders, or no gender, and that they need to live out that identity to live fully.
For decades, most churches have told these parishioners that their inner life is unnatural, or unbiblical, or diseased, or in need of repair. Most churches have told these members to conform their inner self to their outer appearance. In so doing, these churches refuse to see transgendered and nonbinary persons as God sees them: “God does not see as mortals see; mortals see outward appearances but God sees into the heart” (1 Samuel 16 b).
The church’s rejection of their authentic selves causes horrific harm to trans and nonbinary persons. Nevertheless, they persist. They are risking themselves in repeated acts of vulnerability and self-disclosure, like unto God. They are coming out and suffering rejection, yet they continue to reveal themselves until the world sees them the way God sees them. The perseverance of these saints is changing minds, which is changing souls, creating a more grace-filled world.
Transparency transforms and transfigures. Just as the disciples were allowed to see Jesus transfigured (Mark 9:2–8), LGBTQ+ self-revelation allows the world to see itself transfigured, liberated from fear and invited into celebration. This transfiguration is not an act of inclusion on the part of the excluders, with the excluded passively waiting at the gate. No, it is an ongoing act of conversion by the excluded, of the excluders, for the excluders, who continue to suffer behind walls of ignorance. This conversion is for all. Like God, it is for us; hence, for all of us.
For the trans community, external transition to their neurological birth gender is often accompanied by persecution—expulsion from home, loss of job, physical attacks, and worse. Despite this persecution, most record greater life satisfaction after choosing to express their internal gender identity.
To mark their transition, most trans persons change their name. Likewise, the Bible frequently renames persons when they undergo a profound change: Abram became Abraham, Sarai became Sarah (Genesis 17), Jacob becomes Israel (Genesis 32), Simon becomes Peter (Matthew 16), and Saul becomes Paul (Acts 13). Associates who reject the transitions of transgendered persons will sometimes express this rejection by “deadnaming” them—calling them by the name given at birth rather than their chosen name. Would these rejectionists also deadname Paul as Saul? Sarah as Sarai?
The Bible is about transformation: our potential for it, our call to it, and our invitation to celebrate it. Today we can fulfill that call by supporting LGBTQ+ rights and LGBTQ+ identity, until everyone can say, with Alice Walker, “I am an expression of the divine, just like a peach is, just like a fish is. I have a right to be this way.” (adapted from Jon Paul Sydnor, The Great Open Dance: A Progressive Christian Theology, page 219-221)
*****
For further reading, please see:
Oord, Thomas Jay. The Uncontrolling Love of God: An Open and Relational Account of Providence. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2015.
Walker, Alice. The World Has Changed: Conversations with Alice Walker. New York: New Press, 2010.
The Church Must Celebrate LGBTQ+ Persons as LGBTQ+
Bad churches are inauthentic; good churches are authentic. The persons of the Trinity live in interpersonal freedom, never hiding any part of themselves. We are made in the image of the Trinity, for such honesty. Therefore, in faithful community we can express our deepest self authentically. If a church demands that we hide our self to be accepted, if a church creates an artificial standard and demands that we conform to it, then that church has stifled the image of God within us.Because God is authentic community, and authenticity demands freedom, authentic churches are low social control groups. They don’t demand that you subordinate your self to an ideal. Instead, they nurture your ideal self, helping you bring it to full expression.
A low social control church respects members’ uniqueness, trusting that cohesion will emerge from diversity, as it does within God. Some churches deny the possibility of unity-in-diversity and become high social control groups, subjecting members to shame, shunning, denial of sacraments, and threats of damnation if they fail to be who the church wants them to be.
These churches demand that members subordinate their God-given uniqueness to a church-generated stereotype, hiding their authentic self within a conformist shell.
In high control churches, where members are opaque to one another, secrets are kept. But, as it is said, where there are secrets, there is shame.
Authentic churches celebrate their LGBTQ+ members. In God-centered community, we must trust one another’s self-revelation. We must practice interpersonal honesty or, in philosophical language, intersubjectivity. For decades, most churches have denied the self-revelation of their gay and lesbian members. These members are telling their churches that they can find emotional intimacy only with members of the same sex, they are telling their churches that this disposition cannot be changed, and they are telling their churches that this disposition does not need to be changed, that they feel blessed in the loving relationships they are in.
At the same time, most churches are denying the self-revelation of their trans and nonbinary members, who are telling them that they do not identify with the sex they were assigned at birth, that their interior experience is of the opposite gender, or both genders, or no gender, and that they need to live out that identity to live fully.
For decades, most churches have told these parishioners that their inner life is unnatural, or unbiblical, or diseased, or in need of repair. Most churches have told these members to conform their inner self to their outer appearance. In so doing, these churches refuse to see transgendered and nonbinary persons as God sees them: “God does not see as mortals see; mortals see outward appearances but God sees into the heart” (1 Samuel 16
b).
The church’s rejection of their authentic selves causes horrific harm to trans and nonbinary persons. Nevertheless, they persist. They are risking themselves in repeated acts of vulnerability and self-disclosure, like unto God. They are coming out and suffering rejection, yet they continue to reveal themselves until the world sees them the way God sees them. The perseverance of these saints is changing minds, which is changing souls, creating a more grace-filled world.
Transparency transforms and transfigures. Just as the disciples were allowed to see Jesus transfigured (Mark 9:2–8), LGBTQ+ self-revelation allows the world to see itself transfigured, liberated from fear and invited into celebration. This transfiguration is not an act of inclusion on the part of the excluders, with the excluded passively waiting at the gate. No, it is an ongoing act of conversion by the excluded, of the excluders, for the excluders, who continue to suffer behind walls of ignorance. This conversion is for all. Like God, it is for us; hence, for all of us.
For the trans community, external transition to their neurological birth gender is often accompanied by persecution—expulsion from home, loss of job, physical attacks, and worse. Despite this persecution, most record greater life satisfaction after choosing to express their internal gender identity.
To mark their transition, most trans persons change their name. Likewise, the Bible frequently renames persons when they undergo a profound change: Abram became Abraham, Sarai became Sarah (Genesis 17), Jacob becomes Israel (Genesis 32), Simon becomes Peter (Matthew 16), and Saul becomes Paul (Acts 13). Associates who reject the transitions of transgendered persons will sometimes express this rejection by “deadnaming” them—calling them by the name given at birth rather than their chosen name. Would these rejectionists also deadname Paul as Saul? Sarah as Sarai?
The Bible is about transformation: our potential for it, our call to it, and our invitation to celebrate it. Today we can fulfill that call by supporting LGBTQ+ rights and LGBTQ+ identity, until everyone can say, with Alice Walker, “I am an expression of the divine, just like a peach is, just like a fish is. I have a right to be this way.” (adapted from Jon Paul Sydnor, The Great Open Dance: A Progressive Christian Theology, page 219-221)
*****
For further reading, please see:
Oord, Thomas Jay. The Uncontrolling Love of God: An Open and Relational Account of Providence. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2015.
Walker, Alice. The World Has Changed: Conversations with Alice Walker. New York: New Press, 2010.
May 6, 2026
We are made in the image of God, for authentic community. In previous essays, I have argued that the Trinity is three unique persons united through love into one divine community. Abba, Jesus, and Sophia are specific centers of consciousness, thought, and feeling; hence, each one is a subject— a self with a specific identity. An object is a thing without consciousness, thought, or feeling, while a subject is a person with consciousness, thought, and feeling.
The divine subjects differ from human subjects in their perfect love for, and openness to, one another. What they could hide, they always choose to share. Their subjectivity is transparent. Hence, they are not only subjective, they are intersubjective—perfectly open and lovingly transparent to one another. God is intersubjectivity itself. By way of consequence, individual uniqueness, and its contribution to the kaleidoscope of difference, is holy.
To be known, we must know one another. Recognizing our own uniqueness, and our unique value, we desire to be seen. We want the depth of our subjectivity to be known, even if we don’t know it ourselves. We want to be acknowledged as a self who possesses a soul. We want to be perceived as consequential, not because we’re rich or famous, but because we are of inherent worth. Such co-celebration is what should happen in religious communities. The endeavor is sacred, and even partial achievement grants us a foretaste of the kingdom.
As gathering places for the people of God, churches should be places of transparency and intersubjectivity. Such openness, in a culture of acceptance, is healing in itself. We can think of participants in an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting who begin by stating their name and their addiction to alcohol, always in full confidence of welcome.
Many churches claim to be so welcoming, yet they subtly coerce members into that church’s image of what a Christian looks like, encircling them in candy-coated barbed wire. Other churches are truly welcoming, encouraging participants to fully embody the unique image that God created them to be. These churches encourage authenticity, which is confident self-revelation, an external life lived in accord with one’s internal self. Such churches truly practice Paul’s instruction, “Accept one another as Christ accepted us, for the glory of God” (Romans 15 ). (adapted from Jon Paul Sydnor, The Great Open Dance: A Progressive Christian Theology, page 218)
In our age of "the Mar-a-Lago look," we need authentic community more than ever
We are made in the image of God, for authentic community. In previous essays, I have argued that the Trinity is three unique persons united through love into one divine community. Abba, Jesus, and Sophia are specific centers of consciousness, thought, and feeling; hence, each one is a subject— a self with a specific identity. An object is a thing without consciousness, thought, or feeling, while a subject is a person with consciousness, thought, and feeling.
The divine subjects differ from human subjects in their perfect love for, and openness to, one another. What they could hide, they always choose to share. Their subjectivity is transparent. Hence, they are not only subjective, they are intersubjective—perfectly open and lovingly transparent to one another. God is intersubjectivity itself. By way of consequence, individual uniqueness, and its contribution to the kaleidoscope of difference, is holy.
To be known, we must know one another. Recognizing our own uniqueness, and our unique value, we desire to be seen. We want the depth of our subjectivity to be known, even if we don’t know it ourselves. We want to be acknowledged as a self who possesses a soul. We want to be perceived as consequential, not because we’re rich or famous, but because we are of inherent worth. Such co-celebration is what should happen in religious communities. The endeavor is sacred, and even partial achievement grants us a foretaste of the kingdom.
As gathering places for the people of God, churches should be places of transparency and intersubjectivity. Such openness, in a culture of acceptance, is healing in itself. We can think of participants in an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting who begin by stating their name and their addiction to alcohol, always in full confidence of welcome.
Many churches claim to be so welcoming, yet they subtly coerce members into that church’s image of what a Christian looks like, encircling them in candy-coated barbed wire. Other churches are truly welcoming, encouraging participants to fully embody the unique image that God created them to be. These churches encourage authenticity, which is confident self-revelation, an external life lived in accord with one’s internal self. Such churches truly practice Paul’s instruction, “Accept one another as Christ accepted us, for the glory of God” (Romans 15
). (adapted from Jon Paul Sydnor, The Great Open Dance: A Progressive Christian Theology, page 218)
April 29, 2026
Suffering wants us to believe that we are alone, but love knows differently. For this reason, the church provides consolation. The word consolation derives from the Latin con or with, and solus or lonely. It means “to be with the lonely.” Consolation does not take away the pain, but it does lighten it, because pain coupled with loneliness is excruciating.
We suffer less when we suffer with others, and we suffer less when we suffer wisely, so we suffer best when we suffer in a wise community. A thirteen-year-old youth in our church lost a friend who was hit by a truck while riding her bicycle. The Sunday after the accident, the youth came to church and, as her fellow parishioners offered condolences, eventually began weeping.
Three matrons of the church, who had known her since she was born, stood up, surrounded her, and just comforted her—undistracted, undisturbed, and undismayed—until she was finished. Did they make her sadness go away? No. Did they explain why this tragedy happened? No. Did they let her know, without words, that life would continue, and become good again? Yes, because they believed in the power of community: “Bear one another’s burdens,” writes Paul, “and thus fulfill the law of Christ” (Gal 6:2).
Backstage churches are authentic; frontstage churches are inauthentic. Our sharing of sorrows helps us to get real and live authentically, but such sharing occurs only in backstage churches. Backstage churches are different from frontstage churches. In frontstage churches, everyone puts their best foot forward, showing up well-dressed and clean and all put together. Many frontstage churches believe that God rewards religious virtue with health and wealth. God may test us, on occasion, but if we respond faithfully to the test, then God will reward us with even greater prosperity, as in the utterly shallow, prosaic conclusion to Job. These churches inevitably devolve into the hellhole of competitive virtue signaling, in which parishioners compete to see who can appear the most virtuous, hence the most blessed by God.
Worse, if a church believes that God sends suffering as a punishment for vice, then parishioners will have to hide their suffering from each other. We know a woman in a fundamentalist area of the country whose young daughter got cancer. She set up a website to raise money for medical bills and, being a person of faith, she asked for prayers on the website as well. Most comments were kind and supportive, but a large number speculated about how her family had sinned, causing God to punish them. Others suggested ways that they could get right with God so the cancer would go away, or even claimed that their use of modern medicine revealed a lack of faith. The mother had to edit her request for prayer, insisting that the cause of her daughter’s cancer was purely medical, and she informed visitors that any comments suggesting otherwise would be deleted.
The belief that human suffering is divine punishment for hidden sin produces frontstage churches and lonely churchgoers, a combination of words that should be oxymoronic. Likewise, the belief that prosperity is a reward for virtue produces pride: “My life is perfect, see how God has blessed me!” This boast is a misery-inducing lie, to oneself and everyone else. It arises from envious insecurity and sinks us deeper within it. It misrepresents God’s love as conditional and separates parishioners from one another.
Frontstage churches foster rivalry rather than grace and contest rather than community. “Therefore, let’s have no more lies. Speak truthfully to each other, for we are all members of one body,” admonishes Paul (Ephesians 4:25). Because we need to be known, because we need to be seen, we need to share ourselves with one another. In backstage churches, we allow each other to see the inevitable messiness of our lives. Acknowledging the universality of our struggles frees us from envy and recenters us in one another. Sharing life’s joys and worries allows us to be loved through both and to love others through both. This love is oxygen for the soul. Acceptance after self-revelation heals, while secrets eat at us like tapeworms. (adapted from Jon Paul Sydnor, The Great Open Dance: A Progressive Christian Theology, pages 216-217)
*****
For further reading, please see:
Jurgen Moltmann. The Church in the Power of the Spirit: A Contribution to Messianic Ecclesiology. London: SCM Press, 1993.
Danielle Shroyer. Original Blessing: Putting Sin in Its Rightful Place. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2016.
Does your church practice competitive virtue signaling? If so, then you may already be in hell!
Radical honesty creates authentic community. Jesus is the great Amen of God, the Yes to life in all its agony and ecstasy. Following his example and empowered by the Spirit, the church also says yes to life, to both its joy and its suffering.Suffering wants us to believe that we are alone, but love knows differently. For this reason, the church provides consolation. The word consolation derives from the Latin con or with, and solus or lonely. It means “to be with the lonely.” Consolation does not take away the pain, but it does lighten it, because pain coupled with loneliness is excruciating.
We suffer less when we suffer with others, and we suffer less when we suffer wisely, so we suffer best when we suffer in a wise community. A thirteen-year-old youth in our church lost a friend who was hit by a truck while riding her bicycle. The Sunday after the accident, the youth came to church and, as her fellow parishioners offered condolences, eventually began weeping.
Three matrons of the church, who had known her since she was born, stood up, surrounded her, and just comforted her—undistracted, undisturbed, and undismayed—until she was finished. Did they make her sadness go away? No. Did they explain why this tragedy happened? No. Did they let her know, without words, that life would continue, and become good again? Yes, because they believed in the power of community: “Bear one another’s burdens,” writes Paul, “and thus fulfill the law of Christ” (Gal 6:2).
Backstage churches are authentic; frontstage churches are inauthentic. Our sharing of sorrows helps us to get real and live authentically, but such sharing occurs only in backstage churches. Backstage churches are different from frontstage churches. In frontstage churches, everyone puts their best foot forward, showing up well-dressed and clean and all put together. Many frontstage churches believe that God rewards religious virtue with health and wealth. God may test us, on occasion, but if we respond faithfully to the test, then God will reward us with even greater prosperity, as in the utterly shallow, prosaic conclusion to Job. These churches inevitably devolve into the hellhole of competitive virtue signaling, in which parishioners compete to see who can appear the most virtuous, hence the most blessed by God.
Worse, if a church believes that God sends suffering as a punishment for vice, then parishioners will have to hide their suffering from each other. We know a woman in a fundamentalist area of the country whose young daughter got cancer. She set up a website to raise money for medical bills and, being a person of faith, she asked for prayers on the website as well. Most comments were kind and supportive, but a large number speculated about how her family had sinned, causing God to punish them. Others suggested ways that they could get right with God so the cancer would go away, or even claimed that their use of modern medicine revealed a lack of faith. The mother had to edit her request for prayer, insisting that the cause of her daughter’s cancer was purely medical, and she informed visitors that any comments suggesting otherwise would be deleted.
The belief that human suffering is divine punishment for hidden sin produces frontstage churches and lonely churchgoers, a combination of words that should be oxymoronic. Likewise, the belief that prosperity is a reward for virtue produces pride: “My life is perfect, see how God has blessed me!” This boast is a misery-inducing lie, to oneself and everyone else. It arises from envious insecurity and sinks us deeper within it. It misrepresents God’s love as conditional and separates parishioners from one another.
Frontstage churches foster rivalry rather than grace and contest rather than community. “Therefore, let’s have no more lies. Speak truthfully to each other, for we are all members of one body,” admonishes Paul (Ephesians 4:25). Because we need to be known, because we need to be seen, we need to share ourselves with one another. In backstage churches, we allow each other to see the inevitable messiness of our lives. Acknowledging the universality of our struggles frees us from envy and recenters us in one another. Sharing life’s joys and worries allows us to be loved through both and to love others through both. This love is oxygen for the soul. Acceptance after self-revelation heals, while secrets eat at us like tapeworms. (adapted from Jon Paul Sydnor, The Great Open Dance: A Progressive Christian Theology, pages 216-217)
*****
For further reading, please see:
Jurgen Moltmann. The Church in the Power of the Spirit: A Contribution to Messianic Ecclesiology. London: SCM Press, 1993.
Danielle Shroyer. Original Blessing: Putting Sin in Its Rightful Place. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2016.
April 20, 2026
To enter this type of community, a community modeled on the triune God, is an act of faith. Faith is not a moral accomplishment, or rigorous obedience to rigid rules, or stubborn adherence to propositions for which there is no evidence. Faith is openness to the most basic experiential truth of the universe, a way of being that is plumb with reality, the practice of which entails risk.
Jesus ascended to Abba so that the Holy Spirit Sophia, who had animated Jesus, could now animate his followers. Together, they would continue his ministry as the church. In church God is known not just in community, but as community, in the freedom of self-gift.
This concept of freedom as self-gift, self-revelation, and self-communication resists contemporary culture, in which people increasingly delay commitment to preserve what they deem to be freedom: the spontaneity of a life unencumbered by responsibility for others. Such delayed commitment can lessen the self that it seeks to indulge. Self-donation in relationships of mutuality and equality, and in communities of mutuality and equality, is self-fulfillment, not self-renunciation.
Good churches manifest agape—the universal, unconditional, egalitarian love of God. The function of church is to provide communities in which love can be equitably given, received, and shared with the world. (That is what good churches do. They don’t cause religious trauma by controlling their parishioners through fear.) This sacred exchange accesses a new realm of belonging—the domain of Sophia. Her Holy Spirit is a gratuitous energy that perpetually renews and transforms the community. Thus, the church experiences Sophia as ever heightening our quality of shared life.
The self finds itself only in community. Hence, to limit self-donation is to limit the self. This statement is not dogmatic; it is empirical and will be ratified by those willing to risk it. Paul writes, “If one member suffers, all the members suffer together with them; if one member is honored, all the members share their joy” (1 Corinthians 12:26). He believes this because “we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members of one another” (Romans 12:5 WEB).
The phrase “of one another” is one word in Greek, allēlōn (ah-LAY-loan). Allēlōn and its variations are used one hundred times in the Newer Testament, which repeatedly insists on our inseparability from one another. The church’s conviction that we are members of one another expresses itself in the doctrine of universal priesthood. Instead of a class of priests who mediate God to the laity, the church believes that there is only one High Priest, Jesus (Hebrews 4:14–16; 1 Timothy 2:5). The sole mediation of Jesus places all followers on the same spiritual plane. But it does not lower their status; it universally elevates their status to that of priest. For this reason, Bible passages refer to the fledgling church as a “holy priesthood” (1 Peter 2:5), “royal priesthood” (1 Peter 2 ), and “priests to God” (Revelation 1:6; Revelation 5:10).
In Trinitarian community, our neighbors are portals of God. In older religions, priests offered burnt sacrifices to God to garner goodwill for the people. In contrast, the followers of Jesus are universally empowered to offer sacrifices, but of a different sort: “Keep doing good works and sharing resources. These are the sacrifices that please God” (Hebrews 13:16).
During the Protestant Reformation, leaders such as Martin Luther and John Calvin institutionalized this priestly status by teaching and establishing the priesthood of all believers. While certain members of the faith may be educated for and ordained to professional ministry, this status does not elevate them over other believers; it only assigns them a specific role within the universal priesthood. Pastors minister through sermons and sacraments, while doctors have a ministry of healing, laborers have a ministry of building, educators have a ministry of teaching, carpenters have a ministry of making, etc. All ministries are equally legitimate, so their (only male, alas, in the time of the Reformation) practitioners had equal standing within the democratically governed church.
The priesthood of all believers does not mean that each believer is a priest unto themselves alone, with a direct, solo line to God. Unfortunately, this misinterpretation has achieved dominance in some denominations. Prayer and Bible study in isolation, unchecked by any Christian community, is a dangerous practice, encouraging individuals to confuse their personal spirituality with divine truth. All too often, this practice produces very harmful theology that overconfident enthusiasts propagate with prophetic zeal.
Instead, the priesthood of all believers implies that we are all mediators of God to one another. God is always fully present, absolutely attentive, and perfectly solicitous. This presence is what we finite beings receive from the infinite God and what we need most. We may not be present to each other—we may be distracted or disengaged—but God is always fully present to us.
In church, we try to make the divine presence real by being fully present to one another. Such presence poses a challenge in this era of technology, when every conversation can be interrupted and the screen always beckons, offering its anaesthesia. We are plagued by the absence of presence. We need to be tended to, and we need to tend, because tending manifests grace.
Divine community is for the sacred now. This life-giving conception of the church denies that it is a waiting room for heaven. The function of the church is this-worldly, not next-worldly. God loves us here and now and wants us to thrive here and now, not delay our thriving into some distant future. Certainly, the afterlife is a true consolation for the bereaved, but not at the cost of this life. Because Abba loves us in this moment, Jesus’s message and Sophia’s counsel are both urgent: “After John’s arrest, Jesus appeared in Galilee proclaiming the Good News of God: ‘This is the time of fulfillment. The reign of God is at hand. Change your hearts and minds, and believe this Good News!’” (Mark 1:14–15).
To take on God’s way of being is not possible in isolation. We are spiritually interdependent. Recognizing this truth, Buddhism commends the sangha, Hinduism commends the ashram, Islam commends the ummah, Judaism commends the minyan, and Christianity commends the church. The religions recognize that inertia dooms privatistic faith. Individualist salvation, consumerist spirituality, and personalized piety are all deficient because we cannot realize divinized life in isolation. In response, religions create spiritual communities within which lamas, sadhus, imams, prophets, and rabbis—and fellow congregants—jar us out of complacency, from separation to union, through love. In all these institutions, we manifest God’s mode of existence by forming a spiritual family (Romans 8:29). (adapted from Jon Paul Sydnor, The Great Open Dance: A Progressive Christian Theology, pages 213-216)
*****
For further reading, please see:
Boff, Leonardo. Trinity and Society. Translated by Paul Burns. 1988. Reprint. Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2005.
LaCugna, Catherine Mowry. God for Us: The Trinity and Christian Life. San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1993.
Volf, Miroslav. After Our Likeness: The Church as the Image of the Trinity. Sacra Doctrina: Christian Theology for a Postmodern Age (SACRA). Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998.
We weren't made to be alone: finding divinity in community
In community, we fulfill the image of God within us. Writing about the social Trinity, Miroslav Volf argues: “Because the Christian God is not a lonely God, but rather a communion of three persons, faith leads human beings into the divine communion.” Such communion cannot express itself in solitary life, a private person worshiping a private deity alone. Instead, the divine communion draws us into human communion, into togetherness, into a community that practices love of God and love of neighbor.To enter this type of community, a community modeled on the triune God, is an act of faith. Faith is not a moral accomplishment, or rigorous obedience to rigid rules, or stubborn adherence to propositions for which there is no evidence. Faith is openness to the most basic experiential truth of the universe, a way of being that is plumb with reality, the practice of which entails risk.
Jesus ascended to Abba so that the Holy Spirit Sophia, who had animated Jesus, could now animate his followers. Together, they would continue his ministry as the church. In church God is known not just in community, but as community, in the freedom of self-gift.
This concept of freedom as self-gift, self-revelation, and self-communication resists contemporary culture, in which people increasingly delay commitment to preserve what they deem to be freedom: the spontaneity of a life unencumbered by responsibility for others. Such delayed commitment can lessen the self that it seeks to indulge. Self-donation in relationships of mutuality and equality, and in communities of mutuality and equality, is self-fulfillment, not self-renunciation.
Good churches manifest agape—the universal, unconditional, egalitarian love of God. The function of church is to provide communities in which love can be equitably given, received, and shared with the world. (That is what good churches do. They don’t cause religious trauma by controlling their parishioners through fear.) This sacred exchange accesses a new realm of belonging—the domain of Sophia. Her Holy Spirit is a gratuitous energy that perpetually renews and transforms the community. Thus, the church experiences Sophia as ever heightening our quality of shared life.
The self finds itself only in community. Hence, to limit self-donation is to limit the self. This statement is not dogmatic; it is empirical and will be ratified by those willing to risk it. Paul writes, “If one member suffers, all the members suffer together with them; if one member is honored, all the members share their joy” (1 Corinthians 12:26). He believes this because “we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members of one another” (Romans 12:5 WEB).
The phrase “of one another” is one word in Greek, allēlōn (ah-LAY-loan). Allēlōn and its variations are used one hundred times in the Newer Testament, which repeatedly insists on our inseparability from one another. The church’s conviction that we are members of one another expresses itself in the doctrine of universal priesthood. Instead of a class of priests who mediate God to the laity, the church believes that there is only one High Priest, Jesus (Hebrews 4:14–16; 1 Timothy 2:5). The sole mediation of Jesus places all followers on the same spiritual plane. But it does not lower their status; it universally elevates their status to that of priest. For this reason, Bible passages refer to the fledgling church as a “holy priesthood” (1 Peter 2:5), “royal priesthood” (1 Peter 2
), and “priests to God” (Revelation 1:6; Revelation 5:10).
In Trinitarian community, our neighbors are portals of God. In older religions, priests offered burnt sacrifices to God to garner goodwill for the people. In contrast, the followers of Jesus are universally empowered to offer sacrifices, but of a different sort: “Keep doing good works and sharing resources. These are the sacrifices that please God” (Hebrews 13:16).
During the Protestant Reformation, leaders such as Martin Luther and John Calvin institutionalized this priestly status by teaching and establishing the priesthood of all believers. While certain members of the faith may be educated for and ordained to professional ministry, this status does not elevate them over other believers; it only assigns them a specific role within the universal priesthood. Pastors minister through sermons and sacraments, while doctors have a ministry of healing, laborers have a ministry of building, educators have a ministry of teaching, carpenters have a ministry of making, etc. All ministries are equally legitimate, so their (only male, alas, in the time of the Reformation) practitioners had equal standing within the democratically governed church.
The priesthood of all believers does not mean that each believer is a priest unto themselves alone, with a direct, solo line to God. Unfortunately, this misinterpretation has achieved dominance in some denominations. Prayer and Bible study in isolation, unchecked by any Christian community, is a dangerous practice, encouraging individuals to confuse their personal spirituality with divine truth. All too often, this practice produces very harmful theology that overconfident enthusiasts propagate with prophetic zeal.
Instead, the priesthood of all believers implies that we are all mediators of God to one another. God is always fully present, absolutely attentive, and perfectly solicitous. This presence is what we finite beings receive from the infinite God and what we need most. We may not be present to each other—we may be distracted or disengaged—but God is always fully present to us.
In church, we try to make the divine presence real by being fully present to one another. Such presence poses a challenge in this era of technology, when every conversation can be interrupted and the screen always beckons, offering its anaesthesia. We are plagued by the absence of presence. We need to be tended to, and we need to tend, because tending manifests grace.
Divine community is for the sacred now. This life-giving conception of the church denies that it is a waiting room for heaven. The function of the church is this-worldly, not next-worldly. God loves us here and now and wants us to thrive here and now, not delay our thriving into some distant future. Certainly, the afterlife is a true consolation for the bereaved, but not at the cost of this life. Because Abba loves us in this moment, Jesus’s message and Sophia’s counsel are both urgent: “After John’s arrest, Jesus appeared in Galilee proclaiming the Good News of God: ‘This is the time of fulfillment. The reign of God is at hand. Change your hearts and minds, and believe this Good News!’” (Mark 1:14–15).
To take on God’s way of being is not possible in isolation. We are spiritually interdependent. Recognizing this truth, Buddhism commends the sangha, Hinduism commends the ashram, Islam commends the ummah, Judaism commends the minyan, and Christianity commends the church. The religions recognize that inertia dooms privatistic faith. Individualist salvation, consumerist spirituality, and personalized piety are all deficient because we cannot realize divinized life in isolation. In response, religions create spiritual communities within which lamas, sadhus, imams, prophets, and rabbis—and fellow congregants—jar us out of complacency, from separation to union, through love. In all these institutions, we manifest God’s mode of existence by forming a spiritual family (Romans 8:29). (adapted from Jon Paul Sydnor, The Great Open Dance: A Progressive Christian Theology, pages 213-216)
*****
For further reading, please see:
Boff, Leonardo. Trinity and Society. Translated by Paul Burns. 1988. Reprint. Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2005.
LaCugna, Catherine Mowry. God for Us: The Trinity and Christian Life. San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1993.
Volf, Miroslav. After Our Likeness: The Church as the Image of the Trinity. Sacra Doctrina: Christian Theology for a Postmodern Age (SACRA). Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998.
April 14, 2026
Small miracles happen here. When I was in seminary and needed to earn some extra money, I preached regularly at a small Presbyterian church in north Philadelphia. It was a dying White church in a largely Black neighborhood with at most twenty attendees on any given Sunday, mainly elderly. Still, they conjured religious beauty.
George (name changed for privacy) sang in the church’s small choir and performed most solos. As a boy, George had a physically abusive father. To escape the abuse, George joined the army, which sent him into combat in Vietnam. Returning home, he suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder and spent years on the streets of Philadelphia in alcohol addiction. Through Alcoholics Anonymous he achieved sobriety, met a woman from the church, got married, and became a regular attendee.
Together, they never missed a Sunday. Although he was the church’s main soloist, George couldn’t sing. At the risk of being disrespectful, for which I apologize: George couldn’t carry a tune, and his voice was cracked by years of drinking and smoking. But George didn’t know this himself, and he never held back, praising God with full-throated gratitude. His cracked voice reminded the congregation that, in the words of Leonard Cohen, “There’s a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.”
No one complained about the quality of the music. The music director kept asking him to sing, and the congregation kept listening, in respectful attention, grateful that he was in recovery, grateful that he had married, grateful that he had found redemption. Their joy in George’s joy overwhelmed any discomfort with the performance.
George’s years of alcoholism caught up with him, and he was hospitalized with cirrhosis of the liver. Only 10 percent of his liver was still functioning, his body was too weak for a transplant, and the doctors gave him a few months to live. George returned home, jaundiced and out of breath. Naturally, the music director called and asked him to sing a solo for the congregation, of his own choosing.
George chose “How Great Thou Art.” We gathered one Sunday to watch a frail man, beaten by his father, scarred by war, and poisoned by alcohol, sing from his soul to the glory of God, in joyful rapture. Grace so flooded the sanctuary that, to our ears, he sounded like an angel. George died two weeks later, in the presence of his wife and members of the community.
Imperfect love is good enough. That was a good church. It is closed now. It wouldn’t have impressed anyone with its spreadsheets, attendance, or preaching, but it loved Abba, our Parent. Sophia, the Holy Spirit, was active there, flowing through the parishioners, from one to another, inspiring them to be like Jesus and love their neighbor through thick and thin.
Some churches promise earth-shattering miracles that defy natural law, but that church kept its eyes open for small miracles, the kind that we too easily overlook. Its openness to small miracles produced them—warmed hearts, settled spirits, and courage in the face of death.
Churches are supposed to practice the universal, unconditional, celebratory agape of God— the unifying love that is our source, our sustenance, and our destiny. This belief may appear idealized, or even naive, since churches can’t actually attain these heights. Imperfect persons form imperfect institutions that express the love of God imperfectly.
Nevertheless, even in our imperfection, unreachable ideals serve a function. The ideal transforms the real because it gifts us with discontent, spurring us out of complacency and into possibility. The ideal tells us where we are and where we should go. Then, the ideal serves as the mark by which we measure our progress.
I write in full recognition that many people suffer from religious trauma syndrome (RTS), and that their RTS has been caused by very bad churches. Bad churches threaten their parishioners, even their youngest, with damnation for disobedience, censure for disagreement, shunning for leaving the faith, etc. Bad churches want control, and fear is their tool.
But there are good churches, too, whose practice is love. And the existence of bad churches doesn’t condemn the existence of good churches, any more than the existence of poison condemns the existence of medicine.
The perfectly loving church does not exist in any pure form. But any honest observer will recognize that there are many good churches of many different stripes that aspire to loving unity and do much good in the world. They seek to serve rather than control, foster rather than restrict, and heal rather than harm. And sometimes they work small miracles, which come to us like manna from heaven. (adapted from Jon Paul Sydnor, The Great Open Dance: A Progressive Christian Theology, pages 211-213)
*****
For further reading, please see:
Campbell, Ted A. The Sky Is Falling, the Church Is Dying, and Other False Alarms. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2015.
Oord, Thomas Jay, and Fuller, Tripp. God After Deconstruction. Idaho: SacraSage Press, 2024.
Who else would allow a really bad singer to sing with such gusto?
Week after week after week he sang, and they listened . . .Small miracles happen here. When I was in seminary and needed to earn some extra money, I preached regularly at a small Presbyterian church in north Philadelphia. It was a dying White church in a largely Black neighborhood with at most twenty attendees on any given Sunday, mainly elderly. Still, they conjured religious beauty.
George (name changed for privacy) sang in the church’s small choir and performed most solos. As a boy, George had a physically abusive father. To escape the abuse, George joined the army, which sent him into combat in Vietnam. Returning home, he suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder and spent years on the streets of Philadelphia in alcohol addiction. Through Alcoholics Anonymous he achieved sobriety, met a woman from the church, got married, and became a regular attendee.
Together, they never missed a Sunday. Although he was the church’s main soloist, George couldn’t sing. At the risk of being disrespectful, for which I apologize: George couldn’t carry a tune, and his voice was cracked by years of drinking and smoking. But George didn’t know this himself, and he never held back, praising God with full-throated gratitude. His cracked voice reminded the congregation that, in the words of Leonard Cohen, “There’s a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.”
No one complained about the quality of the music. The music director kept asking him to sing, and the congregation kept listening, in respectful attention, grateful that he was in recovery, grateful that he had married, grateful that he had found redemption. Their joy in George’s joy overwhelmed any discomfort with the performance.
George’s years of alcoholism caught up with him, and he was hospitalized with cirrhosis of the liver. Only 10 percent of his liver was still functioning, his body was too weak for a transplant, and the doctors gave him a few months to live. George returned home, jaundiced and out of breath. Naturally, the music director called and asked him to sing a solo for the congregation, of his own choosing.
George chose “How Great Thou Art.” We gathered one Sunday to watch a frail man, beaten by his father, scarred by war, and poisoned by alcohol, sing from his soul to the glory of God, in joyful rapture. Grace so flooded the sanctuary that, to our ears, he sounded like an angel. George died two weeks later, in the presence of his wife and members of the community.
Imperfect love is good enough. That was a good church. It is closed now. It wouldn’t have impressed anyone with its spreadsheets, attendance, or preaching, but it loved Abba, our Parent. Sophia, the Holy Spirit, was active there, flowing through the parishioners, from one to another, inspiring them to be like Jesus and love their neighbor through thick and thin.
Some churches promise earth-shattering miracles that defy natural law, but that church kept its eyes open for small miracles, the kind that we too easily overlook. Its openness to small miracles produced them—warmed hearts, settled spirits, and courage in the face of death.
Churches are supposed to practice the universal, unconditional, celebratory agape of God— the unifying love that is our source, our sustenance, and our destiny. This belief may appear idealized, or even naive, since churches can’t actually attain these heights. Imperfect persons form imperfect institutions that express the love of God imperfectly.
Nevertheless, even in our imperfection, unreachable ideals serve a function. The ideal transforms the real because it gifts us with discontent, spurring us out of complacency and into possibility. The ideal tells us where we are and where we should go. Then, the ideal serves as the mark by which we measure our progress.
I write in full recognition that many people suffer from religious trauma syndrome (RTS), and that their RTS has been caused by very bad churches. Bad churches threaten their parishioners, even their youngest, with damnation for disobedience, censure for disagreement, shunning for leaving the faith, etc. Bad churches want control, and fear is their tool.
But there are good churches, too, whose practice is love. And the existence of bad churches doesn’t condemn the existence of good churches, any more than the existence of poison condemns the existence of medicine.
The perfectly loving church does not exist in any pure form. But any honest observer will recognize that there are many good churches of many different stripes that aspire to loving unity and do much good in the world. They seek to serve rather than control, foster rather than restrict, and heal rather than harm. And sometimes they work small miracles, which come to us like manna from heaven. (adapted from Jon Paul Sydnor, The Great Open Dance: A Progressive Christian Theology, pages 211-213)
*****
For further reading, please see:
Campbell, Ted A. The Sky Is Falling, the Church Is Dying, and Other False Alarms. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2015.
Oord, Thomas Jay, and Fuller, Tripp. God After Deconstruction. Idaho: SacraSage Press, 2024.
March 29, 2026
What good is it to profess faith without practicing it? Such faith has no power to save. If any need clothes and have no food, and one of you says to them, “Goodbye and good luck. Stay warm and well-fed,” without giving them the bare necessities of life, then what good is this? So it is with faith. If good deeds don’t go with it, faith is dead. (James 2:14–17)
Active love extends our self into the all and allows the all into our self, so that the world’s joy and suffering are ours, and will remain so, until we have created the world imagined by Abba, preached by Jesus, and inspired by Sophia, a world of peace with justice—the kingdom of God.
The kingdom of God is not a fantasy; it is the destination that grants our lives destiny. As such, it is the fulfillment of Sophia’s promise: “I’ll teach you and show you the way you should walk; I will counsel you and keep watch over you” (Psalm 32:8). The kingdom of God articulates the divine imagination and moves us into a new realm of possibility. It is not the opposite of reality; it is the purpose of reality, challenging what is with what can be.
The Kingdom of God, which is the Reign of Love, allows us to imagine ourselves and others otherwise, seeing the oppressed liberated from their oppression and the oppressors liberated from their oppressing. By pointing elsewhere, it transforms the here and now. By presenting a vision of deliverance it spurs us to activity, because “when freedom is near the chains begin to chafe.”
The universe is an ocean. Shall we leave our spirit a thimble? Our hearts come alive when we create, and our hearts come alive when we love. Hence, the sacred life is creative love. Creative love does not seek out suffering, but it is willing to suffer to reduce suffering.
The creative, loving life offers more abundance than ease. A seven-year-old in a sandbox, playing alone with their toys, can be perfectly happy. But if this state were the best that life offered, then life would be truly tragic. There is more available: commitment, risk, meaning, purpose, challenge, and growth all produce joy.
Joy surges up from an unknown depth of self that we share with the unknown depth of other selves, which we all share with the unknown depth of the divine selves. Granted this sacred potential, we cannot be satisfied with a superficial happiness that sugarcoats our consciousness. We must become who God has invited us to become or admit that we have denied our own nature. We must risk a generous love, in hope.
Thankfully, we do so in the assurance of God’s nurturing love, which guides us into new life. Jesus declares: “If you wish to follow me, you must deny yourself, pick up the instrument of your death, and begin to follow in my footsteps. If you would save your life, you will lose it; but if you would lose your life for my sake, you will find it” (Matthew 16:24–25). (adapted from Jon Paul Sydnor, The Great Open Dance: A Progressive Christian Theology, pages 209-210)
*****
For further reading, please see:
Jurgen Moltmann. The Crucified God: The Cross of Christ as the Foundation and Criticism of Christian Theology. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993.
Sobrino, Jon. Jesus the Liberator: A Historical-Theological Reading of Jesus of Nazareth. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1993.
God is love. Love is something you do.
Healing works toward the kingdom. God is love, and love is something you do. This observation dovetails with our observation that God is activity, more verb than noun, and we are made in the image of God. When we participate in loving activity, we are participating in God:What good is it to profess faith without practicing it? Such faith has no power to save. If any need clothes and have no food, and one of you says to them, “Goodbye and good luck. Stay warm and well-fed,” without giving them the bare necessities of life, then what good is this? So it is with faith. If good deeds don’t go with it, faith is dead. (James 2:14–17)
Active love extends our self into the all and allows the all into our self, so that the world’s joy and suffering are ours, and will remain so, until we have created the world imagined by Abba, preached by Jesus, and inspired by Sophia, a world of peace with justice—the kingdom of God.
The kingdom of God is not a fantasy; it is the destination that grants our lives destiny. As such, it is the fulfillment of Sophia’s promise: “I’ll teach you and show you the way you should walk; I will counsel you and keep watch over you” (Psalm 32:8). The kingdom of God articulates the divine imagination and moves us into a new realm of possibility. It is not the opposite of reality; it is the purpose of reality, challenging what is with what can be.
The Kingdom of God, which is the Reign of Love, allows us to imagine ourselves and others otherwise, seeing the oppressed liberated from their oppression and the oppressors liberated from their oppressing. By pointing elsewhere, it transforms the here and now. By presenting a vision of deliverance it spurs us to activity, because “when freedom is near the chains begin to chafe.”
The universe is an ocean. Shall we leave our spirit a thimble? Our hearts come alive when we create, and our hearts come alive when we love. Hence, the sacred life is creative love. Creative love does not seek out suffering, but it is willing to suffer to reduce suffering.
The creative, loving life offers more abundance than ease. A seven-year-old in a sandbox, playing alone with their toys, can be perfectly happy. But if this state were the best that life offered, then life would be truly tragic. There is more available: commitment, risk, meaning, purpose, challenge, and growth all produce joy.
Joy surges up from an unknown depth of self that we share with the unknown depth of other selves, which we all share with the unknown depth of the divine selves. Granted this sacred potential, we cannot be satisfied with a superficial happiness that sugarcoats our consciousness. We must become who God has invited us to become or admit that we have denied our own nature. We must risk a generous love, in hope.
Thankfully, we do so in the assurance of God’s nurturing love, which guides us into new life. Jesus declares: “If you wish to follow me, you must deny yourself, pick up the instrument of your death, and begin to follow in my footsteps. If you would save your life, you will lose it; but if you would lose your life for my sake, you will find it” (Matthew 16:24–25). (adapted from Jon Paul Sydnor, The Great Open Dance: A Progressive Christian Theology, pages 209-210)
*****
For further reading, please see:
Jurgen Moltmann. The Crucified God: The Cross of Christ as the Foundation and Criticism of Christian Theology. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993.
Sobrino, Jon. Jesus the Liberator: A Historical-Theological Reading of Jesus of Nazareth. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1993.
March 23, 2026
John Makransky, a Lama in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, aptly describes the experience of life available to us. We tend to neglect this resource, especially in tribulation:
According to Makransky, we need unobstructed eyes that see thankfully, eyes that recognize the humbling power of Paul’s question: “What do you have that you didn’t receive?” (1 Corinthians 4 ).
Recognizing God’s generosity invites us into the love of life. Fancying ourselves wiser than the divine Architect, we tend to compare the universe as it is with the universe as we would make it. We imagine an easier universe with less suffering, or we imagine a world in which we are more talented and powerful. Then we crave that world. Thus, we end up in a transactional relationship with life, keeping score and analyzing the data according to our own concept of fairness. We conclude that we’ve gotten the short end of the stick and God should put things right. If God doesn’t, then we will.
We should not compare the present universe with our fantasies about a more perfect universe, which is always a universe in which we are personally better off. Instead, we should compare the present universe with the other real possibility, the true option that God overcame for us—the option of nothingness itself. Without the Creator there would be nothing but cold, dark silence.
Now, having considered our rescue from nonexistence, we develop sheer awe at existence itself. We become graced with gratitude, which frees us from the score-keeping, transactional attitude that always leaves us embittered. Having received eyes to see, we can finally understand Iris Murdoch’s observation that “people from a planet without flowers would think we must be mad with joy the whole time to have such things about us.”
Faith recognizes reality as a gift and practices gratitude toward the Giver. We do not become grateful because we are joyful; we become joyful because we are grateful. “As I take from the Infinite, so I give infinitely,” declares E. Stanley Jones. This statement is surely aspirational. Our resources are finite, and finitude that gives infinitely depletes itself and can help no one. But the sentiment opens our hands, which are cramped from clinging, which have forgotten how to give and receive.
Jesus confirms this truth when he declares that that life cannot be hoarded: “Sell what you own and give money to the poor. Make purses for yourselves that do not wear out, unfailing treasures in heaven, where no thief comes and no moth destroys. For wherever your treasure is, that’s where your heart will be” (Luke 12:33).
Joy surpasses happiness. Unfortunately, in the world of religion, overpromising is more marketable than underpromising. It is also fundamentally dishonest. The Bible, being honest, refuses to overpromise. Paul writes paradoxically of the early Christian communities: “We are afflicted in every way possible, but we are not crushed; we are full of doubts, but we never despair. We are persecuted, but never abandoned; we are struck down, but never destroyed. Continually we carry about in our bodies the death of Jesus, so that in our bodies the life of Jesus may also be revealed” (2 Corinthians 4:8–10).
Yet even in the midst of these difficulties Paul counsels celebration: “Rejoice in the Savior always. I say it again: Rejoice!” (Philemon 4:4). For Paul, the surest sign of spiritual transformation is joy. Joy is not happiness. Joy is an abiding disposition; happiness is a transitory emotion. Joy is what we experience caring for orphans; happiness is what we experience in Disneyland.
The two aspects of life are not in competition. We need both, but they are very different. Happiness can be gained without vulnerability. Multibillionaires who compete with one another based on the size of their stock portfolio experience the surge of self that comes with increased riches, prestige, and power. This intoxicating experience is pleasurable and does not necessitate any openness to the larger world’s suffering. Indeed, withdrawal into the acquisitive self can render that self immune to the suffering of others. Increased pleasure with decreased vulnerability can produce superficial happiness. Alas, only toxins produce such intoxication.
Joy is a deeper, more abiding experience that necessitates vulnerability to the world at large. In happiness, the self experiences the pleasures of the self. There is nothing wrong with that because the self too deserves to be cared for. But in joy, the self discerns that the world is fundamentally beautiful and good. Yet, for this beauty and goodness to flow inward the self must become open to the world. The self must put itself at risk. Hence, the experience of joy leaves us at the mercy of tragedy, and tragedy can be merciless—as the crucifixion testifies. Nevertheless, joy senses an underlying grace beneath the play of laughter and tears, and the eventual triumph of laughter—as the resurrection testifies. (adapted from Jon Paul Sydnor, The Great Open Dance: A Progressive Christian Theology, pages 207-209)
*****
For further reading, please see:
Makransky, John. Awakening through Love: Unveiling Your Deepest Goodness. Somerville, MA: Wisdom, 2007.
Murdoch, Iris. A Fairly Honourable Defeat. Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics. New York: Penguin, 2001.
This is no time to overlook joy: when in resistance, we have to celebrate all that is good
Even today, celebration is an obligation. Today, if you are compassionate, reasonable, or civil, you live in a state of daily disturbance. We are saturated in cruel policies, idiotic statements, and juvenile insults, all coming from the halls of highest power. Exhausted by the cascade of stupidity, many of us are struggling with feelings of despair. But maybe that is precisely why we need to celebrate. Because celebration is an act of resistance.John Makransky, a Lama in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, aptly describes the experience of life available to us. We tend to neglect this resource, especially in tribulation:
Most of us just haven’t learned to pay much attention to the countless moments of love, kindness, and care that surround us each day: a child at the store reaching for her mother’s hand, an elderly stranger at the park who smiles upon a young family, a grocery clerk who beams at you as she hands you your change.
According to Makransky, we need unobstructed eyes that see thankfully, eyes that recognize the humbling power of Paul’s question: “What do you have that you didn’t receive?” (1 Corinthians 4
).
Recognizing God’s generosity invites us into the love of life. Fancying ourselves wiser than the divine Architect, we tend to compare the universe as it is with the universe as we would make it. We imagine an easier universe with less suffering, or we imagine a world in which we are more talented and powerful. Then we crave that world. Thus, we end up in a transactional relationship with life, keeping score and analyzing the data according to our own concept of fairness. We conclude that we’ve gotten the short end of the stick and God should put things right. If God doesn’t, then we will.
We should not compare the present universe with our fantasies about a more perfect universe, which is always a universe in which we are personally better off. Instead, we should compare the present universe with the other real possibility, the true option that God overcame for us—the option of nothingness itself. Without the Creator there would be nothing but cold, dark silence.
Now, having considered our rescue from nonexistence, we develop sheer awe at existence itself. We become graced with gratitude, which frees us from the score-keeping, transactional attitude that always leaves us embittered. Having received eyes to see, we can finally understand Iris Murdoch’s observation that “people from a planet without flowers would think we must be mad with joy the whole time to have such things about us.”
Faith recognizes reality as a gift and practices gratitude toward the Giver. We do not become grateful because we are joyful; we become joyful because we are grateful. “As I take from the Infinite, so I give infinitely,” declares E. Stanley Jones. This statement is surely aspirational. Our resources are finite, and finitude that gives infinitely depletes itself and can help no one. But the sentiment opens our hands, which are cramped from clinging, which have forgotten how to give and receive.
Jesus confirms this truth when he declares that that life cannot be hoarded: “Sell what you own and give money to the poor. Make purses for yourselves that do not wear out, unfailing treasures in heaven, where no thief comes and no moth destroys. For wherever your treasure is, that’s where your heart will be” (Luke 12:33).
Joy surpasses happiness. Unfortunately, in the world of religion, overpromising is more marketable than underpromising. It is also fundamentally dishonest. The Bible, being honest, refuses to overpromise. Paul writes paradoxically of the early Christian communities: “We are afflicted in every way possible, but we are not crushed; we are full of doubts, but we never despair. We are persecuted, but never abandoned; we are struck down, but never destroyed. Continually we carry about in our bodies the death of Jesus, so that in our bodies the life of Jesus may also be revealed” (2 Corinthians 4:8–10).
Yet even in the midst of these difficulties Paul counsels celebration: “Rejoice in the Savior always. I say it again: Rejoice!” (Philemon 4:4). For Paul, the surest sign of spiritual transformation is joy. Joy is not happiness. Joy is an abiding disposition; happiness is a transitory emotion. Joy is what we experience caring for orphans; happiness is what we experience in Disneyland.
The two aspects of life are not in competition. We need both, but they are very different. Happiness can be gained without vulnerability. Multibillionaires who compete with one another based on the size of their stock portfolio experience the surge of self that comes with increased riches, prestige, and power. This intoxicating experience is pleasurable and does not necessitate any openness to the larger world’s suffering. Indeed, withdrawal into the acquisitive self can render that self immune to the suffering of others. Increased pleasure with decreased vulnerability can produce superficial happiness. Alas, only toxins produce such intoxication.
Joy is a deeper, more abiding experience that necessitates vulnerability to the world at large. In happiness, the self experiences the pleasures of the self. There is nothing wrong with that because the self too deserves to be cared for. But in joy, the self discerns that the world is fundamentally beautiful and good. Yet, for this beauty and goodness to flow inward the self must become open to the world. The self must put itself at risk. Hence, the experience of joy leaves us at the mercy of tragedy, and tragedy can be merciless—as the crucifixion testifies. Nevertheless, joy senses an underlying grace beneath the play of laughter and tears, and the eventual triumph of laughter—as the resurrection testifies. (adapted from Jon Paul Sydnor, The Great Open Dance: A Progressive Christian Theology, pages 207-209)
*****
For further reading, please see:
Makransky, John. Awakening through Love: Unveiling Your Deepest Goodness. Somerville, MA: Wisdom, 2007.
Murdoch, Iris. A Fairly Honourable Defeat. Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics. New York: Penguin, 2001.
March 11, 2026
How can we say Yes to life in our morally disturbing times? If you are paying attention, then you may feel hopeless right now, especially if you are an American. Even our spirits feel tired, and you may feel that your religion is letting you down. Active participation in life without fear or dismay is the everlasting and unachievable dream of faith. We seek to practice engagement without anxiety, compassion without disturbance, and presence without agitation, yet somehow we always seem to find ourselves anxious, disturbed, and agitated.
We are in good company. Jesus also lived under a despotic empire, and the writers of the Gospels are very honest about his anxiety, disturbance, and agitation. Jesus slung anger at hypocrites (Matthew 23), was troubled by the grief of others (John 11:33), wept over the death of a friend (John 11:35), lamented the impending destruction of Jerusalem (Luke 19:41–44), got tired and needed rest (Mark 6:31), and sweat blood in anticipation of his crucifixion (Luke 22:44).
Jesus did not model detached transcendence. He modeled steadfast faithfulness, the ḥesed or “loving kindness” of God. “It is the propensity of religion to avoid, precisely, suffering: to have light without darkness, vision without trust, hope without an ongoing dialogue with despair—in short, Easter without Good Friday,” writes Douglas John Hall. Hall reminds us that Abba did not create, Jesus did not enter, and Sophia has not promised any spiritual absolutes of pure joy, perfect peace, or abiding satisfaction. We may yearn for such a universe, but God denies it to us, because only mutually amplifying contrasts produce existential abundance. Anything that exists independently exists insufficiently.
In this interrelated worldview, joy, suffering, and love are inseparable. They are triune, like the three points that form a triangle. Abba declares, “I form light and create darkness, I make peace and create evil; I am YHWH, who does all these things” (Isaiah 45 ). Metaphysical difference fosters experiential bounty, even as negative qualities cause tribulation.
God prioritizes challenge and development over ease and comfort because God wants our lives to be meaning-laden, not comfort-stultified. Jesus models ḥesed (steadfast mercy) within the fluctuating contrasts of existence, revealing that although we are never perfectly safe, we are always perfectly loved.
Now, the Holy Spirit Sophia invites us into the boldness of the beloved, embracing the multiplicity of existence. Life is beautiful, difficult, and thrilling. Life asks us how we will respond to its extravagance, and the way we live our lives is the answer. Sophia invites and empowers us to respond in the affirmative, to say Yes to both the pleasure and the pain, to both the joy and the suffering.
Too often—confused, hurt, or afraid—we say No to the offered bounty. Historically, Jesus is the inexhaustible Yes to our existential situation, hence the perfect expression of the image of God within the universe. Paul writes:
Jesus is the Amen, the Yes, because he is the faithful and true witness, the divine participant in creation whose life reverberates with the purpose of creation (Revelations 3:14). Jesus fulfills the human calling to say Amen to life as it is, to heed the profound whispers of Sophia, to love Abba even in the midst of futility and defeat.
To the extent that we can share in Jesus’s Yes, to that extent will we find his sacred passion in our own lives. This Jesus is water to the desert, the faithful one who, as Leonardo Boff writes, “lives to live, in absolute spontaneity, in the self-evident meaning of light that shines to shine, clear spring water that gushes to gush, the bird that sings to sing.” The example of Jesus, coupled with the inspiration of Sophia, invites us into an existential transformation that we experience viscerally, that converts the totality of heart, body, and mind. The sacred Yes reinterprets our experiences, reorganizes our thinking, revalues our values, and changes our overall affect. We do not merely revise our beliefs or tinker with old rituals or break old habits. We don’t just rearrange the furniture; we access a new way of being alive, a new experience of the cosmos as holy. (adapted from Jon Paul Sydnor, The Great Open Dance: A Progressive Christian Theology, pages 205–207)
*****
For further reading, please see:
Boff, Leonardo. Trinity and Society. Translated by Paul Burns. 1988. Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 1988.
Hall, Douglas John. God and Human Suffering: An Exercise in the Theology of the Cross. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1987.
Oord, Thomas Jay. God Can't: How to Believe in God and Love After Abuse, Tragedy, and Other Evils. Idaho: SacraSage Press, 2019.
Christ is the sacred Yes within the cosmos
In turbulent times, we must affirm both joy and suffering (then work for joy)How can we say Yes to life in our morally disturbing times? If you are paying attention, then you may feel hopeless right now, especially if you are an American. Even our spirits feel tired, and you may feel that your religion is letting you down. Active participation in life without fear or dismay is the everlasting and unachievable dream of faith. We seek to practice engagement without anxiety, compassion without disturbance, and presence without agitation, yet somehow we always seem to find ourselves anxious, disturbed, and agitated.
We are in good company. Jesus also lived under a despotic empire, and the writers of the Gospels are very honest about his anxiety, disturbance, and agitation. Jesus slung anger at hypocrites (Matthew 23), was troubled by the grief of others (John 11:33), wept over the death of a friend (John 11:35), lamented the impending destruction of Jerusalem (Luke 19:41–44), got tired and needed rest (Mark 6:31), and sweat blood in anticipation of his crucifixion (Luke 22:44).
Jesus did not model detached transcendence. He modeled steadfast faithfulness, the ḥesed or “loving kindness” of God. “It is the propensity of religion to avoid, precisely, suffering: to have light without darkness, vision without trust, hope without an ongoing dialogue with despair—in short, Easter without Good Friday,” writes Douglas John Hall. Hall reminds us that Abba did not create, Jesus did not enter, and Sophia has not promised any spiritual absolutes of pure joy, perfect peace, or abiding satisfaction. We may yearn for such a universe, but God denies it to us, because only mutually amplifying contrasts produce existential abundance. Anything that exists independently exists insufficiently.
In this interrelated worldview, joy, suffering, and love are inseparable. They are triune, like the three points that form a triangle. Abba declares, “I form light and create darkness, I make peace and create evil; I am YHWH, who does all these things” (Isaiah 45
). Metaphysical difference fosters experiential bounty, even as negative qualities cause tribulation.
God prioritizes challenge and development over ease and comfort because God wants our lives to be meaning-laden, not comfort-stultified. Jesus models ḥesed (steadfast mercy) within the fluctuating contrasts of existence, revealing that although we are never perfectly safe, we are always perfectly loved.
Now, the Holy Spirit Sophia invites us into the boldness of the beloved, embracing the multiplicity of existence. Life is beautiful, difficult, and thrilling. Life asks us how we will respond to its extravagance, and the way we live our lives is the answer. Sophia invites and empowers us to respond in the affirmative, to say Yes to both the pleasure and the pain, to both the joy and the suffering.
Too often—confused, hurt, or afraid—we say No to the offered bounty. Historically, Jesus is the inexhaustible Yes to our existential situation, hence the perfect expression of the image of God within the universe. Paul writes:
Don’t think I make my plans with ordinary human motives so that I say “Yes, yes,” then in the same breath, “No, no”! As sure as God is faithful, I declare that my word to you is not “yes” one minute and “no” the next. Jesus Christ, whom Silvanus, Timothy and I preached to you as the Only Begotten of God, was not alternately “yes” and “no”; Jesus is never anything but “yes.” No matter how many promises God has made, they are “yes” in Christ. (2 Corinthians 1:17–20a)
Jesus is the Amen, the Yes, because he is the faithful and true witness, the divine participant in creation whose life reverberates with the purpose of creation (Revelations 3:14). Jesus fulfills the human calling to say Amen to life as it is, to heed the profound whispers of Sophia, to love Abba even in the midst of futility and defeat.
To the extent that we can share in Jesus’s Yes, to that extent will we find his sacred passion in our own lives. This Jesus is water to the desert, the faithful one who, as Leonardo Boff writes, “lives to live, in absolute spontaneity, in the self-evident meaning of light that shines to shine, clear spring water that gushes to gush, the bird that sings to sing.” The example of Jesus, coupled with the inspiration of Sophia, invites us into an existential transformation that we experience viscerally, that converts the totality of heart, body, and mind. The sacred Yes reinterprets our experiences, reorganizes our thinking, revalues our values, and changes our overall affect. We do not merely revise our beliefs or tinker with old rituals or break old habits. We don’t just rearrange the furniture; we access a new way of being alive, a new experience of the cosmos as holy. (adapted from Jon Paul Sydnor, The Great Open Dance: A Progressive Christian Theology, pages 205–207)
*****
For further reading, please see:
Boff, Leonardo. Trinity and Society. Translated by Paul Burns. 1988. Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 1988.
Hall, Douglas John. God and Human Suffering: An Exercise in the Theology of the Cross. Minneapolis: Fortress, 1987.
Oord, Thomas Jay. God Can't: How to Believe in God and Love After Abuse, Tragedy, and Other Evils. Idaho: SacraSage Press, 2019.
February 25, 2026
Hatred is safer than love, despair is safer than hope, and fear is safer than faith; hence their attractiveness. But Jesus does not call us to safety; Jesus calls us to life. Life is love in the shadow of death, and love in the shadow of death is love that defeats death. For this reason we can find God everywhere, even in “thick darkness” (Exodus 20:21), even in the tomb.
The symbol of love defeating death is the resurrection. Jesus did not rise from the dead; Jesus was raised from the dead by Trinitarian love, by the agapic communion of three persons. His resurrection was not the act of an individual; it was an act of community. It was communion celebrating itself and declaring victory over division.
To the extent that the “hero” is an individual who acts alone, without need of assistance, Christ is no hero. Were he such, then he would contribute to the forces of individualization and separation. But as the perfectly loving person who was crucified, entombed, and resurrected, he becomes Savior, opening us to the power of sacred fellowship, the holy place where we will find healing.
The power of God triumphs by means of the power of God, not by means of the power of this world. The Romans who crucified Jesus believed in the power of this world, which is the power of godless violence. Throughout the empire, many awaited the messiah, or “anointed one.” Previous recipients of this exalted title were Aaron, the high priest of Israel (Sirach 45:15); Saul, the first king of Israel (1 Samuel 24:10); and Cyrus, the Persian emperor who allowed the Jews to rebuild their temple (Isaiah 45:1). Given this pedigree, people naturally expected wealth, power, and conquest of their savior. They wanted a messiah who trafficked in absolutes, who would establish absolute dominion, thereby resolving all the ambiguities of history. They got no such magnificence. Instead, they got an authentic revelation of God as love, the image of all-forgiving meekness who prays for enemies and tormentors. They got reconciliation between persons, which is reconciliation with God.
God makes a universe that makes itself, that evolves from simplicity to complexity, toward God. Likewise, God makes persons who make themselves. We have the freedom to live plumb with the divinely sustained cosmos or against it. When choosing greed, hatred, and power over generosity, love, and community, we choose against God. The crucifixion symbolizes our freedom to make this choice, a freedom that makes our choice for God meaningful. Through the cross, inhumanity believed that it could defeat humanity. But the Spirit of the universe could not be defeated by the spirit against the universe. Hatred cannot defeat love, and division cannot defeat communion. The will of the godless cannot override the will of God, which is to life in its fullness.
In a context in which suffering is recognized as a universal human constant, the cross is an assurance. Jesus is God among the suffering; hence, Jesus is God among us. Through the divine identification with our condition, we receive assurance that God is with us in our affliction, denying our affliction the final word. God grants finality instead to Jesus, the Word of God, the Beginning from which all things come and the End for which all things yearn. Kent Annan writes that, if we trust the Christian story, “We don’t have to minimize either suffering or uncertainty. Our love for truth can help protect us from ourselves and from worshiping an untrue god that can’t survive the trials of this world. Let our faith too be nailed regularly to the cross of this world. Any faith that dies there was dead to begin with. What is resurrected is Life.”
Resurrection to life leaves us among the tensions of experience. Jesus was resurrected to us, not away from us. Resurrection is into embodied life, not a spiritual heaven. We can trust that, having tasted death, Jesus savored life all the more. He arose to hear the sounds of nature, smell life in the soil, and feel the warmth of the sun on his face. All these sensations must have felt wonderfully extravagant after three days in the tomb. He could once again feel the Infinite Creative Benevolence, not as a mountaintop revelation, but in the moment-by-moment experience of everyday life.
Resurrection is transformation. It is not just a historical event that we remember; it is an eternal truth that we participate in. The Holy Spirit, Sophia, now invites us to become resurrection to one another. We are to risk entry into one another’s lives, as Jesus entered our world. We are to walk in one another’s troubles, as Jesus walked in ours. And we are to raise each other up, as God raised Jesus. Such love is laborious, but labor is the height of creativity, and creative love fulfills the image of God within us. (adapted from Jon Paul Sydnor, The Great Open Dance: A Progressive Christian Theology, pages 202–205)
*****
For further reading, please see:
Annan, Kent. After Shock: Searching for Honest Faith When Your World Is Shaken. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2011.
Bulgakov, Sergeĭ Nikolaevich. Churchly Joy: Orthodox Devotions for the Church Year. Translated by Boris Jakim. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008.
Madigan, Kevin J., and Jon D. Levenson. Resurrection: The Power of God for Christians and Jews. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009.
God Rejects Crucifixion Through Resurrection: Let us become resurrection to one another
God’s absolute rejection of the crucifixion expresses itself in the resurrection. “There is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends,” declares Jesus (John 15:13). In this declaration, Jesus associates love with death because Jesus well knows that love is perilous.Hatred is safer than love, despair is safer than hope, and fear is safer than faith; hence their attractiveness. But Jesus does not call us to safety; Jesus calls us to life. Life is love in the shadow of death, and love in the shadow of death is love that defeats death. For this reason we can find God everywhere, even in “thick darkness” (Exodus 20:21), even in the tomb.
The symbol of love defeating death is the resurrection. Jesus did not rise from the dead; Jesus was raised from the dead by Trinitarian love, by the agapic communion of three persons. His resurrection was not the act of an individual; it was an act of community. It was communion celebrating itself and declaring victory over division.
To the extent that the “hero” is an individual who acts alone, without need of assistance, Christ is no hero. Were he such, then he would contribute to the forces of individualization and separation. But as the perfectly loving person who was crucified, entombed, and resurrected, he becomes Savior, opening us to the power of sacred fellowship, the holy place where we will find healing.
The power of God triumphs by means of the power of God, not by means of the power of this world. The Romans who crucified Jesus believed in the power of this world, which is the power of godless violence. Throughout the empire, many awaited the messiah, or “anointed one.” Previous recipients of this exalted title were Aaron, the high priest of Israel (Sirach 45:15); Saul, the first king of Israel (1 Samuel 24:10); and Cyrus, the Persian emperor who allowed the Jews to rebuild their temple (Isaiah 45:1). Given this pedigree, people naturally expected wealth, power, and conquest of their savior. They wanted a messiah who trafficked in absolutes, who would establish absolute dominion, thereby resolving all the ambiguities of history. They got no such magnificence. Instead, they got an authentic revelation of God as love, the image of all-forgiving meekness who prays for enemies and tormentors. They got reconciliation between persons, which is reconciliation with God.
God makes a universe that makes itself, that evolves from simplicity to complexity, toward God. Likewise, God makes persons who make themselves. We have the freedom to live plumb with the divinely sustained cosmos or against it. When choosing greed, hatred, and power over generosity, love, and community, we choose against God. The crucifixion symbolizes our freedom to make this choice, a freedom that makes our choice for God meaningful. Through the cross, inhumanity believed that it could defeat humanity. But the Spirit of the universe could not be defeated by the spirit against the universe. Hatred cannot defeat love, and division cannot defeat communion. The will of the godless cannot override the will of God, which is to life in its fullness.
In a context in which suffering is recognized as a universal human constant, the cross is an assurance. Jesus is God among the suffering; hence, Jesus is God among us. Through the divine identification with our condition, we receive assurance that God is with us in our affliction, denying our affliction the final word. God grants finality instead to Jesus, the Word of God, the Beginning from which all things come and the End for which all things yearn. Kent Annan writes that, if we trust the Christian story, “We don’t have to minimize either suffering or uncertainty. Our love for truth can help protect us from ourselves and from worshiping an untrue god that can’t survive the trials of this world. Let our faith too be nailed regularly to the cross of this world. Any faith that dies there was dead to begin with. What is resurrected is Life.”
Resurrection to life leaves us among the tensions of experience. Jesus was resurrected to us, not away from us. Resurrection is into embodied life, not a spiritual heaven. We can trust that, having tasted death, Jesus savored life all the more. He arose to hear the sounds of nature, smell life in the soil, and feel the warmth of the sun on his face. All these sensations must have felt wonderfully extravagant after three days in the tomb. He could once again feel the Infinite Creative Benevolence, not as a mountaintop revelation, but in the moment-by-moment experience of everyday life.
Resurrection is transformation. It is not just a historical event that we remember; it is an eternal truth that we participate in. The Holy Spirit, Sophia, now invites us to become resurrection to one another. We are to risk entry into one another’s lives, as Jesus entered our world. We are to walk in one another’s troubles, as Jesus walked in ours. And we are to raise each other up, as God raised Jesus. Such love is laborious, but labor is the height of creativity, and creative love fulfills the image of God within us. (adapted from Jon Paul Sydnor, The Great Open Dance: A Progressive Christian Theology, pages 202–205)
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For further reading, please see:
Annan, Kent. After Shock: Searching for Honest Faith When Your World Is Shaken. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2011.
Bulgakov, Sergeĭ Nikolaevich. Churchly Joy: Orthodox Devotions for the Church Year. Translated by Boris Jakim. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008.
Madigan, Kevin J., and Jon D. Levenson. Resurrection: The Power of God for Christians and Jews. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009.
Profile Information
Name: Jon Paul SydnorGender: Male
Hometown: Boston, Massachusetts
Home country: USA
Current location: Boston
Member since: Wed Oct 2, 2024, 03:02 PM
Number of posts: 161