On Pop Theology Podcast: Episode 57 - An Interview w/ Richard Beck

by Ben Howard

This week on the podcast I talk with blogger, author, and psychologist Richard Beck. They discuss the Church of Christ, the nature of psychology and theology, the label "progressive" and the importance of human experience. We'll also discuss Beck's new book The Slavery of Death, Eastern Orthodox theology and the concept of kenosis.

You can find Richard's books on Amazon and find more of his writing at Experimental Theology.

You can download the podcast by clicking here. Or you can subscribe to the podcast by searching "On Pop Theology" in the iTunes music store. If you like the show, please rate and review us on iTunes. It's the only way to prove to my mom that I have friends.

Finally, if you'd like to stream the podcast, you can do that here: 

   

Peace,
Ben 

You can follow On Pop Theology on Twitter @OnPopTheology or like us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/OnPopTheology. If you'd like to support what we do, you can donate via the button on the right of the screen.

You might also like:

• On Pop Theology Podcast: Episode 56 - Jesus Is Better Than You Imagined w/ Jonathan Merritt
• On Pop Theology Podcast: Episode 55 - Villainous Villainy
• On Pop Theology Podcast: Episode 54 - Leviticus, An Interview w/ Baruch Levine

I Need You To Kill Me

by Justin McRoberts

Nothing curbs the appetite of my fierce personal preferences or consumerist instincts like falling in love with someone else. Doing so means entering the comic tragedy of living with, caring about, and wanting the best for someone who has their own set of appetites and preferences. In this spirit, I believe that life together, in committed community, provides the most viable antidote for the consumerism with which I am grown so fatally sick. That I will die is a foregone conclusion. But the character and nature of my death is exactly what the Christian story aims to redeem. There are better, more beautiful, truer deaths, the pursuit of which, in my estimation, determines the quality of life I lead.

I want to die well. I need you to kill me.

Dying to myself ends up being a far less individualistic discipline than I had imagined, as John’s oft quoted aphorism makes clear. “He must increase, but I must decrease” presupposes another person’s presence and role. I had generally thought of the practice of “dying to myself” as an endeavor of isolation, like Thomas Merton or Carlo Carretto, hidden away in a cave, high on a cliff-side, eating dust and stale bread until I’ve sufficiently starved my selfish desires away. But that’s not been my practical experience. The most powerful impetus for my self-denial has, instead, almost always been the desire to make room for those I’m given to as Family, those with whom I follow and worship Jesus. Often, I want blessed goodness for those I love more than I want it for myself. Seeking it for them has frequently meant putting my needs, tastes and preferences aside… and when I have been lucky, it was long enough to see just how small and petty they were.

And sometimes, that moment of clear vision grants me wisdom enough to leave those tastes and preferences at my periphery…. further from the core of my own identity… making more room in me for the blessed goodness I want for you. Help me displace them. I need you to kill me that I might live again.

Strangely, many of my best efforts to snuff-out my consumeristic impulses become simply more nuanced forms of consumerism. I strive for self improvement through the belief in self reliance - and I end up chasing after the latest, best, most moving version of my own faith. On the other hand, nothing has been as effective or (dare I use the word) authentic as dying to myself in order to make room for you.

My politics.
My theology. (and yes, I’m suggesting that personal preference plays a significant role in the development of my theology)
My sexuality.

…all become secondary aspects of my person.

You are more important than my politics.
You are more important than my theology.
You are more important than my sexuality.

“The more genuine and the deeper our community becomes,” writes Bonhoeffer “the more will everything else between us recede, the more clearly and purely will Jesus Christ and His work become the one and only thing that is vital between us.” - Life Together

I need you to kill me that I might live again, in and for Christ, with and for you, and in loving, hospitable pursuit of those who have been unable to find a place for themselves in the Kingdom.

A few years ago, reflecting on this same principle and practice, I became keenly thankful for the central role the eucharist has played in church life. As part of a longer piece, I wrote this:

“I spend a good deal of my social energy trying to surround myself with a tribe of people more reflective of my tastes and preferences. Then, at the communion table, Jesus asks me to do something dramatically different: deny my expectations, my tastes and my preferences and receive into my life and family anyone God gives me to.”

And still, it is true. I want to live well. I need you to kill me.

Justin McRoberts is a singer, songwriter, blogger, pastor and teacher living in San Francisco He is also the mind behind the CMYK Project. You can follow him on Twitter @justinmcroberts and find more information about his other endeavors here.

You can follow On Pop Theology on Twitter @OnPopTheology or like us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/OnPopTheology. If you'd like to support what we do, you can donate via the button on the right of the screen.

Image Credits:
All photos by Lars Hammar 
  

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Einstein: A Tale of Cats and Eschatology

by JaneAnn Kenney

Now, I’m not one of those Left Behind sort of eschatology nuts, although not having read the books or watched any movies (are those movies out yet, Nic Cage?), I don’t suppose I can say for certain. I am pretty certain though. In any case, I’m not a Chicken Little or anything. What I can say about eschatology is that sometimes in the now we get glimpses of the not-yet. These glimpses fascinate me and fill me with hope, and often with tears. One such glimpse was given to me by a very old man and a cat.

Whether consciously or not, I have avoided writing about cats. I do not think I’m a crazy cat lady in the making, but I admit that my sister and I have a plan for our widowed days. This plan alternatively involves hiding neighborhood baseballs found in our yard in the dark recesses of our old house and forbidding their young owners into our yard, or else inviting the ball players onto the porch for freshly-baked cookies. The non-negotiable in either scenario is the cats. We both adore them—for entertainment value, for snuggle value (when they so decide), for not having to walk them or take them outside in a manner akin to the Postal Service’s sun, rain, or snow policy value.

I’ve avoided writing about them for what I think are now obvious reasons. It gets a little intense. Since I was born, there has not been a time when my family did not own at least one kitty, and most of the time we’ve had at least two around. Needless to say, we have all kinds of stories about the critters. However, I’ll only tell one, and then I’ll give you my pithy proverb, and then I’ll be through, at which point you can decide whether I am a crazy cat lady (but not before, please).

Our cat Einstein was the proverbial scaredy cat. Mom always said he was born near a big, mean dog under a porch, but now that I’m older and wiser, I suspect he was born inside a meth house (this was West Virginia, after all; Go ‘Eers!). In any case, he spent most of his life afraid. I think that my energetic nature was terrifying to him, being rather reminiscent of his chaotic kittenhood, which is why instead of being my kitty, he adopted my brother, Scott, as his human.

He became a big, beautiful cat, all dark stripes with white accents at his feet, the tip of his tail, and belly. Though never fat, he was a solid cat. Unlike fluffy cats who sometimes look quite heavy, Einstein looked deceptively light. He was built. As a result, it was ironic that everything terrified him. Any natural predators to be found would have to think twice about such a heavy beast, and—let’s be honest—we weren’t in the wild parts of West Virginia, i.e., no bear spottings for days on end.

Life was sometimes hard for Einstein. He didn’t much like other cats and got into the habit of spraying pee inside the house whenever new cats arrived, marking his territory. This made him an outdoor cat. Following a family move, he hid underneath our new clawfoot tub for three days. (We both miss that tub…) When his human went away to college, no one was willing to sit with him calmly for hours and deal with his slobber and claws.

Then my family made another move, this time to Indianapolis. For months my parents lived in a rental apartment and couldn’t keep any of the cats with them. So they got farmed out to family. Einstein went immediately to live with my grandparents in Columbus, Ohio.

Now my grandparents in Columbus are—unsurprisingly—also cat people. They used to have exclusively Siamese cats but became more equal-opportunity with the years. Einstein entered the house as the third cat and was meant to stay until my parents found a permanent house. When they found it, however, he did not leave promptly.

For the last years of his life, my grandfather suffered a lot and in many ways. He had emphysema from years of smoking. He had dementia, which eventually robbed him of his independence. He couldn’t remember how to drive home from his usual haunts around town, and he relived painful war memories he’d spent years avoiding. Once quick-witted, he would now repeat the same questions over and over, circling back to what had already been said. He even began watching football. And enjoying it. All those years in Buckeye country and he didn’t care about football till 2011.

You think I’m kidding. I am not kidding.

It progressed to the point that Grandpa would leave the house for doctor visits and not much else. It was at this time that Einstein came to be fostered in his house. My brother and I were nervous; the cat didn’t like new situations and definitely didn’t like new cats (the spraying bit again).

I think Einstein lived in Columbus for about a year and a half. In that time, he and my grandpa became inseparable. They were old men together. Grandpa would lie in bed watching TV or sleeping while Einstein lay beside him, being constantly and carefully petted, purring, and leaving only for the litter box or food.

My grandpa died last October. We had expected it for a long time, and he’d been predicting it for maybe my whole life. I held myself together pretty well for a little while, talking on the phone to my mom and my grandma. It wasn’t until I heard about Einstein that I lost my cool. It was my grandma who told me.

That cat lay by my grandpa’s side to his dying day. Einstein stayed by his side even after Grandpa had stopped breathing. He was the warm spot when Grandma found Grandpa in the morning. With Grandpa’s bed empty, Einstein wandered the house looking for his person. He cried. He was lost.

I’m not saying that we adopted Einstein eighteen years ago so that he could go comfort my grandfather in his twilight. I’m not even saying God orchestrated a move for my parents so that the cat would have to go live with my dying grandfather. What I am saying is that when my grandfather’s body and mind betrayed him, the cat gave him comfort, day in and day out. I know it’s not a lion and a lamb story, but for me the tale of Einstein and my grandfather is an echo from eternity, whispering about what will be.

Now I take care of Einstein. When he’s stinky, or he tracks cat litter through the house and leaves dirty paw prints all over from sneaking into my brother’s bathtub, I remember the happiness Einstein brought to my grandpa, and I go pet that old cat. I deal with the slobber and the claws, because he did a good thing for a man who needed him.

You can ask JaneAnn about: Nashville, theology, cats. Baseball. Glacial rivers. Her stance on the color purple, and then again the existence of the word "purple." General frivolity and terrible music (for the DANCING!!). Old Stephen King novels, time zones, and toll roads in Oklahoma. She will not, however, answer any questions about that thing living in her fridge. You can follow her on Twitter @JAKof3Ts.

You can follow On Pop Theology on Twitter @OnPopTheology or like us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/OnPopTheology.
 
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Reflections on Ecclesiastes at a Gazillion Feet (Approx.)

by JaneAnn Kenney

Flying has always helped me put my life back into perspective, which might be why I waited until now, on a Southwest flight headed west, to begin writing again. I sit with strangers and sometimes I hope for an extrovert (not the magazine-wielding lass who showed up today). Why? Why do I want Tyler Durden’s single-serving friend? Because I long for a story; I want to hear a new story, to swap stories. 

I need to be reminded that I am not an automaton when I board a plane, even though my entire body is suspended in space, as human bodies were never meant to be. My concerns remain real and are, perhaps, even pressing, but while in flight there is nothing to be done about them; they must wait patiently.

Perspective: everyone on this airplane is the lead actor in the plot of their lives. All of those tiny houses below in West Tennessee hold lives and problems which seem highly important to those within, but affect me not at all, just as mine are of no concern to them. I feel like a vanilla person in flight; certainly I’ve got flaws, and gifts as well, but no one here knows them. They may suspect, based on my appearance or my brief interactions, but they cannot know. 

At times like this, the Teacher’s admonition to be neither too wise nor a fool comes to mind (Ecc. 7:16-17 for the curious). It seems that both wisdom and folly lead to death, so a mixture of the two must be the recipe for life. Or else, perhaps the recipe of life is to be fully human, embracing our fallenness, since we cannot escape it except in death. In this embrace, we begin to understand how far we are from being God.

It’s not just that we die alone and are forgotten; we also live so much alone. If Adam and Eve were created to be in relationship with one another and with God, then the fact of human isolation constitutes a major flaw in the world, and perhaps even the major flaw. Ecclesiastes speaks directly to my post-modern American soul. (I would say Christian, but the Teacher would appreciate that I can confess to frequently being more American than I am Christian.) We are so busy with our own lives that we forget God and we forget one another. 

This is not a purely American problem, of course, but I see the brokenness of the world most clearly in my own culture. And I see the Teacher as speaking this culture’s native tongue: he refuses to give a straight answer to anything, preferring the grey areas to which we have become so accustomed.

I find the Teacher’s words easier to consider as an American woman than as a Christian. I feel less guilty for hopelessness, for trudging through life without a clear aim, than if I am supposed to be praising Jesus on an infinite loop. Qohelet (Hebrew for “the Teacher”) addresses the issues that the church in the USA avoids, namely, if God is on my side, why do I feel so lethargic or bumbling or useless? If the Holy Spirit is within me, why do I still want what I should not have and reach for what I cannot receive? 

Perhaps the life of faith hasn’t changed so much in the last 2500 years; even “knowing God and keeping his commands” can leave us listless and frustrated, especially on those days we’ve done all we can and life continues just as senselessly as the day before. Our histories never leave us, and so sorrows abound from past experiences, sins, and injustices, returning to us in new and unexpected ways.

But we don’t like this story; we want life to make sense, to have meaning and a happy ending. So we tell ourselves different stories in an attempt to drown out the truth. Perhaps the best example is the romantic comedy, a stalwart barrier against Real Life. We all know the recipe for romantic comedies; we see the characters spinning ever closer to an appropriate, satisfying end. 

Imagine a director or writer straying from the tried-and-true script. See the male lead—say he’s a bike messenger—always dashing around on two wheels, rather oblivious to both interpersonal and vehicular signals. As he races to the bus stop to prevent his female counterpart from boarding and leaving him forever, to confess his true love (which we know she shares—see the tears in her eyes as she thinks, he’s not coming), as he speeds through an intersection, he is hit by a car because he wasn’t looking where he was pedaling, and now he lies dead in a pool of blood. This isn’t how the story was meant to go! the audience protests, and yet part of us knows that this unsatisfying end is truer to life than their kiss ever could have been.

His death is the natural consequence of a lifetime of haphazard actions. He died because he was never looking where he went, checking left and right and then left again. We dislike it, but we have to admit it made sense. And what of a teenager in a dark hoodie killed because a man felt threatened by his gait? What of a movie theater massacre or—God forbid!—a school shooting? Qohelet protests: These things are not in God’s script, were never in God’s script! 

Any appeal to creation is an appeal to the way the world was designed to work rather than how we see it working. We gnash our teeth over the ridiculous salaries paid to baseball players, yet we pay our $20 to go to the game and cheer for our team (and believe me, I am guilty of this). Qohelet’s appeal to creation is a plea for God to restore order so that old men are not forgotten by their children nor is a stillborn child better off than the man full of years. He yearns for the day when finding one good woman in a thousand would be senselessly easy: they are all quality, and so are the men.

Perspective: I could die today in this airplane, whether because of an electrical malfunction or a terrorist act or my very body fatally betraying me. It is unlikely that I will die today, simply because I will only die the one time, and that time is already a very small percentage of my life.

Yet in this plane I face mortality and think: This is a bad time to go. Is the timing ever right, or is there no such thing? It can only be one or the other, really. In any case, there are loose ends in Oklahoma that I’m hoping to mend (not tear apart). My parents are still alive. I’ve never been married or (more importantly) raised a child. My degree isn’t finished, my brother can’t pay rent on his own, I am good at my job… the Teacher might even agree with me that, if I died today, it would be astoundingly senseless, and yet he would not be surprised.

It may be appropriate how self-centered I’ve been in considering the implications of Ecclesiastes in life today, and I know it’s appropriate that I’ve offered no real answers. The Teacher’s search, while on behalf of the community, was a path he walked alone. There was no Watson to his Sherlock, no Robin to his Batman, no Stewart to his Colbert (or should this last be reversed?). When I look at my life, I too see the dreariness, the endless wandering, the cycles of cycles and photocopies of days on end. And yet, 

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man's smudge & shares man's smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs --
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast & with ah! bright wings.

-G. Manley Hopkins, “God’s Grandeur”

You can ask JaneAnn about: Nashville, theology, cats. Baseball. Glacial rivers. Her stance on the color purple, and then again the existence of the word "purple." General frivolity and terrible music (for the DANCING!!). Old Stephen King novels, time zones, and toll roads in Oklahoma. She will not, however, answer any questions about that thing living in her fridge. You can follow her on Twitter @JAKof3Ts.

You can follow On Pop Theology on Twitter @OnPopTheology or like us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/OnPopTheology.

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Batman Should Have Died

by Ben Howard

Batman should have died.

I'm not kidding and I don't particularly care if I'm spoiling the ending. Batman should have died at the end of The Dark Knight Rises. It was the only appropriate way for the trilogy to end. Batman sacrificing himself and passing on his legacy to another. 

But of course that's not the way the movie ends. No, instead Batman finds the time in his busy schedule to do a thing to some stuff and dramatically fake his own death. 

Sentiment makes for lazy plot mechanics.

This has become a regular part of all superhero movies. In order to emotionally hook the audience there need to be real stakes, the audience has to believe that the hero is actually in danger. Of course, everyone intellectually knows that you can't kill the hero, so you endanger those close to him. It's why Uncle Ben has to die in Spiderman, why Batman's girlfriend has to die in the Dark Knight, or why Tony Stark's cave friend has to die in Iron Man.

But how much emotional capital does an audience really have invested in a character they've only known for half a movie? Not enough. So you have to kill off the star. You have to make it really hurt. You have to make it real.

So you kill Batman, or Sherlock Holmes, or Doctor Who. And then you figure out a way to bring them back to life.

It's a good story, but it's also cheating because real life doesn't come with a writer's room.


My favorite stories are the ones that end in pain, that embrace it, not because it's beautiful, but because it's real. Friday Night Lights is my favorite sports movie almost entirely because at the end of the movie, they lose. You build up so much emotion waiting for the climactic moment, the redemptive moment and then...you fall just short.

Any Game of Thrones fan can speak to author George R.R. Martin's almost maniacal obsession with killing beloved characters. He's even gone so far as to say that the end of the story will be bittersweet.

It's not that I don't believe in happy endings, it's that I don't believe in endings at all. Real life does not fade to black after the ending, it does not have a lovely epilogue where Harry Potter takes his kids to school, nor does it pan back from a funeral to find the supposedly deceased watching from off in the distance. It just keeps going.

We are tempted to deal with pain indirectly or tangentially, pulling back on the throttle before we get too deep. We're tempted to tell only stories that have endings, and since we can't embrace a sad ending, we get stories that end happily ever after.

That's one of the reasons I'm so drawn to the liturgical traditions of Christianity. The story is one that continually repeats. It goes through the tense darkness of Advent to the pinnacle of Christmas, it descends into the painful remembrance of mortality on Ash Wednesday, the ache of Good Friday and Holy Saturday and the exuberant joy of Easter. 

Yet, there are also plains between these peaks and valleys. Life is not an infinite binary of pleasure and pain. There is also the aptly-named Ordinary Time where things are, well, ordinary.

And this happens over and over and over again. There is no end, no beginning, just a continual roll of ups and downs, valleys and peaks and long ordinary plains.

Endings are overrated, but Batman still should have died.

Peace,
Ben

Ben Howard is an accidental iconoclast and generally curious individual living in Nashville, Tennessee. He is also the editor-in-chief of On Pop Theology and an avid fan of waving at strangers for no reason. You can follow him on Twitter @BenHoward87. 

 

You can follow On Pop Theology on Twitter @OnPopTheology or like us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/OnPopTheology.

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Because It's Not My Tragedy

by Lyndsey Graves

I am suspicious of people who know what to think.

They knew the answers long before we asked the questions – Why?  How? – or else they aren’t thinking at all, at least not about anyone but themselves.

Even now, I wonder what I could possibly add to this conversation; especially since this post won’t go out until a few days after Boston, and you will wonder why OPT is harping on about this while everyone else has moved on.

Like everyone else I’ve talked to, I struggled at first, trying to feel sad, and then realized I can’t; I am only a little shocked, and afraid, and ashamed that I don’t pray more often for those who live their lives shocked and afraid every day in other regions of the world. And I’m angry. That’s the thing about terrorism, isn’t it? Disease and tragedy and disaster happen to people all the time, and someone chooses to add to the chaos. Now suddenly people can’t run a foot race on a minor holiday?

Yesterday also marked one month since the death of an 18-year-old whose family I am close to.

I know what I feel, but I don’t know what to think.

Predictably, now that I’m at a loss, the only thing springing up to fill the void is the post I was already intending to write. I was going to write about all the profound implications of this stupid phrase that’s been bouncing around long enough to be on its way out, and now I can’t decide if it’s glib or callous or flippant to say,

you only live once.

That’s all I’ve got. You live once; you spend some finite number of evenings with your family. You do your thing. You give and take. And then you’re done, and you didn’t see it coming.

Maybe the hardest part about other people’s tragedy, what’s so unnerving about the things you didn’t expect, is that there’s nothing tangible to do when all you want is to act, make, go, fight the evil you’ve encountered. Maybe that’s why people spout ignorant and pious and insensitive things on Facebook. I don’t know.

I never know what to think, but I’m learning what to do. I turn off all the news; I don’t need the details. I turn off the computer; I don’t need acquaintances’ opinions. I sit in silence for the victims and plead with God for mercy.

For a couple of days I’ll make bread or something, I’ll go outside in the rain, and for the love of God I’ll hold that much tighter to the people I’m with, because it will be following me around – you only live once. Try to do it on purpose. you only live once. And you’re not in control. you only live once. Sometimes it means you quit wasting time and get your shit together and help some people, or that you go to school like you always meant to. And sometimes, it means you throw your philosophical questions about hedonism to the wind and just enjoy some things before “too late” shows up.

For me, it always means I stop scrolling through the feed and my uncharitable interpretations of it. I stop imagining I have to know what to feel or think just because everyone else seems to. I start living, a little more here and a little more now, because I already have everything precious. And I look a little harder for resurrection where it’s happening, and cheer and cheer and work to help it on, because somehow in the midst of tragedy, I believe – look, I’ve seen it – people can and will live again, and they are the ones who’ll YOLO best.

Lyndsey lives and works in Syracuse, NY. She majored in theology at Lee University, which is like eating cake or listening to thunderstorms - too enjoyable to be called work. Also, no one will pay you to do it. You can follow her on Twitter @lyndseygraves and you can find more of her writing at her blog To Be Honest.

You can follow On Pop Theology on Twitter @OnPopTheology or like us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/OnPopTheology.
 
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When It Is Still Not Yet

“But you O LORD, reign forever;
                your throne endures to all generations.
Why have you forgotten us completely?
                Why have you forsaken us these many days?
Restore us to yourself, O LORD, that we may be restored;
                renew our days as of old–
unless you have utterly rejected us,
                and are angry with us beyond measure.” – Lamentations 5:19-22

by Ben Howard

Kyrie Eleison, Christe Eleison

More than likely in the next few days, we will have names and suspects. We will have arrests and we will have someone to blame. We will call them evil and they will be our new demons. They will serve as the face of menace and destruction and death.

We will hate them.

They will be the new James Holmes. The new Adam Lanza. The new terrorists.

And then we will fight. We will argue about mental illness or terrorism or who should have known what and when they should have known it. There will be hearings and there will be reports and there will be overpaid men in ties yelling at each other on cable news and using words like “obviously” to preface statements that are far from obvious.

Someone on Facebook will blame Obama. Someone else will blame God.

It is all so tragic, so horrible, yet so familiar, so normal.

Yesterday, after checking around to make sure that my friends were all okay, I thought to myself, “Only 3 died? That’s not bad.” Only?!? Really? That’s what crossed my mind? What kind of monster hears about the death of 3 innocent people, the pain and suffering of hundreds, and the emotional tragedy of thousands and says, “That’s not so bad”?

I am numb. The violence, the tragedies, the death, the brokenness and the desperation of the world just keeps coming. One after another. And they are so loud. They are so ever-present and unwieldy and unmanageable that I can barely do more than let them wash over me in a cacophony of tears and pain and blood.

And I am left cold, and I am ashamed that I do not feel more, that I do not hurt and ache along with those who hurt and ache. I am ashamed that my day was quite pleasant and relatively normal.

Since I am a Christian blogger and I have Christian blogger friends, I will read a bunch of articles about God today. They will talk about lament, and where God is in the tragedies, and how God is working with us to heal this broken world. They will talk about the heroes and the acts of love and truth and justice that happened in the wake of the explosions. They will talk about the Kingdom of God that is coming, the Kingdom that is already here.

And I will remember, bitterly, coldly, painfully, that though it is already, it is still not yet.

"In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express." - Romans 8:26

Peace,

Ben

Ben Howard is an accidental iconoclast and generally curious individual living in Nashville, Tennessee. He is also the editor-in-chief of On Pop Theology and an avid fan of waving at strangers for no reason. You can follow him on Twitter @BenHoward87.

You can follow On Pop Theology on Twitter @OnPopTheology or like us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/OnPopTheology.

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