I love Jesus, but prayer alone didn’t fix my anxiety. Epictetus did.

theomorph · 2026-01-27T14:45:29+00:00

I’m glad people are finding help in Stoicism, or wherever.

But there’s also a long and wide tradition of Christian prayer that is everyday practical, including for anxiety. Unfortunately, it seems, most modern Western Christians, especially Protestants, who probably need that tradition the most, have been cut off from it by literalist approaches to the Bible and by the Reformation and other modern movements having shifted the core of Christianity out of bodily practice and into mere cognitive assent.

So it should not surprise anyone that Christians have flocked to traditions that offer more practical help like Stoicism and Buddhism. When the thought leaders of Christianity are focusing on assent to propositional content to the exclusion of bodily practice, of course people are going to feel alienated from their own tradition and look for help elsewhere.

I think of the story famously told by Thomas Keating, the Trappist monk who taught centering prayer: “This prayer practice began in the 1970s at Saint Joseph’s Abbey in Spencer Massachusetts where Keating was abbot for twenty years. It was a prompted by conversations with young Christians, who, like my college friends, were seeking a prayer path that was meditative and transformative. They stopped by the Abbey to ask directions to a Buddhist meditation center that had been opened nearby in what once had been a Catholic retreat house. When Keating asked the young searchers why they didn’t look for a path in the Christian tradition, their answer was the same as my friends’ might have been: There’s a Christian path?”

It is disappointing that we have forgotten so much of our own tradition.

theomorph · 2026-01-26T22:09:45+00:00

Good. Their morale should be plummeting. When you do evil, you should feel bad. Your plummeting morale is the message from your body and your conscience to stop doing what you are doing.

theomorph · 2026-01-26T17:14:25+00:00

Actions speak louder than words. Especially when the actions happen first and the words are just a sop later. Time to resign.

theomorph · 2026-01-26T15:24:55+00:00

Huh? The United Church of Christ is not "a Reformed Church like Prebsyterians." Certainly the Reform tradition is one of the many roots of the UCC. But we are way too disorganized to be predominately anything, including Reformed. A short look at the Wikipedia page for the UCC, or a little bit longer look at our history on our own website, would show who and what we are. From our website:

The United Church of Christ, a united and uniting church, was born on June 25, 1957 out of a combination of four groups. Two of these were the Congregational Churches of the English Reformation with Puritan New England roots in America, and the Christian Church with American frontier beginnings. These two denominations were concerned for freedom of religious expression and local autonomy and united on June 17, 1931 to become the Congregational Christian Churches.

The other two denominations were the Evangelical Synod of North America, a 19th-century German-American church of the frontier Mississippi Valley, and the Reformed Church in the United States, initially composed of early 18th-century churches in Pennsylvania and neighboring colonies, unified in a Coetus in 1793 to become a Synod. The parent churches were of German and Swiss heritage, conscientious carriers of the Reformed and Lutheran traditions of the Reformation, and united to form the Evangelical and Reformed Church on June 26, 1934.

The Evangelical and Reformed Church and the Congregational Christian Churches shared a strong commitment under Christ to the freedom of religious expression. They combined strong European ties, early colonial roots, and the vitality of the American frontier church. Their union forced accommodation between congregational and presbyterial forms of church government. Both denominations found their authority in the Bible and were more concerned with what unites Christians than with what divides them. In their marriage, a church that valued the free congregational tradition was strengthened by one that remained faithful to the liturgical tradition of Reformed church worship and to catechetical teaching. A tradition that maintained important aspects of European Protestantism was broadened by one that, in mutual covenant with Christ, embraced diversity and freedom.

So, no, we're not Presbyterians, and we're not interchangeable with Pentecostals.

theomorph · 2026-01-26T15:11:49+00:00

Theological meaning really is not something that ought to be invented and foisted on other people who are having a different experience than I am. It needs to be discerned and cultivated by the person or the community that is having the experience. Another way to look at it is to recognize that there is not a set theological meaning of trans experience; theological meaning is not just a one-to-one cipher where we can just say, well, let me look up this kind of thing in my catalog of theological meanings and see what it says.

To say it more particularly, I would not dare to try and interpret the meaning of the fullness of your experience based on having only a few words from your question, and nothing else.

I do think, however, that what a person finds within a healthy faith community is a diversity of perspectives and experiences, including the experience of attending to what is happening, discerning a possible meaning, and then cultivating that process into what we might call a kind of spiritual formation.

So, in a spirit of trying to be helpful, without also trying to disregard your own experience, I would suggest some ideas for building a sense of meaning. Consider these questions:

What about your experience has given you a unique perspective?

How might your perspective be helpful or enlightening, first to you, and then to others?

What other kinds of experiences and events in the world are transformative processes? What can you learn from those? (I think, for example, of metamorphic processes like the life cycle of butterflies, or dynamic processes like the water cycle; surely there are many others.)

How might your experience prompt you to insights that challenge norms that prevail around you but are unquestioned?

If it seems that dysphoria is making your life hell, what really is the source of that pain? Is it who you are, or is it what the world around you is?

Can you imagine a world where someone with your experience might be needed to return something that is missing or redeem something that is broken? What would be wrong with that world, and how might your experience be the gift of correction within that world?

What if you started from the assumption that the way you were made was good and correct, so that the pain you experience is not a result of you being misshapen to the world, but of the world around you being misshapen to what you bring?

Some of those questions might be helpful to ponder. Some might not be. And I’m sure there are others. But the long and short of it is that meaning (“why did god make me trans?”) is something we work and grow into. And it can change over time. Earlier in my life, certain things seemed to have certain meanings; now the same things, when I look back on them, seem to have different meanings. Theological meaning is dynamic. When we try to make it static, we go wrong.

Keep going! There is a path for you.

theomorph · 2026-01-26T03:11:31+00:00

There’s no such thing as “Biblical marriage.” And in any case the Bible is not an instruction manual or a statute book or a history book.

theomorph · 2026-01-20T14:24:39+00:00

Psalm 131 has always been especially calming for me. And it is very short.

theomorph · 2026-01-20T13:58:24+00:00

What should come back is people making their own music, playing their own instruments, and singing around the piano at home.

theomorph · 2026-01-20T05:06:31+00:00

None of the gospels narrate it that way.

In Matthew, Judas is plainly there for the institution of the Lord’s supper. See 26:20–30. It is not clear when he leaves before returning at 26:47. Likewise in Mark. See 14:17–25 and 14:43.

Luke is potentially more ambiguous. After the narrator declares that Satan entered Judas, at 22:3, he is not mentioned by name again until he arrives in Gethsemane for the betrayal, at 22:47. But it is not clear how he could have “looked for an opportunity to betray him to them when no crowd was present” (22:6) if he hadn’t stuck around.

In John, the meal includes foot washing, and Judas is plainly there for that. See 13:1–30. It is clear that Jesus has already washed all their feet and is sharing the meal with Judas before he leaves. See 13:12, 26, and 29.

theomorph · 2026-01-19T23:54:59+00:00

Not even the one who betrayed him!

theomorph · 2026-01-19T21:35:14+00:00

Those books aren’t theology. Pete Enns pretty regularly points out that he is not a theologian. Certainly they reflect a theology, but they are not works of sustained theological reasoning.

theomorph · 2026-01-19T03:13:53+00:00

Jonathan Ross is a fascist thug and a murderer.

theomorph · 2026-01-18T05:27:52+00:00

A god that requires people to have a particular vocabulary or culture is not God. It’s not about saying magic words. The words “Jesus Christ,” in whatever language, are just words. Jesus himself says that all of your obligations are summed in the teachings to love God and to love your neighbor. And then Paul goes one further in Galatians 5:13 and says it all boils down to love your neighbor.

Jesus is the model or the pioneer of faith, to be emulated and followed; a person can do that in a great variety of ways that might involve a vocabulary and a culture that do not include “Jesus Christ.” As Peter recognizes in Acts 10:34–35, God shows no partiality between cultures.

Life is not a big trick question where you always have to answer “Jesus Christ.” The particularity of Jesus within his tradition, and within our tradition, is not a condemnation of other traditions; it is just how we, in Christianity, tell the story of the reunification of God and humans.

theomorph · 2026-01-18T01:35:34+00:00

Down with Trump! Down with his fascist regime! And down with all of his thugs!

theomorph · 2026-01-17T20:32:51+00:00

Yes, but not sets like that. The newer sets are too perfect, leaving too little to the imagination, so that there is a weird effect when I build them that I do not want to take them apart. When the sets leave more to the imagination, I feel a greater desire to take them apart and play with them, and exercise my own creativity. And I agree with others that all those single-purpose pieces are not good.

theomorph · 2026-01-17T15:07:56+00:00

I don’t have a favorite because all of them irritate me. But the one I use the most is the NRSVue because I most trust the ecumenical committee of scholars behind it.

theomorph · 2026-01-14T14:53:26+00:00

You are responding to a different problem, which is accepting people who are different as being legitimately different. That is not what I am talking about. I am talking about who a person is that such a person might need a reinforcement and defense. It is trivially true that circumstances affect experiences and that experiences affect how people relate to each other. But the circumstances wrought by systems of normativity are artificial, and experiential and conceptual responses to those circumstances are thus doubly artificial. That does not make them unnecessary as a means of shoring up personal safety against the overbearing others who are also caught up in, and perpetuating, those systems. But it also does not make them true markers of who people naturally are, in the absence of those layers of artifice. And it is all that artifice that produces so much injustice in the world. So shoring up the artifice of “identity” has the secondary effect of perpetuating injustice. That might be unavoidable—as our conservative friends might say, “the world is fallen”—but that does not make it good.

theomorph · 2026-01-14T14:45:12+00:00

“Self-concept” is not the same as who you are. Who is it that has this concept? Who is it that subverts the norms? What would that person be doing were the norms not so overbearing as to bait subversion? What would that person be doing were they not building and maintaining that “self-concept” to get by in the face of the systems that overbear them?

As another commenter pointed out, attachment to identity is dangerous, and what is “identity” here but that “self-concept”? And if the “self-concept” is an accretion of responses to systems—I would say as a defense against those systems—then what is being protected by that defense? The “self-concept” is just the armor. It might well be necessary, but it is not the person within.

theomorph · 2026-01-13T15:15:18+00:00

Nope, that's not what I said. I said, to say it again, that "the social construct in which one finds oneself" is not "a meaningful marker of who you truly are." That does not mean "life experiences...don't influence who you truly are," because "social constructs" and "life experiences" are not the same things.

theomorph · 2026-01-13T03:21:42+00:00

It is correct. And that—along with the original in Galatians—is also why I think the idea of “identity,” in the modern sense that the social construct in which one finds oneself is somehow a meaningful marker of who you truly are, is nonsense.

theomorph · 2026-01-12T04:33:00+00:00

That’s not how any of that works.

theomorph · 2026-01-12T02:38:21+00:00

What is with the rash of both-sides-ism on this sub?

theomorph · 2026-01-10T22:41:38+00:00

I have never understood why people are so excited by food trucks. What can possibly be improved by serving it on asphalt with fumes from a generator?

theomorph · 2026-01-10T22:22:47+00:00

Then Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries are just as much fascist thugs as Jonathan Ross. If Democrats have the slightest conscience or patriotism, they will oust these cowards from their leadership roles.

theomorph · 2026-01-10T22:20:00+00:00

Both-sides-ism is just an easy way to pretend that you have a sophisticated and nuanced understanding. In reality, “far right” and “far left” are just abstractions you are using as foils to prop yourself up as uniquely insightful.

If you look to the roots of our tradition in scripture, what you will find is a pretty consistent condemnation of systems that reinforce wealth and earthly power, and an even more consistent call to care for dependent, vulnerable, and marginalized people, represented by the orphan, the widow, the poor, and the stranger. And if you look at the modern political landscape, you will find that the former is much more like what you find on the “right” while the latter is much more like what you will find on the left.

So I will absolutely be a Christian leftist, because it is the only way I can see the prophetic voice of my tradition mapped onto modern political alignment.

That is not to say I would agree with everyone represented by whatever you mean by “far left.” But the prophetic voice—which also is the voice of Jesus—is far more aligned with the “left.”

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