Time for another edition of Faith Fallacies, where we take a look at ideas that people think are in the Bible or are part of Christianity but actually are not. Today’s fallacy is this: God won’t give you more than you can handle. Yup. That’s right. Not Biblical. Not Christian. And if you really think about what it’s saying, I don’t think we would want it to be anyway. Why is that? How is this well-intentioned statement of support unbiblical?... Read more
Super Bowl LVIII just finished about an hour ago—a phenomenal matchup between two very talented teams, and one of those games where it was a shame that someone had to lose. I’m not writing about the game, though. What I am writing about are the two He Gets Us ads that ran during the broadcast. In case you didn’t watch the game or missed the ads, the first was a sixty second commercial featuring a series of pictures. In each... Read more
Okay, men, we’ve gotta have a talk. It’s about Taylor Swift. Actually, I guess it goes way deeper than that—but the whole Taylor Swift/Travis Kelce thing is an appropriate starting point. Backlash Even if you don’t follow the NFL or pop culture, you’ve probably heard about the backlash Taylor Swift has gotten for being shown on screen so often during Kansas City Chiefs football games. Even if you’re not a sports or pop culture fan, this is about all of... Read more
Can we talk about the death penalty for a minute? An Execution in Alabama This past week, Alabama executed Kenneth Smith by nitrogen hypoxia, using an untested protocol. It’s interesting that a state deep in the Bible Belt was so worried that they might not be able to obtain necessary lethal injection drugs, they approved a new and untested execution method to get around it. Also interesting is that the American Veterinary Medical Association has declared nitrogen hypoxia an unfit... Read more
Last week I saw a quotation at @deadsoulpoetry on X (formerly Twitter) that said, “2000 years from now, people will not understand the difference between butt dial and booty call, and this is exactly why the Bible is hard to understand.” While I would personally replace “is hard to understand” with “takes work to understand,” the overall point is the same. Context matters. Butt Dial or Booty Call? Butt and booty are synonyms (or can be, at least). Call and... Read more
This is the first in what I plan on being a semi-regular feature at Not That Kind of Christian, titled Faith Fallacies. As the name suggests, each feature column will examine a different saying, belief, or idea which: you’ll hear from a large number of Christians, and is flat-out wrong. Today, we begin with one of my favorites: everything happens for a reason. Getting a Technicality Out of the Way Okay, so technically it’s true. Earthquakes happen because tectonic plates... Read more
Democrats are banking on the hope that the country would not take back a defeated president who inspired a violent mob to help him keep power and has been charged with more felonies than Al Capone. There was a time when such a line would have been unnecessary, even laughable, as part of a news story from a reputable news source. But there I was this past Wednesday, reading those very words in the New York Times. Strange days we’ve... Read more
Monday was Martin Luther King Jr. Day in the United States, when we remember a man who was committed to the cause of justice through nonviolence. It’s a day where those of us who are white tend to post black and white pictures of Dr. King looking all preacher-y and visionary, along with a nice, safe quotation that speaks very generally about love or peace or equality. We’re big fans of Martin Luther King Jr. That is, as long as... Read more
Can we talk about this past weekend’s Golden Globe awards for a minute? The Barbie Movie At one point during his monologue, comedian and host Jo Koy compared the movies Barbie and Oppenheimer with each other, saying: “Oppenheimer is based on a 721-page Pulitzer Prize-winning book about the Manhattan Project, and Barbie is on a plastic doll with big boobies.” And he didn’t stop there: “The key moment in Barbie is when she goes from perfect beauty to bad breath, cellulite, and flat feet. Or... Read more
January 6th is about an unstable, power-hungry, and paranoid leader with delusions of grandeur. He demanded complete fealty, showing no qualms about getting rid of someone if he sensed even the smallest hint of disloyalty in them…but he was loyal to nobody but himself. He craved power, and once he had it he was not afraid to do terrible things to keep it. Yes, one of the primary players in the events of January 6th was…King Herod. What? You thought... Read more
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