>Always lovely to see you here!

Well Jesus got to hang around with sex workers, so I'm just doing my bit to continue the tradition :p

I'm glad you're still doing the AMAs even after leaving the pulpit, though! The yearly 'Be kind' message is always a good reminder, whether it's religious or secular.

How can faith prey on science, when they regard fundamentally exclusive domains?

People argue against objective evidence from the perspective of faith, but I’d argue they are just sticking their fingers in their ears. Faith concerns belief, that which is unprovable or unknowable. Science concerns everything except that.

Edit: typos, and, I completely sympathize with your frustrations. Using religion to fight fact is counterproductive for everybody.

There is excellent historical evidence that Jesus of Nazareth was a real person who lived in the first century and died by crucifixion. This is well attested in Biblical and non-Biblical sources. Jesus-mythers are few and far between in serious academic circles.

I can definitely empathize with your reasons and hope that it means you are more present, healthy, and whole for your family for the rest of your Christmas visit with them this year, and just in general headed into 2023.

An argument in bad faith, ironically.

What do you mean by “tangible evidence”? There are plenty of philosophical arguments for God, some even using evidence from science as a premise (like the Kalam Cosmological Argument).

You are correct that God is changeless from a moral perspective. God might change in relation to things like time, for example, knowing today is Dec. 24th, and tomorrow knowing it is Dec 25th, but the God of the Old Testament was morally perfect and the God of the New Testament identically morally perfect.

I explain several factors that led to my burnout in this Twitter thread: https://twitter.com/RevEricAtcheson/status/1520095327046545408

I would add, on top of everything in that thread, that more and more I experienced my ethnic identity be perceived as bad and unwanted, to the extent I was told not to talk about how my ethnicity influences my faith because the church comes first. The frequency with which who I am became a weapon was more than I could bear.

I would have to think about what would lead me to return to the pulpit. I could see myself in interim ministry for pastors on sabbatical, or churches in need of a few months between pastors, but I do not know when or even if I will ever serve as a settled pastor of a church. But in the meanwhile, I continue to seek other opportunities to do ministry and live out my call.

Always lovely to see you here!

They are both fables.

Magic guys living in a place you can't see. Judging your good and bad deeds. Rewarding or punishing you.

Time to move past the fairy tales.

Ah I see, that makes a lot of sense. Your analogy helped a lot; thank you very much for responding and again, Merry Christmas!

The practice of Christianity has had many different priorities over the centuries, and most of those splits have had to do with some combination of theological, political, nationalistic, etc. priorities.

We treat other books thusly too--we highlight what we think is important and minimize what we think isn't. Like, it is Christmas Eve--think of just how many adaptations of A Christmas Carol there are.

With the church, those differences have felt much more dramatic because we so often say that salvation is at stake, persecute the losers, and so on, to our detriment and disrepute.

I have not performed an exorcism, merely watched Anthony Hopkins perform them in the movie Rite.

So its safe to say there were no Armenians at the Capitol?

Obviously as a pastor I believe that I am the best version of myself within Christianity, but I also understand how so many people have experienced Christianity in such a way that it made them worse people, or made them feel worse about themselves, that they felt they could not flourish within it. I mourn that as a terrible failure of the church for which we need to make amends.

Truth, Jesus teaches, sets us free, and if the truth of your lived experience is that Christianity has done much more harm than benefit to you, then an embrace of that truth can indeed set you free. Such truth, I think, is a more reliable cosmic insurance policy than a Sinners Prayer or a Bible tract. Truth is, was, and will forever be much more than that.

Have you ever had to exorcise a demon (or something of the sort)? Can you tell us how you did it and what happened?

(Edit: added second question)

To have faith that humans devised something so reliant on the faith that humans are faithful to honesty is a major flaw in the system of Christianity. I would argue that religious “faith”preys on science. The science of biology and chemistry in our DNA.

Edit: also, that’s a go away answer.

Hello and merry Christmas pastor,

Something I have been wondering since this evenings service and can’t get a straight answer from google and I hope you can answer this potentially complicated question.

What is the difference between all the different churches (catholic, Methodist, Protestant, United Methodist, etc etc etc); if it all Christianity then why the different churches if it is all coming from one book?

IIRC, the Unitarian Universalists do ordain atheist pastors, so an atheist would not (and should not) have to fake it there.

But more to the core of your point--yes, someone could fake their way thru the process, just as they could in other professions. There are doctors and nurses who discredit medical science, biologists who discredit life science, journalists who discredit journalism, etc. If they made it to where they are, of course there can be pastors who faked it as well. As to why that is, I think we as a society will make choices to reward fakery rather than truth for reasons of convenience. I wish that were not so, for my profession and for others.

1. Please read and explain Jeremiah 10 in correlation with Christmas.

2. What time of year do you think Jesus was born? and please support biblically why you think so.

3. What do you believe is more important, the celebration of Jesus’ birth, or the purpose of his death & Resurrection?

My brother and I had to make the really hard decision not to join our family for Christmas services when we came home this year. This message is really encouraging, as tough as that experience has been. For certain reasons, we just knew it wouldn't be healthy to go back in there.

Faith isn't the same as science, and neither are meant to take the place of the other.

Santa is a wintery Willy Wonka who runs an entire operation on non-union elf labor, trafficks in fossil fuels for ill-behaved kids, and mushes reindeer whose veterinary care is murky at best.

Jesus of Nazareth challenges us to sacrifice for others, even if it means all we own, so as to love others as we normally love ourselves so that we may be the very best versions of ourselves individually and collectively, in this world and the next.

You don't see a difference?

I believe in a God who only makes burritos from scratch.

How many children were sexually assaulted in the church this year?

How many innocent kids have you sexually abused?