In our last post, we sat with a heavy and often confusing text: Romans 1.

We looked at how Paul’s words don’t really map neatly onto our modern understanding and experiences of human sexuality, but rather seem to echo ancient hierarchies and the terrifying concept of societal collapse.

But there is a lingering word in that text we still need to talk about.

It is the word “natural.”

It sounds like Paul clearly considers heterosexuality to be “natural” and homosexuality (among men, at least) to be “unnatural.” For Paul, the men he is describing in Romans 1 are heterosexuals who have been turned homosexual because God allowed their desires to shift as a punishment for unrighteousness.

But we know that simply isn’t how things work.

We know Jesus-following Christians who have experienced same-sex attraction as an innate part of their orientation for their entire, righteous lives.

Where do they fit in Paul’s formula? Why does Paul give no space for those who never felt heterosexual desires to begin with? What happens when our lived reality collides with our reading of an ancient text?

We have to remember how the Bible speaks.

The Bible speaks within the knowledge and culture of the days in which it was composed. It speaks of the pillars of the earth, the floodgates of heaven, and a literal underworld. It shouldn’t surprise us that Paul speaks in the parlance of his day about what his culture considered “natural.”

So, how does this involve Romans 1?

Let’s look closer at Paul’s use of this idea of “natural.” Is he referring to a universal moral absolute? Or is he simply referring to what is expected within a specific culture or setting?

For Paul, "nature" wasn't a cosmic moral law; it was a sort of catch-all concept for how his world functioned—agriculturally, spiritually, scientifically, and socially.

The Olive Tree (Agricultural/Spiritual Expectations)

If we keep reading the book of Romans, Paul actually speaks of God acting contrary to nature.

He shockingly describes God as messing with nature by removing natural branches from His spiritual olive tree and grafting in Gentile branches (Romans 11:24). Think about that for a moment. God—the very basis of all things moral—can act against nature. Relocating the Gentiles is not unnatural because it is a sin, but because it goes against the expected agricultural characteristics of a tree. In the spiritual realm, God disrupts the “natural” way a tree works to do something beautifully inclusive.

Hair Length (Ancient Medical Science)

More light is shed on this when Paul speaks in 1 Corinthians 11:14-15 about the “natural” length of men’s and women’s hair:

“And does not nature itself teach you that a man, if he wears long hair, it is a dishonor to him? But a woman, if she wears long hair, it is her glory…”

Does nature actually teach us that?

Paul speaks of the mandatory length of men’s hair as if this is a “natural” fact, but we find nowhere in biology or universal moral law where there is an “obvious” dishonor for a man with long hair.

Today, we look at biology and find absolutely no universal, moral law that says a man with long hair is doing something physically or spiritually dishonorable.

When Paul says “nature itself” teaches this, he is appealing to the leading medical science of the first century. He is citing ancient biology, not universal morality.

Note: As shocking as this may sound to our modern ears, in Paul’s context, the medical understanding of the day held hair to be a sexual organ. Particularly, it was believed that hair created a vacuum effect on sperm. Men were told to have short hair to reduce the retention of sperm and allow it to leave their bodies. Women were told to have long hair to increase that vacuum effect. However, that long hair was seen as a sex organ, like a man’s testicles, so Paul says that it is to be covered up. It’s a wild historical fact, but it explains so much about the intense concern in Paul’s day with hair length and head coverings! Watch next Monday or Tuesday for a full post on this with historical support.

The "Natural" Established Order (Cultural Expectations)

Think about how we use the word “natural” to describe the established order of our own lives.

Many families have “natural” expectations related to what is seen as a family career. Some families pride themselves on generations of military enlistment. If a child decides not to join the military, it isn’t immoral. But it goes against what is perceived as a “natural” family characteristic. Other families expect their children to become doctors or lawyers, and experience profound shock if their offspring choose other paths than what is naturally expected.

It’s not a moral failure. It’s a violated expectation or norm.

As we have covered, in Paul’s patriarchal Roman world, the “natural” hierarchal order meant men were dominant and active, while women were subordinate and passive. For a man to take a passive sexual role wasn’t just seen as different; it was viewed as a profound degradation of his “natural” social status.

Paul’s writing of heterosexuality as natural can no more be understood as an absolute moral law against homosexuality than men necessarily having short hair, or the spiritual olive tree not including Gentiles. We simply cannot take Paul’s use of the term “natural” as a universal moral law when he makes it explicitly clear elsewhere that he uses it to describe the established order of his era.

Where Does This Leave Us?

Let’s stack the pieces together.

We have seen that Paul uses the concepts of “natural” and “unnatural” to describe the established expectations of his day—agriculturally, spiritually, medically, and socially—rather than declaring timeless moral absolutes.

We have also seen that this text completely fails to address righteous people who experience innate same-sex attraction. And, just like in Leviticus, we are left with the glaring absence of lesbianism, leaving open the strong possibility that Paul’s examples actually echo the Old Testament prohibitions of bestiality.

When we put all of this together, I lean heavily toward a contextual reading of this passage.

Our scientific and social understandings have changed, which affects how Paul’s specific examples may apply to us. But it does not affect his greater lesson: when we abandon right living, the guardrails come off, and our lives can be turned over to chaos.

Because of these deep contextual and historical layers, I simply cannot confidently use Romans 1 as a definitive statement against modern, consensual same-sex relationships.

We are now halfway through the relevant scriptures. And we are finding that a clear, universal text addressing this topic is much harder to find than we were taught.

Take a breath. Let that sink in.

It may feel as unexpected for you as it did for me.

In next Thursday’s post in this series, I will offer a short consideration of my updated, enriched reading of Romans 1.

It is time to turn our attention to the Apostle Paul.

But before we dive into the text, I want to pause and be entirely transparent with you.

The material I am going to share in these next two posts comes from the original study I did several years ago. It represents how I first began to untangle these verses. However, over the many years since that study, I have greatly increased my understanding of Paul and his writings. That growth in understanding has actually led me to a new reading of this passage.

However, when I asked myself: Does my new reading invalidate the careful work of my original study? I don’t believe so.

So, here is how we will proceed: I am going to share my original approach first. Then, I will offer an update on how I read this text now. I believe that the best of both concepts will come together to offer us significant, challenging material to consider.

With that in mind, let’s look at the letter to the Romans.

When discussing the Bible and homosexuality, this is an inevitable destination:

Romans 1:26-27 “Because of this, God gave them over to degrading passions, for their females exchanged the natural relations for those contrary to nature, and likewise also the males, abandoning the natural relations with the female, were inflamed in their desire toward one another, males with males committing the shameless deed, and receiving in themselves the penalty that was necessary for their error.”

For many, this is it. The clearest judgment on the sinfulness of homosexuality in the entire Bible: it is contrary to nature.

But as we dig into the context, we find that the passage quickly proves to be less than clear.

Is it about Idolatrous Sex?

Some who argue for the affirming side claim that Paul is specifically looking at idolatrous sex acts committed in service to a pagan temple.

The late historian John Boswell rightly finds fault with this argument, and I have to agree with him. When we look at the text, it is evident that Paul is not describing a religious act. He clearly speaks of personal desire or passion being involved, rather than people simply performing sex acts out of religious duty.

The Leviticus Connection: Bestiality or Lesbianism?

The greatest difficulty with Paul’s words actually follows in the exact same vein as the Leviticus passages we reviewed in our previous posts.

Paul makes no clear reference to lesbianism. He speaks simply of women taking on “unnatural” sexual relations.

We run right back into the same problem we found in the Old Testament. A literal reading of Paul does not literally allow us to apply his words to homosexuality as a whole—unless we fill in the blanks however we want.

We know that there are hundreds of explicit references or allusions to the Old Testament in Paul’s writings. In fact, he alludes to the Hebrew scriptures in Romans more than in any other book. Because of this, Paul’s phrasing regarding women could just as easily be a reference back to the Levitical concept of bestiality rather than lesbianism.

We are forced to ask a difficult question: Is Paul making the first-ever biblical reference to lesbianism, despite not doing so clearly? Or is he echoing Leviticus regarding women having intercourse with animals?

Picking up the hierarchical considerations of penetration from our Leviticus study, it is very possible that Paul is speaking out of this same Hebraic hierarchy concern. This means he isn’t necessarily focused on the modern concept of homosexuality, but rather on social structure as understood in his culture.

What if Paul is essentially saying that God allows a breakdown of “proper” social barriers to fall on those who do not follow him? The order collapses in their lives, and people are left in chaos.

Paul’s context was a society where gender superiority and inferiority were seen as built into nature itself. Thus, he could use men leaving their primary social position to be penetrated like a woman—and women replacing men with beasts—to describe the collapse of social order in the terms of his day.

This reading makes profound sense when you consider that Paul goes on in the Romans 1 context to list other social order issues that come with the breakdown of community: murder, envy, malice, gossip, and more.

The Problem of “Punishment”: A Reality Check

But there is another major hurdle in this text that we have to address.

Let’s assume for a moment that Paul is talking about modern homosexuality. If we read the passage closely, Paul clearly frames these “unnatural relations” as a specific judgment from God on people who refused to acknowledge Him.

According to Romans 1, there is a very specific sequence of events:

1. The Starting Point: A group of people (or a single person) know about God and have “natural” (heterosexual) desires.

2. The Rebellion: They actively choose to reject God.

3. The Punishment: As a direct penalty for their idolatry, God “gives them over” and changes their sexual orientation.

If this passage is the definitive, universal biblical explanation for why homosexuality exists, it creates a massive theological and pastoral problem.

Why? Because it simply does not match reality.

Think about the real lives of people in our churches and communities.

• What does this passage say to the child of God-loving parents who also loves God their entire life, yet experiences same-sex attraction from a very young age?

• What does it say to the devout teenager who grows up seeking God, loving Him deeply, and begging with tears at the altar for their homoerotic desires to go away—but they don’t?

• What about the spouse who has fought their same-sex attraction and entered into a heterosexual marriage and started a family—trying as hard as they can to be righteous, praying and praying to no longer be gay, and they are never changed?

If Romans 1 is a formula, what exactly is being “judged” in the lives of these fully repentant, Jesus-loving, submissive people?

The Romans 1 formula—rebellion causes God to turn you over to being gay as a punishment—completely falls apart when we look at the lives of righteous, faithful Christians who are experiencing same-sex attraction. They did not start out straight, reject God, and get handed over to being gay as a divine penalty.

The “Collateral Damage” Argument

When faced with this reality, some traditional theologians try to explain it away. They argue that God doesn’t inflict homosexuality as a punishment on a case-by-case basis. Instead, they say that homosexuality is just a general curse of God’s permissive judgment on a fallen, unrighteous world.

In this view, if you happen to be a faithful Christian who is gay, you are simply “collateral damage” of humanity’s general rebellion and God’s infliction of punishment.

But there is a major flaw with this argument.

Paul’s own words do not support it.

In his letter to the Romans, Paul is incredibly precise. He doesn’t just throw a blanket curse over all of humanity. He distinctly separates people into two camps: the righteous (who live by faith) and the unrighteous (who actively do what they know they shouldn’t). In Romans 1, Paul is speaking about a specific group of people who became unrighteous through their own personal, deliberate choices, and God judged them for their unique sinfulness by allowing “gayness” to overtake them.

That group is a distinct “them” from the other group of righteous people.

He is not describing a generalized “fallen world” where innocent bystanders accidentally catch a judgment. He is describing a direct penalty for a direct crime.

Aside from the linguistic issues that make a generalized homosexual punishment difficult, given what we now know about the psychological and biological realities of sexual orientation—that it is deeply woven into who a person is—it is incredibly difficult to accept this collateral damage interpretation.

Note: Such an interpretation is called eisegesis. This interpretive error starts from a conclusion and then works to make the text fit it—often unconsciously. In the care of Romans 1, the collateral damage interpretation comes from the assumed conclusion that homosexuality is certainly a sin, so an interpretation of this passage must come up with why otherwise righteous people are gay. Thus, the words of Paul are twisted.

Harmonizing Paul’s Goal

I believe there is a strong case to be made that Paul was not explicitly focused on the modern concept of homosexuality. He was focused on the breakdown of social propriety that comes when people live unrighteously.

As Paul understood it, when God judges a rebellious society, He simply removes the guardrails of order on a person’s life.

In Paul’s male-elevated world, that was pictured as the ancient gender and penetration tiers disappearing—the exact same tiers we saw in Leviticus: men first, women second, and animals last.

If Paul is speaking of this collapsing social hierarchy rather than establishing a universal origin story for sexual orientation, everything clicks into place.

It harmonizes perfectly with the Levitical passages. It continues his pattern of pulling from the Old Testament. And it places his words squarely into the setting of his own day.

If we are going to read Paul well, we have to sit with him in his own context.

And it is exactly to that ancient context that we will turn in our next post, as we consider more about how Paul uses the ideas of “natural” and “unnatural.”

Beneath the arithmetic friction of thought,
There slumbers an ocean the mind cannot plumb.
A fluency neither surrendered nor bought,
Where loud and empirical voices grow dumb.
It charts no meridian, proves no design,
But traces the root of a deeper divine.

When sorrow tears all the equations apart,
And rational comfort is gasping for breath,
There wakes an impossible grace in the heart,
That carries a loyalty deeper than death.
It gathers the fragments the intellect spurns,
And breaks itself open, and loves as it burns.

And when the cold architecture gives way
To the staggering rush of this inward expanse,
A holy machinery beneath our clay,
Now catches the frame in a luminous dance.
The cynical armor is shattered apart,
Transfiguring flesh to the shape of the heart.

In our last post, we sat with a heavy text.

Leviticus 18:22 “And you shall not lie with a male as lying with a woman; that is a detestable thing.”

Leviticus 20:13 “As for the man who lies with a male as lying with a woman, they have committed a detestable thing; they shall surely be put to death—their blood is on them.”

We looked closely at Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13, leaning into the tension of the original Hebrew language. We explored the distinct possibility that these ancient rules were actually addressing idolatrous temple prostitution, or perhaps the rape of otherwise heterosexual men.

For me, stepping back and realizing that these verses might not be talking about loving, covenanted same-sex relationships has been a profound theological awakening. It shifted how I see the text.

But my biggest shift happened when I ran into the most glaring problem of all.

These verses are entirely unconcerned with lesbianism.

The Missing Half of the Equation

If the primary topic of these passages is a blanket condemnation of homosexuality, why is the female half of the equation completely absent?

Some contend that lesbianism is obviously condemned by default when male-male sex is forbidden. But does the text itself actually support that assumption?

If women are simply presumed to be included in the rules for men, why are women explicitly singled out in the very next breath when it comes to bestiality?

Leviticus 18:23 “And [men] shall not give their seminal emission with any animal, becoming unclean with it; and a woman shall not position herself with an animal to copulate with it—that is a perversion.”

Leviticus 20:15-16 “As for a man who gives their seminal emission to an animal, he shall surely be put to death, and you must kill the animal. As for a woman who approaches any animal to copulate with it, you shall kill the woman and the animal; they shall surely be put to death—their blood is on them.”

If women are presumed in Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13, why is it necessary to mention them in verses 23 and 16?

By deliberately writing a separate, specific section for women right next door, the Levitical author disproves the assumption that lesbianism is implicitly in view when speaking to male-male sexual relations.

With lesbianism missing from the text, we have to ask: What if there is something other than the modern concept of “homosexuality” at play here?

The Real Issue: A Patriarchal or Penetrative Hierarchy

To understand this, we have to use our historical imagination. Picture the ancient Near East. It was a fiercely patriarchal world—a culture that allocated the highest social position to men and treated women as property.

When we view the text through that ancient social structure, the evidence suggests these verses are not concerned with homosexuality as a relational issue. They are concerned with a strict, ancient, social hierarchy.

In that patriarchal world, the central issue wasn’t the gender of the people involved. It was who was penetrating whom.

The matter that explicitly connects male-male intercourse, male-animal intercourse, and female-animal intercourse is penetration. A man is not to be penetrated by another man, an animal is not to be penetrated by a man, and a woman is not to be penetrated by an animal.

A “penetrative hierarchy” reveals itself in the patriarchal law code:

• The Degradation of the Man (by a Man): In this ancient context, the primary problem with male-male intercourse wasn’t the gender pairing itself. It was that one male was lowering himself to the perceived lesser status of a woman by being penetrated.

• The Degradation of the Man (by a Beast): We are looking at a society so obsessed with protecting the elevated status of men that they would sacrifice women to a violent mob to preserve it. In that worldview, it would be unthinkable and deeply shameful for a man to lower himself to the level of a beast by copulating with an animal.

• The Elevation of the Beast (by a Man): But there is a flip side to that coin. While men were held highest, women still held a place in society above the animals. So, the secondary issue with male bestiality is that a beast is improperly elevated to a woman’s place when it is penetrated by a man.

• The Elevation of the Beast (by a Woman): This finally explains the female prohibition. If a woman joins with an animal, she degrades herself, yes. But in a fiercely patriarchal world, the greater offense—the ultimate social sacrilege—would be a woman daring to elevate a beast to a man’s position as her sexual penetrator.

As we saw in the horrific stories of Sodom and Gibeah, ancient cultures placed far less concern on women being degraded than they did on maintaining the man’s highest, unrivaled position in society.

This hierarchal concept harmonizes the passages perfectly. It explains the absence of lesbianism because, in their biological mechanics, a woman does not have the anatomy to “penetrate” another woman in the way this ancient hierarchy was concerned with.

The wording is specifically centered around penile penetration to maintain a social order that keeps men at the top, rather than dealing with same-sex romance.

Understanding Ancient “Laws”

There is another layer to this.

Adding to the difficulty of applying these Levitical passages to modern homosexuality is the way ancient laws actually functioned.

They did not function the way we envision legislation in the West today. We think of justice as conforming to written legislation. For the ancients, justice was conforming to traditions reflected in cultural paradigms. In fact, there is little to no evidence of written “laws” from ancient Mesopotamians in the sense of a modern justice system.

Through the discovery of ancient documents like the Code of Hammurabi, modern scholarship recognizes that ancient rule lists were really “wisdoms” that illuminated the values framing daily life. They were meant to create a people who understood their roles and places within the family and the town.

Generally, what we picture as strict “laws” of the ancient Near East are better understood as cultural mores meant to enforce social norms.

This means the ancient Hebrews came from a world of less-than-absolute laws. The instructions given at Mt. Sinai would have been understood as the paragon of wisdom for maintaining their specific societal structure. This explains why these texts sound more like the enforcement of a “patriarchal social hierarchy” than a timeless moral treatise on the act of homosexuality itself.

Even more, this explains why we don’t find records of the most horrendous Mosaic laws actually being enacted. They didn’t read them necessarily as literally as we do.

A Matter of Conscience

Just this brief consideration of the Levitical passages leave us with a stark, logical conclusion.

If we try to claim these laws must be used for a literal, modern condemnation of homosexuality, we arrive at a contradiction. A literal reading of these laws must admit that the laws do not literally care about lesbianism.

Not caring about half the matter makes no sense if the goal is to condemn the whole matter. (Otherwise, we are left with the absurd conclusion in these passages that the Bible literally forbids homosexual men, but lesbianism is perfectly permitted.)

It is illogical to presume the author rolls women up with the male-male prohibition when he explicitly separates them in the very next sentence. Therefore, according to the author’s own pattern of writing, I am forced to conclude that the modern concept of homosexuality is not under consideration here in Leviticus.

I have to be honest with you. In good conscience, I cannot address homosexuality using passages that ignore half the issue. Especially when those passages are deeply contextualized within an antiquated social hierarchy that permitted women to be treated as lesser beings—to the point of handing over one’s own daughters to be raped.

Sit with that reality for a moment. What does it look like to release our grip on these verses?

My study necessarily moves on: are there other passages that condemn homosexuality as a sin?

Those two passages are it for the Old Testament.

We will begin to look at the New Testament in the next post.

How to stay
when the memories come back
with teeth.

Teach me
what to do
with these hands
that have held too tightly,
pushed too hard,
let go too soon.

Where do I put
the things I’ve done
that don’t fit
inside forgiveness?

Where do I lay down
the names I’ve been called
until they stop answering
when I speak?

Show me
how to look at myself
without becoming
my own accuser.

Or worse—
my own judge
who never adjourns.

I have learned
how to survive myself.
That is not the same
as living.

So if there is a way
to hold all of this—
the harm,
the hunger,
the half-formed good in me—

without turning away,

show me.

Not all at once.
Not clean.
Not finished.

Just enough
to stay.

Just enough
to not leave
when I am hardest
to love.

Just enough
to begin.

My own theological realizations on this topic didn’t happen overnight. It happened slowly, sitting at a desk surrounded by open lexicons and commentaries, wrestling with texts I had previously been told were plain and simple.

When the topic of same-sex relationships comes up, two passages from the Old Testament are almost always brought to the forefront:

Leviticus 18:22 “And you shall not lie with a male as lying with a woman; that is a detestable thing.”

Leviticus 20:13 “As for the man who lies with a male as lying with a woman, they have committed a detestable thing; they shall surely be put to death—their blood is on them.”

In his book Homosexuality and the Bible: Two Views, theologian Dan Via argues for the affirming position. However, he states that these two passages “present an unambiguous and unconditional condemnation of homosexuality.”

It is easy to see why so many read the text exactly that way.

But what happens when we look closer?

Let me show you what I found.

Let’s Look at the Language

Let’s sit with the actual words for a moment.

In both passages above, I added bold emphasis to the word “male.” Both occurrences are translated from the Hebrew word zakar.

This is where things get interesting. The writer chose zakar (which means “male”) rather than ish (which means “man”). It would have made perfect sense for the writer to say, “a man (ish) should not lay with another man (ish).”

But the writer deliberately mixed the two terms. An ish should not lay with a zakar.

Why?

Did they simply use a couple of different words for linguistic variety? Did they use distinct terms intentionally to make a specific point? What if the author is purposefully accentuating the maleness of the second man?

In the ancient world, societies understood the concept of effeminate men or men placed in submissive roles (the Akkadians, for example, called them kulu’u). If we look through that historical lens, these rules in Leviticus might actually feature God telling men not to penetrate other men who identify as heterosexually male.

In other words, this is considered by some to be a rule against the homosexual rape of heterosexual men.

If this is so, these two rules do not prohibit a man from having sex with a consenting, same-sex attracted man who is willingly penetrated. This would make these laws in Leviticus similar to the laws of the surrounding ancient nations, who strictly forbade the rape of an unwilling man but did not forbid consensual homosexuality.

(Though, as theologian Instone-Brewer notes, we can never know for sure what ancient laws have simply been lost to time.)

It leaves us with a lingering tension: We cannot know exactly why the writer worded the text this way. But it certainly opens a door many assume was closed.

The Idolatry Connection

Then there is the context.

What if the author specifically had idolatrous sex acts in mind?

This possibility isn’t pulled out of thin air. Both references to male-male sex in Leviticus sit right next to warnings about Molech, an ancient Canaanite deity. Leviticus 20 even opens with a strict command against offering infants to Molech.

Do you see how the context shifts? Suddenly, we aren’t looking at a loving, covenanted and consensual relationship. We are looking at acts of pagan idol worship.

This idea finds deep support when we connect the scriptural dots:

• The Sin of the Canaanites: Leviticus connects men having sex with males to the “sin of the Canaanites.”

• Temple Prostitution: Later in 1 Kings 14:24 and 2 Kings 23:7, 13, the exact same language found in these Levitical passages is used to describe the male temple prostitutes of the Canaanites.

• The Meaning of “Toevah”: Leviticus 18:22 refers to a man having sex with a man as toevah (translated above as “a detestable thing”). This term doesn’t primarily refer to an innate moral evil; it refers to ritual uncleanliness. Think of a menstruating woman who was considered unclean. Menstruation isn’t a “sin” by religious moral code, but was seen as “dirty” according to religious culture or imagery. Toevah is strongly related to idolatry and can sometimes simply mean “idol.”

In fact, late Jewish commentaries understood this to be an issue of idolatry rather than homosexuality. The Greek Septuagint understood it this way. Early Greek-speaking theologians understood it this way.

What if what is actually being prohibited in Leviticus is the idolatrous worship of other gods through sex rituals, rather than committed homosexual relationships?

Weighing the Contexts

To be fair, opponents of this view raise valid points.

The specific Hebrew term referring to temple prostitutes (qadesh) is missing from these Leviticus passages. Furthermore, they argue the link between the prohibition and Molech isn’t perfectly clear, pointing out that the rule is listed alongside other general sexual boundaries.

So, we are left holding dueling contexts.

On one hand, these rules sit within a list of general sexual laws. On the other hand, they are framed by the worship of Molech, the “sin of the Canaanites,” and the ritual impurity of toevah.

I believe that the laws against male-male sex relating to temple prostitution is a decently strong case. At least strong enough to dissuade us from confidently using these passages to attack homosexuality in the modern context we are considering it. However, as I spent time with these texts, I realized there is something else at play here as it relates to our modern discussions on homosexuality.

We will turn to that matter in the next post.

For now, I invite you to just sit with the tension. If you grew up believing these verses were a clear, flat condemnation, it can feel disorienting to realize the language is actually incredibly nuanced.

Breathe through it. You are not alone. We are in this together.

It started when Trump’s newly named Department of War posted an image that perfectly encapsulated the native ethos of earthly power. It was a photograph of a Tomahawk missile firing, stamped with a chilling, two-word directive: “No mercy.” This is, and always has been, the language of the state.

Shortly after that, a fellow pastor in an overwhelmingly Trump-supporting denomination posted a quote from the Sermon on the Mount:

“Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy. ~Jesus Christ” (Matthew 5:7)

The cognitive dissonance was already heavy. In a spiritually healthy church, the sheer contradiction between the state’s rallying cry and the manifesto of Christ would be enough to give any believer pause. But today, the dissonance became absolutely deafening.

Pete Hegseth stood at the Pentagon and led his first monthly “Christian” worship service since the war with Iran began. Standing before the architects of the state’s military force, he prayed for “overwhelming violence of action against those who deserve no mercy.” He prayed further, asking God to “let every round find its mark against the enemies of righteousness and our great nation.”

Read those words again, and then read the words of Christ. We are being asked to look at the violent, coercive machinery of a nation-state and call it holy. But a religion that echoes the state’s demand for “no mercy” and actively prays for “overwhelming violence” is fundamentally disconnected from the Jesus of Nazareth. When the church aligns itself with this kind of rhetoric, it isn’t bringing God to the Pentagon; it is allowing the spirit of empire to masquerade as the Kingdom of God.

It is no small irony that this Pentagon prayer service—this invocation of overwhelming violence—took place today, on a Wednesday.

In the ancient world, Wednesday was dies Mercurii—the day of Mercury. To the Romans, Mercury was the patron god of commerce, of thieves, and of trickery. How devastatingly appropriate that a liturgy demanding merciless war was offered on a day dedicated to such things.

The military-industrial complex is, at its core, a massive machinery of commerce. It is an economy of death sustained by the staggering taking of our resources. We are watching billions of tax dollars be funneled into the creation of Tomahawk missiles and the machinery of “overwhelming violence,” stolen directly from the hands of the vulnerable to fund the state. We are feeding the empire’s war machine while actively starving the very people Jesus called the “least of these.” War is immensely profitable for the state, and the altar of Mercury always demands its sacrifice.

But Mercury is also the god of trickery, and this is our greatest tragedy: the American church has been profoundly tricked. We have allowed ourselves to be duped by the intoxicating power of empire. Through fear-mongering and the seductive promise of proximity to earthly power, millions of Christians were duped into voting for an administration that operates entirely contrary to the God of Grace that we claim. The trickery is so complete that segments of the church now actively cheer for the very empire they were called to prophetically witness against. We have been deceived into believing that the empire’s wars are God’s wars, mistaking the inherently antichrist spirit of a “no mercy” administration for the righteous will of heaven.

To understand how complete this trickery is, we have to recognize the true nature of the powers we are dealing with. When we look closely at the machinery of earthly governments, we have to admit that their animating spirit is fundamentally opposed to the way of Christ. The way of empire is always coercion, dominance, and the preservation of power through violence. The empire secures its borders with the threat of death and demands ultimate allegiance.

Yet, the church has allowed itself to be seduced by the intoxicating allure of Washington. We have crowned ourselves the “righteous ones,” assuming the moral high ground while we baptize our bombs and anoint our war machines with holy water. We confidently declare that God is on our side, completely blind to the fact that supporting a merciless military apparatus is the very definition of being un-Christlike.

We cannot serve a God who blesses the merciful while simultaneously shouting “amen” to Pentagon prayers for “overwhelming violence.” When we align our faith with an unmerciful war machine, we do not make the war holy; we simply make our religion unrecognizable to Christ.

We have traded the cross for the sword.

We have mistaken the violent, coercive roar of empire for the triumphant song of the Lamb. If we want to know what God is like, we have to look at Jesus. God is exactly like Jesus, and Jesus did not come to execute overwhelming violence against His enemies—He forgave them from a Roman execution stake. To call a prayer for merciless violence “Christian” is to strip the name of Christ of its entire meaning. We have to decide if we are going to follow a crucified savior, or if we are going to worship the beast of empire disguised in Christian clothing.

What happened at the Pentagon today was absolutely a worship service, but we must boldly confess that it was not done in worship of the God revealed in Jesus Christ. It was the worship of empire, the worship of Mercury, and the worship of Mars.

We have settled for a simulation of Christianity—a hyperreal religion where the symbols of our faith have been hollowed out and filled with the antichrist spirit of the state. The cross has been replaced by the missile, the Beatitudes replaced by the battle cry, and the actual Jesus replaced by a militant mascot created in our own nationalistic image.

If we genuinely want to find Jesus in the midst of this global conflict, we must remember that He is never found in the Situation Room or the Pentagon. Matthew 25 makes it abundantly clear where Christ dwells. He is exactly where the empire’s missiles fall: among the broken, the bleeding, the displaced, and the “least of these.”

To bless the merciful is to stand with Christ. To pray for “no mercy” is to stand with the empire.

We cannot serve the Prince of Peace while shouting “amen” to prayers for overwhelming violence. It is time to wake up from the trickery of Mercury, step out of this violent illusion, and decide which kingdom we actually belong to.

When approaching the biblical texts that address same-sex behavior, the discussion usually centers on five primary passages. Many of you are likely familiar with the list:

• Leviticus 18:22

• Leviticus 20:13

• Romans 1:26-27

• 1 Corinthians 6:9

• 1 Timothy 1:10

For many in modern evangelicalism, these verses have been understood to form a unified, definitive stance. But as I leaned in closer, willing to ask the hard questions, the wall began to look more like a mirror reflecting ancient language, complex cultural concerns, and a world vastly different from our own.

As my study progressed, I realized that unfortunately, for such an important topic in our era, the Bible really doesn’t have a lot to say on the issue of homosexuality—especially not in the form of loving, covenanted relationships as I was studying it.

But Wait... What About Sodom?

The glaring omission that many may point to here, is that we are missing the story of Sodom.

“But wait!” they say. “What about the story of Sodom? Didn’t God destroy a whole city because of homosexuality?”

It’s a fair question. It’s the story we’ve been told.

But what if we need to look again? What if our assumptions about Sodom are masking a much deeper, more tragic reality?

When we place the story of Sodom (Genesis 19) alongside its sister story of Gibeah (Judges 19), a very different picture emerges.

These are not stories about romance or innate same-sex attraction.

They are stories about brutality.

In the ancient Middle East, hospitality wasn’t just polite; it was paramount. Protection of guests was a sacred duty. Yet in both Sodom and Gibeah, the locals offer no welcome to the visitors at their gates. Instead, the only hospitality comes from foreigners living in the city: Lot in Sodom, and an old man in Gibeah.

Then, the mob arrives.

They demand the male guests be brought out so they can be raped.

It is horrific. And it has nothing to do with sexual orientation. In various ancient cultures—and tragically, even today in such places as prisons and conflict zones like South Africa and the Congo—the rape of a man by another man serves as a violent display of power. It was a tool of degradation. An emasculation of an enemy.

These men had no same-sex desire. They weren’t looking for lovers. They were looking to dominate.

The Tragic Reality of Patriarchy

How do we know this? Because of what happens next.

To appease the violent mob, the hosts offer something else. Women.

The hosts understand what is happening is not homosexual in nature.

Lot offers his own daughters. In Gibeah, the concubine is offered—and tragically accepted.

If this mob was driven by innate same-sex attraction, would they have accepted women? What does it say about the devastating reality of this patriarchal society that a daughter or a female guest was viewed as a bargaining chip to protect a man’s honor? What happens when a culture values a man’s pride more than a woman’s body?

Do you see how the stakes change when we look closer? The stories are heartbreaking, but they are not about homosexuality. They are about cruel, inhospitable people who cared more for displaying dominance than for human life.

How Jesus Read the Story

If we are going to test the validity of this understanding of Sodom, perhaps we should look to Jesus.

When Jesus sent out his disciples, he provided his own commentary on the sin of Sodom:

“And whoever does not welcome you or listen to your words, shake off the dust from your feet as you are going out of that house or that town. Truly I say to you, it will be more bearable for the region of Sodom and Gomorrah on the day of judgment than for that town!” (Matthew 10:14-15)

Did you catch that?

Jesus contextualizes their sin strictly in terms of being inhospitable.

If Sodom was judged so severely for violently rejecting “random” strangers, Jesus warns, how much harsher will the judgment be for those who reject the way of Christ and his messengers?

Ultimately, the consensus that Sodom is not a text about consensual same-sex relationships crosses theological lines. Even when he held to a traditional view, the respected scholar Richard Hays rejected the idea that the story of Sodom has a place in this discussion.

So, we set Sodom aside.

A Moment to Sit With It

But I know this isn’t just an academic exercise.

If you grew up hearing Sodom preached as a terrifying warning against the LGBTQ+ community, pausing to read it as a story about hospitality and violence might feel unsettling.

Sit with that for a moment.

What changes inside us when we allow the text to speak to its actual historical context?

What if the real sin of Sodom—the hostile rejection of the vulnerable "other"—is closer to our own modern lack of hospitality than we ever dared to admit?

We’re going to take this slow. In the next post, we’ll turn our focus to the actual texts in question, beginning with the Leviticus passages.

In the staggering climax of Matthew 25, Jesus paints a picture of the end of the age that flips our religious expectations completely upside down. He welcomes the righteous into the kingdom, thanking them for tending to his deepest vulnerabilities—his hunger, his nakedness, his imprisonment.

Their response isn’t pious agreement; it’s total bewilderment. “Um... wait a minute. When did we ever see you like that?” Jesus’ reply shatters the barrier between the sacred and the ordinary: whatever they did for the marginalized and oppressed, they did directly to him. It is a paradigm-shifting revelation. Jesus is so radically unified with the downtrodden, the lonely, and the rejected that they are practically one and the same. To look into the eyes of the broken is to look directly into the eyes of the Divine. He is perfectly hidden in plain sight.

The Trap of Escapist Spirituality

Recently, sitting around a table with a local church group, the question was posed: What is a practical way to refocus on Jesus this week?

The reflexive answers from around the table were entirely metaphysical. One person after another spoke of retreating: lock the door, curate the perfect ambient environment, queue up the worship playlist, read, and meditate. We have a tendency to treat Jesus as an abstract, ethereal entity we have to ascend to reach.

These practices have their place, but they reveal a tragic irony in our modern faith. In our frantic rush to isolate ourselves and manufacture a spiritual encounter, how many times do we speed right past the actual, enfleshed Christ on the drive home?

Worse still, how often do we construct the perfect spiritual vacuum, only to sit in the silence and feel completely hollow? We end up frustrated, spiritually dry, and wondering why God ghosted us. We didn’t experience an awakening; we just experienced isolation.

The Gritty Interruptions of Grace

The truth is, life is constantly begging us to collide with Jesus if we have the eyes to see him. True communion isn’t just found in a quiet room; it is waiting for us in the gritty interruptions of our day:

• A deliberate text to someone whose silence is masking their loneliness.

• A pause to offer genuine warmth to a burned-out cashier absorbing the wrath of the line.

• A five-dollar bill pressed into the hand of the street-corner beggar our cynicism tells us to write off as a grifter.

• An unhurried, deeply present embrace with our partner before the day’s chaos takes over.

What if the most potent, efficient way to realign with Jesus isn’t to close our eyes to the world, but to open them to the brokenness right in front of us? I promise you, those people are everywhere.

Removing the Blinders

I am the first to confess my own complicity in missing or even avoiding Jesus in the world around me. It is far easier to keep my blinders firmly affixed than to look the world’s pain in the eye. It’s inconvenient. It’s uncomfortable.

Granted, it is humanly impossible to shoulder the grief of every single soul we pass. We are limited, and we must rely on the Spirit to anchor our attention. But if your soul feels entirely disconnected and you are desperately needing an encounter with Jesus, stop staring at the ceiling. He is likely waiting for you on the next street corner.

The Ultimate Metric

Here is the most disruptive truth of the Matthew 25 narrative. Many read it as a terrifying Judgment Day manifesto. But if that’s true, look closely at what the judgment rests on.

The ultimate metric of a life well-lived—a “righteous” life—does not hinge on flawless doctrine. It doesn’t hinge on perfect theology, or reciting the right salvific incantation. It hinges entirely on radical, charitable love. It is about whether we had the eyes to see and the hands to serve the people who mark the very spots where Jesus secretly remains enfleshed in our world.

And that changes absolutely everything.

Bear with me as I’m going to get “nerdy” for a bit with this series of posts over the next weeks.

Several recent encounters and conversations have led me to dust off an old, unpublished manuscript. This was the culmination of an extensive study I undertook on Christianity and the LGBTQ+ communities.

What This Series Is (and Isn’t)

While experiences in my personal life initiated this study many years ago, this series isn’t going to be an autobiography. Instead, I want to share the “homework.” I’ve spent a significant amount of time (years) diving deep into the verses, the context, and the common arguments that define this conversation.

I hold no illusions that I will be a voice to settle this matter rife with years of arguments and stacks of books published from various positions. However, perhaps for one or two people, there will be something timely in what I share that they will be grateful for.

Personally, this study was challenging, enlightening, and formative for me, and it is a joy to be stirred to reflect upon it once more and review my thoughts after several years have passed.

An Invitation to the Whole Story

I know how divisive this topic is. If you find yourself feeling stirred in some negative way through this, I want you to know that I understand—I’ve been in the middle of it with people I care about and landed on various sides of it at various times. It is polarizing among Christians. However, I encourage you to not give up on the study and to press on through the entire series before making a final judgment.

Secondly, I ask for patience and understanding if I happen to misrepresent, misspeak, or might otherwise inadvertently offend anyone. Through my life, and to this day, I have dear friends who find themselves landing somewhere in an LGBTQ+ community. I also have dear friends who find themselves at odds with the LGBTQ+ communities. This study was—and continues to be—me working to expand my understanding and learning to converse on extremely personal matters to both sides.

I pray that readers will hear my heart underneath any misstep, and I am open to any correction or reflection.

Please feel free to respectfully engage with me through comments or direct messages.

Thank you for being willing to listen whether we come to agree or agree to disagree.

Let’s dive in.

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Sorting Out the Details

This study will begin by considering the issue of same-sex attraction and marriage.

I very much like the language that the Counterpoints book Two Views on Homosexuality, the Bible, and the Church uses for the two general sides of this discussion. They avoid contrasting the pro-homosexual marriage “affirming” side with the term “non-affirming” since the latter is stated in the negative, and that could unfairly bias people’s minds. Instead, they choose the terms “affirming” and “traditional” to represent those who respectively believe, “consensual, monogamous, same-sex relations can be blessed by God and fully included in the life of the church” and those who take “the position that all forms of same-sex sexual behavior are prohibited by Scripture and Christian theology.”

The Counterpoints book perfectly speaks to the intent of this part of my study. My goal is to consider if “consensual, monogamous, same-sex relations can be blessed by God and fully included in the life of the church.”

In other words, I will consider if homosexuals can live out romance, marriage, and sexual activity under God’s blessing in the same manner evangelicals typically consider a heterosexual can?

As it relates to homosexual attraction itself, I take the word of many homosexuals who tell me that homosexuality is “in their DNA,” so to speak. I am not seeking to disprove this and claim that homosexual attraction is itself a choice or even a default sign of immorality.

I join with both the affirming side and many traditionalists to reject the Christian view that held sway at least into the 1960s, that to even have homosexual urges is degeneracy, sin, and a personal, moral failing. I take the word of proven believers on both sides of the issue who love God, live righteous lives, have strong faith, and show no great moral failing as a person, yet confess to having had homoerotic thoughts the entire time and claim those thoughts are innate to how they are wired.

Robert Gagnon, a top traditional theologian, covers this idea well. He acknowledges that the debate should not be over condemning people who have homoerotic proclivities, but most believers are more concerned with the morality or immorality of engaging in same-sex sexual intimacy, primarily in a marriage setting. Richard Hays, also a well-known traditionalist, supports full church inclusion for nonpracticing homosexuals since he does not see the desire itself as the sin.

Update: After ~40 years of defending his traditionalist view, Richard Hays changed his position to an affirming stance for full inclusion of LGBTQ+ communities. Fairly recently, he authored a book on the matter with his son who is an Old Testament scholar.

Taking People at Their Word

I have heard many testimonies of those with same-sex attraction, who attest that they realize it, as I do my heterosexuality, as something innate within themselves to the point that they are convinced they were born with this attraction. I know of many stories of people who felt and were seen by others as standing out in one way or another as gay from their earliest years. In the process of growing up and experiencing puberty, they found their homosexuality simply became more pronounced, as do the heterosexual traits in those of us who are straight.

For those who have come later in life to determine they are homosexuals, I cannot argue against the idea that under the pressure of a largely heterosexual world—especially one that has obvious anti-homosexual currents running through it—one may attempt to fit, even unconsciously, into the hetero-culture until they realize it just isn’t working out, and they come to realize it isn’t the way they are wired. This phenomenon is observable with other areas of life.

Friends from different ethnicities and cultures tell me about the pressure from their families and communities to follow and hold certain careers and try to conform to expectations and please loved ones. Many will burn themselves out trying to be what their family and culture wish them to be, some eventually coming to realize it doesn’t work for them and rejecting what was imposed on them.

Scriptural Authority

Finally, my study will assume the validity of the Christian canon as an authority for the believer. Brilliant minds engage about how the Scriptures work and how they came to us. These minds weigh different types and levels of inspiration with many convincing cases for their respective conclusions. This study will bypass such discussions and simply work with the general understanding that Scripture, however it came about, is accepted as foundational material for believers and it holds some manner of authority for the Christian’s life. To this end, we will consider the exact words we find in Scripture as well as consider concepts commonly taken from Scripture.

With this groundwork laid, the next post will begin to consider the primary Scripture passages we consider might speak to homosexuality…

Meanwhile, we are just over eight weeks away from Trump’s plan on May 17th to rededicate America to God, speaking of renewing America to prayer and the Christian religion.

The Obvious Antichrist (And the Truth We’re Too Scared to Admit)

If you are a Christian looking for the Antichrist, you really don’t have to look that hard. You don’t need to decode secret microchips, parse obscure end-times prophecies, or wait for a cartoonish villain to emerge from the shadows. You just have to look at Donald Trump and the political machinery he has built.

For the better part of a decade—and continuing as he occupies the Oval Office once again—we have watched a political movement coalesce that looks terrifyingly like the Beast of Revelation.

To understand why, we have to look at the word itself. The Greek prefix anti- doesn’t just mean “against.” It also means “in place of.” The spirit of the antichrist isn’t always a direct, secular attack on religion; often, it is a deadly substitution. It is a counterfeit gospel that uses the vocabulary of faith to offer a completely different path to salvation.

When you hold the overarching spirit of this movement up to the light of the Sermon on the Mount, the contrast is so stark it feels like a deliberate, point-by-point inversion of the Jesus we find in the Gospels. Consider the foundational pillars of this modern political ethos:

• The Gospel of Retribution: The driving force of his appeal is not grace, but vengeance. Jesus stood before his executioners and prayed for their forgiveness; this administration has built its entire political platform on the explicit promise of revenge. The Beatitudes tell us that the meek will inherit the earth, but the prevailing ethos of the Trump era mocks the meek, equating mercy with weakness, empathy with fragility, and peacemaking with losing. The anthem of many in the Christian backed Trump admin is the newer eye-for-an-eye slogan: fuck around and find out.

• Contempt for the Vulnerable: At the core of the Christian faith is the belief that every human being is made in the image of God. The Trump ethos is built on a “might makes right” philosophy that systematically degrades the vulnerable. It frames refugees, immigrants, and the marginalized not as neighbors to be loved, but as existential threats to be crushed, cast out, or dehumanized to fuel fear-based political engagement. And Trump is now acting as if he is the god of the world, marching his mighty military around the globe and bragging about its might as he extinguishes God’s image.

• The Idolatry of Absolute Loyalty: A defining characteristic of an antichrist spirit is the demand for a devotion that supersedes moral conviction. We have seen a pervasive culture where loyalty to the leader is the only metric that matters, conditioning followers to abandon personal ethics, honesty, and even the teachings of their own faith if it means staying in his good graces.

• The Weaponization of Christian Identity: Perhaps most dangerously, this movement has hollowed out the actual teachings of Christ and replaced them with a militant Christian nationalism. When Satan tempted Jesus in the wilderness, he offered Him all the kingdoms of the world in exchange for a single act of worship. Jesus refused the shortcut of coercive power. The modern church, however, has largely accepted the deal. The faith is no longer a path of self-emptying, co-suffering love; it has become a cultural weapon used to seize and maintain dominance. It offers believers an insidious bargain: I will give you earthly power and cultural protection, as long as you look the other way while I abandon the ethics of Jesus.

If the spirit of the Antichrist is that which exalts itself above all else, demands the unquestioning loyalty reserved for God alone, and swaps out the sacrificial love of the Lamb for the coercive power of the sword, this administration fits the bill with terrifying precision. He has successfully convinced millions of believers that the only way to “save” Christianity is to abandon everything Christ actually taught.

But here is the devastating twist that his fiercest critics completely miss:

Donald Trump did not invent the Antichrist. He is just the most current, honest, unfiltered manifestation of it. If you believe that the spirit of the Antichrist will be defeated by simply voting him out, hoping for a polite Democrat, refreshing third-party candidate, or trusting in the pendulum swing of American elections, you have profoundly misunderstood how the Beast actually operates.

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The Beast Isn’t a Person. It’s an Empire.

To understand how deeply we have misunderstood the Antichrist, we have to go back to the origins of the apocalyptic language we are using. When the Apostle John wrote the Book of Revelation, he was a political prisoner exiled on the island of Patmos. He was writing to a network of persecuted, marginalized Christians living under the suffocating shadow of the greatest superpower the world had ever known, headed up by Nero.

When John wrote of a terrifying, multi-headed “Beast” rising from the sea, his original readers didn’t envision a cartoonish, end-times villain in a tailored suit waiting at the end of history. They knew exactly what John was describing. They were looking directly at the Roman Emperor.

But more importantly, they were looking at Rome itself.

In the biblical imagination, the Antichrist is not merely a rogue politician or a uniquely wicked individual. It is Empire.What is Empire? In the scriptural narrative—whether it manifests as Egypt, Babylon, or Rome—Empire represents any human system sustained by violence, coercion, economic exploitation, and military supremacy. It is the organization of society around the hoarding of wealth and the myth of “peace through violence” (the Pax Romana). It is a system that demands your ultimate allegiance and promises security, but only through the threat of the sword.

Look at the jarring contrast between the Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of Man:

• The Way of the Lamb: Self-emptying love, enemy forgiveness, servant leadership, radical generosity, and a kingdom where the last are first.

• The Way of the Beast: Coercion, military supremacy, the oppression of the weak, and the relentless pursuit of self-preservation at the expense of the marginalized.

When you understand that the Antichrist is fundamentally the spirit of Empire, the horrifying reality sets in: The throne itself is demonic, no matter who is sitting on it.

We have spent decades arguing over which politician might be the Beast, completely missing the fact that the Beast is the machinery of the State itself. The Antichrist is the system. The Antichrist is the superpower, no matter the person at its head.

The Fatal Illusion: You Cannot “Christianize” the Empire

This brings us to the most dangerous lie sold to modern believers across the political spectrum: the idea that if we just get the right people in charge, we can build a “Christian nation.”

History, scripture, and theology all scream the exact opposite. Christianity and the Empire cannot be brought together. The Empire can never be made Christian.

You cannot baptize coercion. You cannot sanctify violence. You cannot make a system built on military supremacy, border enforcement, and the hoarding of global wealth bow to a crucified carpenter who taught his followers to love their enemies, turn the other cheek, and give their cloaks away. The fundamental mechanisms of the state require the very things Jesus explicitly forbade.

When we try to force this unholy union, we lose the pure, unfiltered gospel. The true message of the Kingdom is radical and self-contained: Jesus. And? Nothing. But the Empire always demands an addition. It offers you Jesus and military might. Jesus and economic dominance. Jesus and the flag.

When Christianity climbs into bed with the Empire, Rome is never Christianized. Instead, Christianity is Romanized. Always.

Whenever the church tries to merge with the state, the faith inevitably mutates into a grotesque perversion of itself. It trades the towel of the servant for the sword of the executioner. It stops washing feet and starts demanding tribute. The cross is hollowed out, stripped of its sacrificial power, painted gold, and used as a weapon to bludgeon political opponents.

The moment Christianity achieves earthly power, it ceases to be the Way of Jesus and becomes just another functioning arm of the Beast. It becomes the exact thing it was born to subvert.

A Form of Godliness: The Lamb That Speaks Like a Dragon

The scriptural language of Empire warns us exactly how this abuse happens. In Revelation 13, John describes a second beast that rises from the earth. The terrifying thing about this beast isn’t that it looks monstrous—it is that it has “two horns like a lamb, but it spoke like a dragon.” This is the ultimate, demonic subversion. The Empire knows that naked, brutal tyranny is hard to sustain. If a leader simply demands that you bow to a golden statue, the faithful will resist. So, the Empire adapts. It puts on the fleece of the Lamb. It co-opts the vocabulary, the aesthetics, and the symbols of the Christian faith, while fully maintaining the voice of the Dragon—the voice of power, intimidation, nationalism, and violence.

The Apostle Paul warned of a time when people would have a “form of godliness but denying its power” (2 Timothy 3:5). When Babylon wants to ensure your loyalty, it rarely asks you to outright reject Jesus. Instead, it asks you to domesticate Him. It asks you to make Him a mascot for the state.

Think about how this plays out in the halls of earthly power:

• The Empire will happily use the cross, as long as it can stamp it on a bomb or paint it on a fighter jet.

• It will proudly hold up a Bible, as long as it can use the text as a prop to justify closing borders, building walls, or exploiting the poor.

• It will host national prayer breakfasts, invoking the name of God while quietly funding proxy wars and expanding the military-industrial complex.

The Empire abuses the form of Christianity to anesthetize the masses. It strips away the radical, self-emptying power of the gospel—the power that actually heals and liberates—and leaves behind a hollow, nationalist skin-suit. This counterfeit religion demands your worship and your vote, promising that if you just hand over the keys to the kingdom, it will protect your cultural dominance.

But a dragon wearing a lamb’s skin is still a dragon. And a state that wields the cross as a sword is still the Antichrist.

The Sword Behind the Back

This brings us to the most uncomfortable truth of all. If the Antichrist is the machinery of Empire, then any leader who stands at its helm is, by definition, participating in an antichrist system. It does not matter if the person wielding the power is a conservative, a progressive, an independent, or a third-party idealist.

No matter who rules the Empire, the Empire runs on one fundamental mechanism: power over and against others.

This is the direct, unyielding opposite of the way of Jesus, which is defined entirely by co-suffering, self-sacrificing love. We can dress the state up in the language of human rights, national security, or traditional values, but behind the back of every empire is the sword of violence. Every law, every border, every tax, and every geopolitical mandate is ultimately backed by the threat of lethal force, coercion, imprisonment, and death to enemies.

• A polite president launching a “surgical” drone strike with or without acceptable collateral casualties is still wielding the sword.

• A progressive leader enforcing domestic policies through armed federal agencies is still relying on coercion.

• A conservative leader securing borders with razor wire and tear gas is still operating by the logic of the Beast.

When you strip away the partisan rhetoric, the state is simply a monopoly on violence. And you cannot use the Devil’s tools to build God’s house.

Dropping the Ring of Power

So, where does this leave us? It leaves us with the stark realization that we cannot defeat the Antichrist by simply electing a better one.

The Kingdom of God can never be ushered in on the back of the Beast. When Jesus walked the earth, He didn’t try to seize control of Rome to mandate His teachings or pass better legislation. He offered a completely alternative way of living. His message was entirely self-contained: Jesus. And? Nothing. No earthly throne required, let alone allowed. No military backing needed, let alone permitted.

As long as we place our ultimate hope in the ballot box, believing that the right earthly ruler will save us, we are still bowing to and serving the Empire. The call for the Christian is not to try and seize the ring of power to use it for good. The ring of state power is forged in violence; its very nature is domination. It will always corrupt the one who wears it.

The call is to recognize the ring for what it is, reject its demonic allure, and step out of Babylon entirely.

“But the Empire Would Collapse!”

When you present this reality, the immediate, panicked objection from modern believers is almost always the same: “But if we actually governed the country according to the Sermon on the Mount—if we turned the other cheek, disarmed our military, loved our enemies, and gave away our wealth—the Empire wouldn’t survive! It would be conquered!”

To which the only honest theological answer is: Yes. It would.

Empires cannot survive on Christian values. To be an empire is to be fundamentally antichrist.

The early Christians understood this perfectly. For the first three centuries of the faith, believers widely recognized that you could not hold a seat of earthly power and still faithfully follow Jesus. You could not be a Roman magistrate who sentenced people to death, or a Roman soldier who slaughtered enemies, while claiming to follow the Savior who died for His enemies. The two realities were mutually exclusive.

If the Empire demands coercion, and Christ demands co-suffering love, you cannot have both. The early church knew that to hold a place of power within the Empire was to willingly give up one’s place within the local church.

The local church was never meant to be a voting bloc, a lobbying group, or a chaplain to the state. It was designed to be a true prototype of communion—a radically alternative society living out the peace, generosity, and self-sacrificing love of Christ right in the middle of a violent world.

The question isn’t whether we can save the Empire. The question is whether we are finally willing to let it go.

(I don’t claim that what follow is the only way one would read Genesis if they came to the Bible without being told the “right” way to read it, but I offer the following as a way the Bible may begin to come across in a completely unadulterated reading.)

I imagine that if you began to read your Bible without being told how to read it, you would start at the beginning.

And as you start at Genesis without any background—no sermons, no categories, no assumptions—you wouldn’t come to it with one of the top questions most people bring:

“Is this literal or symbolic?”

You wouldn’t even know there was a debate. You’d be reading a book you picked up off a shelf with no idea what kind of book it is. Is this history? Is it myth? Is it moral storytelling like Aesop’s Fables?

You wouldn’t have a lens yet.

And without that lens, you wouldn’t even know whether the author is getting any of the details “right”—or whether that question even makes sense for this kind of writing.

So you’d just… read.

A Community at the Beginning of Everything

Right away, you would notice something curious in the opening pages: the language is strangely communal.

God speaks like a “we.”

Humanity is made as a “they.”

Yet somehow, the “they” of humanity reflects the “they” of God in a single image.

²⁶ And God said, “Let us make humankind in our image and according to our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of heaven, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every moving thing that moves upon the earth.” ²⁷ So God created humankind in his image, in the likeness of God he created it, male and female he created them. - Genesis 1

Even if you couldn’t explain it precisely, you’d feel the impulse in the text:

Community and communal identity is there from the very start.

And you’d see it again when marriage is described—a man leaves one community to form a new community with a woman.

Humans are shown as individuals, yes, but they seem to only be themselves within relationship with other humans.

Genesis opens with:

• A God of community

• A humanity of community

• God and humanity in community

The First Fracture

Then something happens.

Eve is enticed toward an action that is entirely self-referential—something done for personal satisfaction. It’s the first moment in the story where the “I” pulls away from the “we.”

And the community fractures.

Not because God withdraws, but because Adam and Eve do.

If you knew nothing about theology, you wouldn’t call this “original sin.”

You’d simply see a story about the breakdown of relationship—the loss of togetherness, the beginning of alienation.

And you would have to wonder about how God handles things.

Are God’s actions in Genesis 3 simply a punitive tit-for-tat to rebalance some justice system we don’t know about?

Or is he taking actions which will ultimately lead to the reunification of community?

A Book About Broken Family

You turn to Genesis 4, and things escalate quickly.

Cain murders Abel, and the line that echoes from that moment is:

“Am I my brother’s guardian?”

If you’d never read Scripture before, you might decide, as you continue reading Genesis, that Cain’s question turns into the thesis of the whole book.

“Can’t I just care about me? Do I have to care for others?”

Genesis seems to be asking it over and over:

• What happens when siblings don’t care for each other?

• What happens when they do?

• What happens when relatives deceive each other?

• What happens when they reconcile?

• What happens when humans choose self over community?

• What happens when they choose each other instead?

From Cain and Abel to Jacob and Esau, Joseph and his brothers, families rise and collapse on the same fault line—

the fragile tension between care and indifference.

Genesis reads like an extended exploration of one truth:

Community is costly.
Fractured community is even costlier.

But Who Is This God?

Reading Genesis without inherited explanations leaves you with some open questions—unsettling ones.

Who is this God who seems able to wipe humanity from the earth—including infants—yet who also works mercy into every fracture?

Who judges people so fiercely, yet brings good out of the evil that people do?

So early in this pure reading, you probably shouldn’t try to resolve all those questions too quickly. For now, perhaps you simply note that the portrait of this God is complex, unfinished, and even contradictory.

You’d keep reading.

What Genesis Leaves You With

But even without answers to everything, one theme seems unmistakable if you’re reading Genesis as a first-time reader:

This is a story about the breakdown of community and the longing for its restoration.

It is a story that claims all humans are a great community of family, descending from a single set of parents.

This is a story about humans who forget how to care for one another, and a God who keeps calling them back.

A story in which the central moral is not hidden:

Things go terribly when we refuse to be our fellow humans’ protector.
Things go far better when we choose to care.

Perhaps this is Genesis before modern doctrines, before our debate, before the arguing schools of interpretation get their hands on it.

Read with fresh eyes, it looks less like the author intended a book about the origin of the universe and more like a book about the problem of human estrangement.

And the author seems to be creating a hope in the reader that broken community might someday be healed.

Those who come closest to God through prayer, silence, suffering, and lived encounter tend to speak of God primarily as love.

Those who come closest through systems, arguments, and institutional authority tend to speak of God in terms of order, rules, and control.

One way approaches God as a problem to be solved. It asks precise questions. It builds categories. It draws lines to protect truth from error. This approach values clarity, coherence, and definition. God is spoken about.

The other way approaches God as a presence to be encountered. It asks fewer questions and stays longer in silence. It is shaped by prayer, by loss, by love, and by endurance. This approach values transformation more than explanation. God is spoken from.

The Language of Those Who Have Been There

When you listen to the voices of Christian mystics, a striking consistency emerges.

They rarely begin with doctrine. They rarely linger on threat. They rarely seem interested in defending God.

Instead, they return again and again to love—not as a concept, but as a reality that rearranges the self.

Julian of Norwich, reflecting on visions received in the midst of illness and suffering, concluded that all shall be well because God is love—not because the world makes sense, but because love remains when explanations fail.

Meister Eckhart pushed language until it broke, insisting that God could not be grasped by concepts at all. What remains beyond knowing, he suggested, is union.

Teresa of Avila described prayer not as mastery but as friendship—an ongoing intimacy that reshapes the heart over time.

John of the Cross wrote that love matures precisely where certainty collapses, and that darkness itself can be a form of divine nearness.

These figures were not sentimental. Many endured suspicion, isolation, and suffering. Yet the closer they came to God through experience, the less interested they became in fear-based religion.

Why Experience Softens Theology

There is a reason lived encounter tends to emphasize love.

Sustained prayer has a way of dismantling images of God that rely on threat. Silence exposes how often religious certainty is propped up by anxiety. Long attention erodes the idea that God must be—even, can be—controlled, defended, or contained.

Those who remain with God long enough often discover that the harsh images they inherited do not survive contact with presence.

This is not rebellion. It is refinement.

As Gregory of Nyssa observed centuries ago, the closer one moves toward God, the more God is known through unknowing. And unknowing has a way of humbling power rather than reinforcing it.

Meanwhile, the Systems Keep Speaking

Academic theology, especially when untethered from contemplative practice, often moves in the opposite direction.

It seeks certainty. It prizes resolution. It organizes mystery into frameworks that can be taught, tested, and enforced. God may still be called love—but love is frequently subordinated to explanations about justice, wrath, hierarchy, or control.

When, in reality, everything else subordinates itself to love. Love is not constrained or restrained by justice, wrath, hierarchy, or control. All of that, and all that is, ultimately subordinates itself to love.

Even someone like Thomas Aquinas, whose work remains foundational to schools of theology, ultimately confessed that everything he had written felt like straw compared to what he had encountered in his direct experience of God. The system reached its limit. Experience did not.

A Quiet but Telling Pattern

Across centuries, cultures, and theological disputes, a quiet pattern persists:

• Theology rooted in encounter tends to sound like love.

• Theology rooted in abstraction tends to sound like management.

This does not mean doctrine is unnecessary. It means doctrine is at its best when it bows to experience rather than replacing it.

Or said more plainly:

The closer theology gets to lived encounter, the less it needs fear.

The farther it gets, the more fear fills the gap.

Why This Still Matters

This distinction matters because many people leave faith not because they have encountered God and found God lacking—but because they have encountered religion that never made room for love to become real.

If Christianity is to speak meaningfully today, it needs fewer arguments and more witnesses. Fewer explanations and more people who have stayed with God long enough to be softened by the staying.

Not everyone is called to be a mystic. But every theology worth trusting should be recognizable to those who have been changed by love.

And if a theology of God grows harsher the closer you examine it, that alone may be a sign worth taking seriously.

“Fixing our eyes on Jesus, the originator and perfecter of our faith.”

—Hebrews 12:2

It’s a beautiful line.

It’s also a dangerous one—depending on how we hear it.

Because the word perfecter carries baggage. Heavy baggage.

Perhaps made the worst for many at the holiday season as people are looking for the “perfect” gifts, while they hope for a “perfect” family time, spent around a “perfect” meal.

We hear perfect and immediately imagine flawlessness. Moral precision. Spiritual mastery. A life with no cracks, no contradictions, no unresolved tensions. And whether we say it out loud or not, we often assume that this is the direction faith is supposed to move us toward.

More maturity.

More certainty.

More victory.

Less mess.

And quietly, almost invisibly, perfection becomes the goal.

That’s the problem.

The Weight We Were Never Meant to Carry

When perfection becomes the imagined aim of faith, the journey itself becomes exhausting.

Every failure feels like regression.

Every doubt feels like disqualification.

Every unfinished place in us feels like proof that we’re doing it wrong.

Perfection leaves no room for being human along the way.

It subtly turns faith into a performance—something we must polish, refine, and present as acceptable. And the longer we try to live under that weight, the more faith starts to feel like pressure rather than promise.

But here’s the quiet relief hidden in the text itself.

What Perfecter Actually Means

The Greek word translated as perfecter in Hebrews 12:2 comes from telos.

Telos does not mean moral flawlessness.

It does not mean “error-free.”

It does not mean spiritual superiority.

It means end.

Completion.

Destination.

Jesus is not being described as the one who pressures our faith into perfection, but as the one who brings it to its end.

A more faithful way to hear the verse might be this:

Jesus is the beginner and finisher of our faith.

The starter and the one who sees it through.

The origin and the destination.

Or, as Scripture puts it elsewhere:

The Alpha and the Omega.

Faith Is a Journey, Not a Scorecard

When telos is understood as destination rather than perfection, something profound shifts.

Faith is no longer about achieving an impossible standard.

It becomes about being faithfully carried from beginning to end.

The emphasis moves away from our performance and back to God’s faithfulness.

Jesus does not stand at the finish line evaluating how clean our journey was.

He is the one who walks the road with us—and promises that the road actually leads somewhere.

Completion is not something we accomplish.

It is something we are brought into.

Why Perfection Keeps Failing Us

Perfection assumes that growth looks like upward movement without detours.

Real faith looks more like a long walk with switchbacks, injuries, rest stops, and wrong turns.

Perfection leaves no space for grief.

No space for unhealed places.

No space for the kind of wisdom that only comes through failure.

Completion, on the other hand, assumes process.

It assumes time.

It assumes patience.

It assumes that becoming whole is not the same thing as becoming flawless.

Letting Go of the Wrong Finish Line

When we release the demand for perfection, faith becomes less about arriving right and more about being led well.

The goal is not to become spiritually impressive.

The goal is to become fully formed in love.

The promise of Hebrews 12 is not that Jesus will make us perfect—but that he will not abandon us halfway through what he started.

He begins the work.

He holds the thread.

He brings the story to its end.

And that end is not a performance review.

It is home.

A Gentler Hope

Maybe faith was never meant to feel like pressure to improve ourselves endlessly.

Maybe it was meant to feel like trust—

that the One who began this work in us

will carry it through

to its completion.

Not because we finally got everything right.

But because love finishes what it starts.

*These reflections are not meant to be disparaging of the pastor who spoke. He is a great person, and offered a great message. He did not use the word perfect in any necessarily negative sense. But as I listened, it sprang to my mind how many people hear the word “perfect” read from Scripture and their thoughts go straight to the stressfulness of performance rather than the restfulness of trust in the alpha and omega of our faith.

How would you read Scripture if no one had ever told you how to read it?

Imagine this with me.

You know nothing about the Bible—not its structure, not its interpretations, not its controversies. One afternoon you’re wandering through a bookstore, simply looking for something new. But this bookstore is strange: no categories, no tidy labels, no “Religion,” “Fiction,” or “History.” Nothing to even set you up to pre-judge a book. There are only shelves of books, side by side, in no particular order, without distinction.

You’re moving slowly down an aisle, reading the spines, when one title catches your eye:

The Bible.

In this case, it is bound like any other paperback. It is unassuming and nothing about its appearance makes you think it is more than any other book.

You pick it up. Thumb through it. Its thickness is a little intimidating, but something keeps your attention. So you buy it. You take it home. And later that evening, you open to the very first page:

“In the beginning, God created…”

Now pause here.

Before we go any further in this series, sit with that simple scenario.

Forget the sermons, the study notes, the inherited assumptions.

Forget the arguments, the apologetics, the categories of “this is literal” and “that is symbolic.”

If this book found you for the first time today—what would you see?

What would you feel?

What would you expect?

Before I offer any reflections or frameworks, I want you to hold the question yourself.

What would it be like to read Scripture with no pre-knowledge?

The tradition spoke of two paths that work together, each illuminating a different side of the same mystery.

The first is cataphatic knowing—the way of words, images, metaphors, and names.
This is prayer as most of us learned it: speaking honestly, imagining boldly, expressing ourselves with language that reaches toward God.

The second is apophatic knowing—the way that steps beyond words.
This is the prayer of silence, unclenching, and release. It’s what happens when we gently set aside our images and stop trying to frame God with our thoughts. Instead of reaching, we rest.

These two modes are companions. When both are honored, prayer becomes something fuller—less about performing or achieving and more about inhabiting a relationship with honesty and openness.

Positive and Negative Pressure in Prayer

One way to feel the difference between the two is through the language of pressure.

Cataphatic prayer carries a kind of positive pressure.
I fill the moment with my voice, my questions, my longing, my imagination. I bring the fullness of my inner life forward, giving shape to what I feel and how I see.

Apophatic prayer, by contrast, creates negative pressure.
Here, I empty my hands.
I allow my words to fall away.
I release the urge to grasp or describe.
I let stillness expand where language once lived.

As I pour myself out, a gentle vacuum forms—not a void, but a clearing. A receptive space where something not-of-my-making can move.

And in that cleared space, I simply wait.
I rest.
I notice what arrives without my control.

This contrast—filling and emptying, offering and opening—gives prayer a fuller texture. It honors both expression and surrender, intention and spaciousness.

The Lost Art of Spaciousness

The apophatic style of theology and prayer once held a cherished place in Christian spirituality. The early contemplatives believed that silence was not a lack of prayer but a richer form of it. They trusted that the empty space around the words was where God often spoke most intimately.

But over time, especially after the conflicts of the Reformation and the intellectual confidence of the Enlightenment, silence began to feel unsafe. Mystery felt too imprecise. Anything that resisted definition or rational clarity grew suspicious.

Prayer became increasingly word-driven. Theology turned argumentative. Spiritual truth was expected to be clear, provable, defensible—systematic.

In the process, we lost something fragile and vital:
the freedom of not knowing.
the permission to rest without resolving.
the ability to meet God without forcing clarity.

Yet the early contemplative tradition—the one that held both word and silence together—insists that God moves precisely in the places we cannot articulate—inside the gaps, the pauses, the unguarded moments when our certainties soften.

The God Who Fills the Gaps

Apophatic knowing was never about refusing knowledge; it was about making room for a kind of knowledge that words cannot carry.

It trusts that God speaks both through what we can say and through what we cannot.
It remembers that silence is not a retreat from meaning but an entry into a different kind of meaning.

Think of music:
if you remove the rests, the notes lose their shape.
Silence is what makes the sound comprehensible.

Apophatic prayer is a contemplative rest.
It’s the clearing in the middle of the forest.
It’s the uncluttered moment where you finally notice the light.

It’s not passive—it’s receptive.
It’s not disengaged—it’s attentive in a different register.

When we allow the space to open, God fills it with something we couldn’t have manufactured.

The Wild Knowing Called Faith

Here’s the paradox: stepping into unknowing doesn’t diminish understanding. It deepens it.

The tradition has always had a name for this deeper kind of knowing: faith.

Not the version that anxiously demands perfect insight.
Not the rigid version that treats belief as a checklist.

Faith, in the contemplative sense, is:

• a trust that doesn’t panic in the presence of mystery

• a willingness to remain open rather than certain

• a spaciousness inside the soul that welcomes the ungraspable

• a confidence that does not rely on control

This kind of knowing isn’t threatened by what cannot be explained. It doesn’t cling desperately to its own ideas. It simply rests in the One who holds all things—even the questions.

“[It’s] a kind of knowing that doesn’t need to know and yet doesn’t dismiss knowledge; a kind of knowing that doesn’t need to hold everything itself because, at a deeper level, it knows it is being held.” - Richard Rohr

Spacious Prayer

There is an undying, contemplative tradition that invites us to remember that prayer has always had more than one register. Words, images, longings, and imagination have their honored place. Yet alongside them lives another practice—quieter, more open, less shaped by intention: the apophatic way.

This is the way of resting rather than reaching, of letting silence speak, of allowing the empty spaces around our thoughts to become a meeting place with God. It does not ask us to abandon language—only to loosen our grip on it. It lets prayer breathe.

Renewing our awareness of this apophatic dimension can open something subtle but significant. It reminds us that communion with God is not limited to what we can express. It can also unfold in the places where expression falls away.

From here, another invitation quietly emerges: to recover the apophatic side of theology as well.

For centuries, Christian reflection held both together—clarity and mystery, language and silence, doctrine and the recognition that every doctrine points beyond itself. Theology in its healthiest form acknowledges that its words are signs, not cages; guides, not walls.

The apophatic tradition doesn’t diminish what we can say about God.
It simply keeps us honest about what we cannot say.

It makes room for humility.
It allows mystery to remain a companion instead of a threat.
It reminds us that the aim of theology is not mastery but wonder.

To renew our life of prayer in this way—and to allow our theology to share that same spaciousness—is to step again into a way of knowing God older than our debates and larger than our definitions.

A way where silence is not absence but presence.

A way where unknowing becomes a form of trust.

A way where God meets us not only through the words we speak,
but through the room we leave for what cannot be spoken.

And in that room, something essential can be heard again.

They’ve started over so often
their hands know the feel of dawn—
coffee cooling on the railing,
heart set to carry on.

They don’t talk much of wisdom,
they just mend what’s torn and lean—
their knowing lives in doing,
their faith in what’s unseen.

They plant the same small garden,
though frost may have its say;
they trust the sun to find them
in its roundabout way.

They sing when skies are heavy,
laugh when the work is long;
their prayers are more like breathing,
their lessons more like song.

They’ve failed enough to be gentle,
lost enough to be kind,
and found that every ending
is just another time to find.

So here’s to the ones still starting,
though tired, they begin again—
seasoned by all their breaking,
beginners until the end.

What are you looking for?

The words land deep,
bypass every easy answer,
probe the hunger
beneath the hunger—
not what they want
but what they’re dying without.

They stammer back geography—
Where are you staying?—
as if his address
could house the homesickness
that pulled them
from their nets.

Come and see, he said,
the only answer
to unanswerable seeking,
the invitation that opens
every door worth entering.

But first that question
floating in the morning air,
filtering into spaces
we’re afraid to name:

What are you looking for?

Are you seeking comfort
or the breaking that remakes you?
Quick answers
or questions that won’t let go?
A teacher
or transformation?

What are you looking for?

The question that begins
every honest journey,
every prayer that costs us something,
every step toward the One who asks
not because he doesn’t know
but because Love always longs
to hear us speak
our deepest hope.

Who do you say that I am?
The turpentine question
that strips from the surface
everything borrowed,
leaving only what we've learned
in our own dark nights.

To the blind man crying out,
he could have simply healed—
instead: What do you want
me to do for you?
Love chose to listen
rather than impose—
it restored agency
over efficient mercy.

Do you want to get well?
The question that terrifies,
that asks if we're ready
to release familiar pain,
and enter the unknown
of our own healing.

Why are you weeping?
Whom are you seeking?
Even resurrection begins
with curiosity about our grief,
about what we've lost,
and who we hope to find
in the garden of our sorrow.

Why are you afraid?
Not accusation
but invitation
to name the deep waters
that threaten to drown us.

Even his dying posed a question:
Why have you forsaken me?
God asking God
the question we're afraid to voice.

This is how Love walks among us—
wanting to hear us more
than needing to be heard,
drawing from us what we
barely knew we carried,
teaching us that the deepest knowing
comes not from answers given
but from questions
that call us home.

For curiosity is love's deepest form—
not born from ignorance
but from abundance,
the choice to listen
even when all is known,
to invite the voice
even when the heart
is already held.

Love chooses questions
over statements.
It leans in with wonder,
makes space for halting truths,
for stories wrapped in shame,
for the ache of being seen
and still wanted.

Every genuine question
is a small resurrection,
calling forth the buried voice,
the silenced song.
It says: you matter enough
to be wondered about,
your thoughts deserve
the light of speaking.

Curiosity refuses
to assume, to possess, to close—
it's the open palm, the tilted head,
the pause that says
tell me more,
let me witness
your unfolding.

The deepest love says
no matter what I know,
I still want to hear from you—
your fears, your hopes, your thoughts.
Speak, and let us
share this moment.

So when shame would seal our lips,
remember that ancient voice
still walking through our gardens,
asking not from need
but from desire to commune:
Where are you, beloved?
Come, tell me everything.

This is the gospel of questions,
the good news of holy curiosity:
every sincere tell me
is love choosing to listen,
choosing to wonder,
choosing us again
in the cool of evening.

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