No BS Bishop

We weren’t born to wage culture wars, nurse division, or protect our comfortable schedules. We were designed for one core purpose: to love our neighbor. In this episode, I dig into the parable of the Good Samaritan and what it actually means to live out its radical message today. When you're broken, bleeding, and lying in a ditch, your political opinions, religious differences, and cultural de...

I am stepping into the theological deep end to confront a big word with massive implications: eschatology. For too long, the ultimate destiny of humanity has been hijacked by comic book terrors, sensationalized "Left Behind" dogmas, and the toxic portrait of God as an abusive parent demanding love "or else" by threatening to vacuum the faithful away while leaving everyone else...

I believe unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final say on reality. For too long, religious dogma has short-sheeted love, turning it into cheap cotton candy on one hand and arming truth with fear, coercion, and threats of hell on the other. But truth doesn’t need threats attached to set you free, and genuine love comes with zero fine print, contracts, or pressure. In this episode, I...

Today, I want to talk to you about how love lights up the inner darkness of my life. What I've learned is that doing the heavy lifting of love has required of me a vigorous self-awareness, a stringent self-awareness: looking at my reality inside, not pretending, not denying, not hiding, and not projecting it out to others. When Jesus said, "If you look at a woman to lust after in your hea...

Hey, hey, hey, all you beautiful people. Today I wanna talk to you about love in a day of name-calling, insults, labels, and slander. We're in a day and time when our political climate has escalated into exactly that, and there's no sweet way to put it. You can put ice cream on top of a manure pile, but it does the manure no good and it sure ruins the ice cream. Jesus promised his disciple...

Today we are cutting straight to the heart of what real integrity looks like: love is moral courage, and moral courage is love. In modern culture and fundamentalist religion, moral courage is too often twisted into an excuse for self righteous bullying. People climb up on existential pulpits to tell everyone else how to live just so they can feel comfortable. That is not courage; it is cowardice....

Love is the only credible value of authentic spirituality. Our world around us here in the 21st century is veritably shouting and screaming for love. People are not looking for religious formulas or cliches; they are dying for a love that is wider, deeper, and higher than ordinary soundbites. Genuine empathy is the direct result of authentic love. To empathize is to enter the pathos, the pain of a...

Ever caught yourself yelling at someone in traffic who cannot even hear you? I have. And what I found in that moment was not just frustration. It was cynicism. That quiet assumption that everyone else is selfish, careless, or out to win some race that does not exist. But here is the turn. That moment became a teacher. Instead of matching the energy, I heard a different voice. Randy, love that pers...

In this episode, I talk about how love is the most human thing we can explore, expect, and experience. Anne Lamott said you can either practice being right or practice being kind. I say you can practice being right or practice being a lover. That's the choice in front of us, and I believe we're born from love, to love, and for love. Nothing else meets our deepest yearning like love does. I...

In this episode, I start by making it crystal clear that I'm not here to shove doctrine or dogma down anyone's throat. I believe Christianity has fallen on hard times because we've become obsessed with certainty when we should be focused on honest, authentic, mountain climbing love. So I begin with my personal "Love's Creed," a reminder that I'm alive to love, unavail...

Choosing to love all eight billion people on this planet is confusing and conflicting, but do it anyway. The reward is living for a higher purpose than meeting your own needs, preventing life from shrinking into something dark and unlivable. My life expanded at the speed of love whenever I pushed past my own selfishness. Whether traveling through Russia, Ukraine, and Mexico, or encouraging young p...

I am alive to love, and I am unavailable for anything less than love. The way of love is my favorite high-priority subject, serving as my North Star and my lifelong commitment that I am not on this earth for hate, nor am I breathing, eating, and sleeping to regain energy for causing pain. Everything else devolves into BS, and walking this path has been an imperfect leaning into gravity, hoping it...

If there is one subject I want to spend the rest of my life proclaiming, unpacking, and living, it’s this: unfailing, unrelenting love. In this episode, we continue our deep dive into love versus religious and church trauma. As someone who has pastored for over 50 years, I want to say something directly to you: no church or religious institution has a inherent right to exist based on legacy alone....

I tackle a deeply urgent issue facing so many today: the antidote to religious trauma. Over the last quarter-century, upwards of 40 million people have walked away from the traditional church. When you look under the hood of institutional religion, it’s not hard to see why. For generations, people have been fed a theology rooted in fear, guilt, and the toxic idea that they are born cursed—a mindse...

“It is remarkable how little doctrine relates to love.”Dallas Willard once observed that doctrinal statements rarely say anything about love, and that churches have often failed to help people become genuinely loving. His challenge is simple and piercing: "We do not, in any effectual way, make love our aim." That quote has been echoing in my heart because I believe it names one of the de...

I believe all we really need is a revolution of love. Not a sentimental love. Not a passive love. A tenacious, exuberant love that lays down the swords of politics, certainty and fear in order to pursue something greater. I believe love isn't something we simply hope for—it's something we choose to do every day. In this episode, I explore what it means to pursue progress instead of perfect...

I've come to believe that an uninjured love doesn't exist. If you've chosen to love people, you've also chosen to experience disappointment, rejection, misunderstanding, and heartbreak along the way. But what if those injuries aren't the end of your story? What if an injured love, when it's allowed to heal, becomes a passionate love? In this episode, I invite you to reject...

What does it mean to love the world the way God loves the world? For years, many of us have been taught to keep this world at arm's length, as though loving it somehow distracts us from heaven. But Jesus said, "For God so loved the world." I believe it's time we take those words seriously. In this episode, I reflect on the beauty of creation, the difference between loving the wor...

What if the most important commandment isn't a list of rules, but a single word: love? In this episode, I reflect on a powerful quote from Saint Augustine: "Love God and do whatever you please." At first glance, that might sound reckless, but Augustine's deeper point is that a life genuinely shaped by love naturally moves toward what is good, beautiful, and life-giving. Together,...

Fear is what actually creates a loveless life. I don't believe anybody is born to hate. We're born to love. But when we live too long in the zone of fear and hurt, hate can become part of the curriculum. I've lived there, and on this episode I want to tell you about finding the exit signs. As Father's Day approaches, I share some of my own story growing up in a dysfunctional family...

What if the walk of faith is actually much simpler than we've made it? In this episode, I explore one of Jesus' first instructions after the resurrection: "If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven." I believe those words point us directly to the walk and way of love. Too often, we've become experts at pointing out failures, assigning guilt, and drawing lines between...

Love is not easy. I've spent years saying that it's a mountain climb, a marathon, and a lifelong commitment to choosing something better than hate. But in this episode, I want to flip the script just a little. We live in a time when outrage, division, and negativity seem to be everywhere. Hate can feel powerful. It can even feel good in the moment. But I want to suggest that we need someth...

In this episode, I’m talking about something I believe with my whole heart: spirituality rooted in love should offer a vision for the world, not spend all its energy raging against it. Far too much modern faith has become a constant drumbeat of blame, fear, and outrage, and I believe we’ve lost sight of the central message Jesus actually gave us. I reflect on the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus’ prayer for u...

I want to challenge you with what I believe is the greatest mountain climb in all of life: love. Not lightweight love. Not sentimental love. I’m talking about the kind of love that asks everything from us. The kind of love Paul writes about in 1 Corinthians 13 when he says faith, hope, and love remain, but the greatest of these is love. I spend time unpacking why I believe that chapter has far mor...

This week, I want to ask you a question that has stayed with me for years. Jesus said, “You are the light of the world.” Well then, if we are the light of the world, why is everything so dark? That question became the doorway for this entire conversation. Not a conversation about blame or shame, but a conversation about what light is actually for. I believe we have often mistaken our role in the w...