What makes a person spiritually mature? And what masquerades under the cloak of spiritual maturity? What must die before we can spiritually see? We often assume that better answers lead to better faith. If we understood why suffering happens, why prayers go unanswered, why good people are wounded, and why life feels unfair, then perhaps…

In the early 1600s, Sir Francis Bacon realized that the way people understood the world was deeply flawed. For centuries, thinkers had mostly relied on inherited ideas from people like Aristotle. They used common sense, logic, and tradition to explain the world, often without carefully testing whether those explanations were true. This created a lot…

In the beginning, God placed two trees in the garden. The tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil was named, explained, and forbidden. God described it, defined it, and drew a boundary around it. It became the only explicit command. The tree itself was not evil, but eating from it would change how life was…

We began this series of talks by questioning the common assumption that religion exists mainly to explain things we don’t understand. If that were true, then as knowledge increases, the need for religion should decrease. But globally, today’s polls don’t support that logic. We then looked at how religious scriptures work, and concluded that they…

Last week I arrived at the unsettling conclusion that religion developed not primarily as a result of knowledge or belief, but out of a real need (not just a psychological desire) to align with reality. In biblical terms, it’s like accepting the wedding invitation rather than gate-crashing and pretending to be a guest. I further…

Last week I continued to argue that Scripture was not intended to function primarily as a repository of answers, although it’s often treated as if it was. Rather, like Jesus himself, scripture operates as a formative, gentle, and non-coercive force that helps to shape perception—how people see the world, preserve tension—between the truths we are…