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Gather Up the Leftovers. Let Nothing Go to Waste.

Americans waste food on a grand scale. Though figures are appalling–30-40% of our food supply gets wasted, by USDA estimates, about 60 million tons a year, worth over $200 billion – big numbers fail to change behavior. First-year students in a seminar I teach on the history of American diet trends are reliably conscientious about…
June 30, 2025
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The Creed and a Christian Worldview

Anniversaries matter. If you’re a cancer survivor, each year of remission offers a fresh lease on life. If you’re married, every annual commemoration of your wedding is an opportunity to recommit to your vows. Your work anniversary may include a bonus or raise. The anniversary of a loved one’s death summons both grief and remembrance.…
June 27, 2025
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How Coaching Youth Sports Helped My Thinking about Christian Character

The most important activity that helped refine my view of character education was not taking classes on epistemology and ethics from Dallas Willard. Nor was it taking all my other Ph.D. classes that addressed virtue or moral development. It was coaching youth league sports. Granted, readings in philosophy, ethics, and theology led me to recognize…
June 25, 2025
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AI and the Grammar of Descent

Recently, there’s been even more press than usual about AI proliferation and its associated risks. The hype has been driven, in part, by the now infamous Ross Douthat interview with Daniel Kokotajlo, executive director of the A.I. Futures Project, in which Kokotajlo suggests that AI could take over civilization—and “then kill all the humans”—by 2027.…
June 24, 2025

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The Hell Dynamic

Lately, I have been especially attentive to outbreaks, like a rash, of what I call to myself the “Hell dynamic.” It is a spirit of domination and destruction, in that order. It begins with a struggle for power, exerted with greater or lesser straightforwardness. (This is “domination.”) It ends with a reckoning full of blame and…
October 9, 2023
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If You Want to Save Souls, Leave Bigger Tips

In the light of eternity, the light in which everything should always be viewed, what matters is the heart and the choices that flow from it. We are placed on this earth to educate our loves. As St. Paul famously says, “If I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if…
October 5, 2023
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The Body is Not (Merely) Utilitarian

I teach a course entitled “Living Well” as a part of our foundational core (i.e., general education) at my Christian university. Often, I’ll poll my classes regarding who has heard sermons or engaged in Bible studies relating to a theology of the body, or more specifically, self-care. My unscientific data collection has yielded dismal results,…
September 28, 2023
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Is Jesus Bad for Student Retention? Leaving the Ninety-Two for the One

I stood in the student-led chapel service singing along with a worship song that proclaimed, “Oh, the overwhelming, never-ending reckless love of God. Oh, it chases me down, fights till I’m found, leaves the ninety-nine.” Though drawing on the familiar imagery of the Parable of the Lost Sheep (Matthew 18:10-14; Luke 15:4-7), the words of…
September 27, 2023
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Why Do We Keep Saying, “Yes”

While trying to keep my feet as I hefted the burden of the academic semester onto my back this year, shocked again—just like every year—as to how heavy that weight can be, I received an email that had a new opportunity inside of it. It wasn’t even a direct ask. It was only a mention,…
September 26, 2023
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Ripe with Opportunity: Spiritual Formation in Collegiate Athletic Departments

Intercollegiate athletics are often assumed to be a vehicle for character formation without thoughtful consideration of empirical research or underlying pedagogies.Sean Strehlow, “Coaching for Christ: How Faith Informs Coaching and Christian Education,” Christian Scholar’s Review (blog), January 17, 2023, https://christianscholars.com/coaching-for-christ-how-faith-informs-coaching-and-christian-education/. In college athletic departments, resources surrounding spiritual formation in sports are similarly sparse. Although Christianity…
September 25, 2023