Welcome to the Pub

A public website is a little daunting, although I'm sure it's a long way to fame from here. I have been wanting to write down thoughts I've had about life in the Spirit, in the Church, and in the world for a long time. Finally I feel as if the Lord himself gave me kind of a kick in the pants to get to it. So here we are.

The vision I have is of a cozy, friendly pub where people can come and relax and talk about the nature of Life. I am a christian, have followed Jesus for over forty years, but only recently have I had much occasion to talk to people, believers or not, about how I see this world and my lord. I think of myself as a reasonable person and I love discussing ideas, so I guess I'm an intellectual. I'm also a geek, and real-time discussions with people have often flustered me, but I think I need the practice trying to articulate my beliefs. Some of the postings will be carefully crafted, but some, I think, will be just trying to let the Spirit of God have his way with me. We'll see how that goes, I guess.

One other thing to point out at the beginning here is that I believe the truth of the Bible. It is the eternally being spoken word of God, and is a reliable guide to the truth that He personifies. I know there are problems with the english language versions I've read all my life, and as people like Bart Ehrman like to point out, there are even problems in the ancient greek manuscripts that we have; but these things only serve to put you on guard against what we used to call 'legalism' back in the Seventies. You cannot treat these writings as a piece of legislation, where you childishly pull at every word to get it to say what you want to believe. If you let the thing say what it says, I think you can know what it means. Sometimes it tells history in a very literal and straightforward way; other times it is incredibly poetic and allegorical. It's not really that hard to tell the difference. Come then, let us reason together.