Crucible of Thought

What happens when you've spent decades being shaped by God - and you finally feel ready to pour into others - but you have no one to pour into, and you're running out of time? In this episode, Brandon wrestles with a growing sense of uselessness: the institutional church isn't making disciples the way it should, he can't return to it in good conscience, and community outside its walls is nearly im...

If you grew up in evangelical Christianity, you probably learned a version of prayer that treats God like a cosmic vending machine - put in the right coin, get out the answer you want. But what if that's not how prayer works at all? This episode explores two very different theologies of what Jesus came to do, and how each one shapes what we expect when we pray. If you're deconstructing you...

Your brain is lying to you about God - and the consequences are devastating. In this episode, we explore the deeply human psychological habit of “tokenizing” - reducing complex realities to simple mental shortcuts - and reveals how we inevitably do this with God, collapsing the infinite Divine into a neat little package of doctrine, denomination, and politics that fits comfortably in our minds. Bu...

Did you grow up feeling really squeamish about Jesus' assertion from the Sermon on the Mount that if our eye offends us, we are supposed to gouge it out? I sure did. It seems particularly over the top, even for a radical like Jesus, and I reckon that we'd assume the only people to follow that teaching are probably mentally disturbed. But I think there's something really deep and really...

I've been so deeply disappointed in watching famous preachers and worship leaders kissing the ring of this antichrist administration. The Pentagon worship services established by Pete Hegseth are not in keeping with the founding and the character of the United States of America, and the preachers and worship leaders supporting them have abandoned any pretense of serving the church universal, and h...

Some things are Truth, but not true. What if everything most Christians have assumed about Armageddon is wrong, and if our holy calling is to love our enemies and lay down our lives in peace, not to march out in war against them? You can view this as a video at https://youtu.be/3CEtxslXvhE

Most of the time that conservative Christians encounter the doctrine of universal reconciliation, they usually describe it with a bunch of caricatures, and I thought it would be useful to discuss those caricatures and contrast them to the truth about this doctrine. You can also read this in blog form at https://crucibleofthought.com/why-many-evangelicals-misunderstand-universal-reconciliation/ A v...

What do we do when our government becomes untrustworthy? I've been wrestling with this question for a while now. And everything I see coming convinces me that we're in for a REALLY rough ride in the near future. So what do we do about it? I have some ideas that won't fix any of our nation's problems - but they will give us a roadmap for bringing the love of God to those around us,...

This week we watched another George-Floyd-like expression of extreme injustice by a government official take place in front of, and despite the obvious presence of, multiple cameras. In fact, that official was even captured on camera recording his actions on his own personal cell phone camera. The horror and outrage that so many are feeling today is understandable. But I'm wrestling with the d...

What if the thing Christians call "hell" was effectively just a welding torch, designed to join us all into one? What if we could become one, without all that heat and fire and pain? Let's talk about becoming one, and how it relates to something the aerospace industry calls "cold welding" or "vacuum welding." You can watch this in video form at https://youtu.be/Te...

I'm joined by Paule Patterson and Andy Luiten to discuss the state of the American church, and her relationship to prophetic voices calling her to account. How did the church get here? What factors are at play? Can we learn anything from the counseling professions as we think about whether the church can recover from its challenges? You can also watch this at https://youtu.be/-cL9POzUh5k

Paule Patterson and I talk about awakening and enlightenment, then the very opposite: the idea of kenosis, of dying to self, of ego death. What does it mean for the Son of Man to experience a mystical awakening? How do we need to die to self, to experience a death of our "ego," to become truly alive? Is this an individual thing, or can it only be experienced in community? Paule and I exp...

In my fifth conversation with Paule Patterson about his book "The Coming of the Son of Man and the Mystic Awakening", we discuss ways that the Bible adopted language from the empire around them, but subverted that empire in the very adoption of that language. You can also watch this as a video at https://youtu.be/HR9cRpFCxQQ

Life and death are impossible to separate. And inevitably, life itself springs from death. It doesn't ease the pain of loss, but we can take comfort in the rebirth inherent in the process of life. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXlIvBgsYmY

The MAGA propaganda machine is powerful and dangerous. More than anything I've seen in my lifetime, I've watched it successfully weaponize the human soul, taking the worst primal human emotions and using them to wound and even kill our neighbors and fellow citizens and the most vulnerable among us.

How dangerous a thing it is to claim a mantle of being God's chosen people living on God's promised land, and not scrupulously following God's laws! The land itself will spew them out. And yet, that's exactly what a massive number of American evangelical Christians are doing - even as they celebrate the horrible injustices being carried out by their government, violating the single...

Perhaps you've heard of "internal family systems" or IFS. I had encountered that idea about a year ago, and found the concept intriguing. But what is IFS, and can it help us heal? Can it help us reveal the Image of God within us? When I started talking to Andy on BlueSky, and discovered he's a counselor that specializes in IFS, I really wanted to talk to him about it. So we spent...

Paule Patterson and I spend some time in Section 5 of his book, talking about two topics. The first is communion, where it came from, how we practice it today, and what we might be missing in our modern practices. Then we switch gears and spend the second half of our conversation on the integration of consciousness and mysticism. I think I've always held a particular understanding of that word...

Have you ever realized you were really, seriously, badly wrong in a way that hurt other people? In 2022 I realized I had been incredibly wrong about gay and queer people and their acceptability to God. So I publicly and clearly repented. This Pride Month, I'd like to spend a few minutes retelling and expanding on some of my history that led to that decision.

It's a provocative question: do we believe that God guaranteed that all the human activity since the time of the writing of scripture has led the Church to a divine, perfect orthodoxy? Is today's definition of "Christian" more accurate today than it was in the early church? And how did we get here, anyway? I spoke with Paule Patterson, who goes by the online moniker of Drunk Past...

I've been getting involved in addressing homelessness in my town, and sat in on a meeting about renovating a house into a women's shelter. I was struck by how *stupidly* hard it is to help people get affordable or even emergency housing. It seems like all the wheels of regulation are jammed against any real progress. You can read this post in blog form: https://crucibleofthought.com/why-is...

Today, a ton of people are talking about Dietrich Bonhoeffer, even making a movie based on his life, but I had to wonder, what did he really think about nationalism and the Gospel, and more importantly to me, what would he think about what's happening in America today? Today I get to share with you a pretty wide-ranging interview with two Christian ministers, Ben Marsh and Bonhoeffer’s Child o...

This is a great conversation about the collective Christ, the Son of Man arising in the world, an appearing of the Body of Christ in a new way. For a couple thousand years the Church has been wrestling with division and strife, and although there's certainly no lack of that strife today, many people are increasingly aware of a new kind of oneness - as Jesus spoke about in John 17 - arising from th...

This is a fun and wide-ranging conversation with Paule Patterson, and we talk about the intersection of philosophy and religion, and specifically the ideas about collective versus individual identity - what IS "The Church," this thing that Christianity has been discussing for two millennia? It's a topic he's been writing about in his book-in-process "The Coming of the Son of Man and Mystical Awake...

While I mourn many things that are being lost in the last few months here in America, one that grieves me the most has been the absolute shredding of many markers of equality in our culture. As I watch what is happening, it's now clear to me that this equality was a lot less solid than I had thought. You can watch this on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xEOOzOFQYQQ Also available in...