What do you mean God speaks?

Send us Fan Mail We’re back for 2023. This is the first part of a two-part episode, which explores how today, in our modern, secular society, we wrestle with our belief in God. These two episodes will detail how I’ve thought through the questions and issues years ago when I seriously asked myself, “Maybe there is no God.”  Because of that, these two episodes are a kind of alternative overview of t...

Send us Fan Mail I'm back for 2023, and here is an extra episode to update what is being worked on. Next episode, "Risking belief to keep your faith"  will air around mid-February.  In the meanwhile, you can listen to this unscripted episode--if are so inclined--as I bemoan my troubles, trying to figure out which publisher would be appropriate for my book, and figure out how to writ...

Send us Fan Mail Many people are surprised that the name of the people of God, "Israel," means to "wrestle with God". But, that was the name God gives to Jacob, who is a character full of faults and failures, and that became the name of everyone who are called God's people in the Bible ( Christians are called "new Israel" in the New Testament). So, in this episod...

Send us Fan Mail We're back with part 1 of the two-episode exploration of Jacob's life.        What does it mean to be blessed by God? What is it about Jacob and his life that Genesis identifies him as the spiritual ancestor and representative of the people that God personally speaks with--people who journeys with God? After all, Jacob is an unlikely figure for a hero of a story. He lies...

Send us Fan Mail Isaac is the promised child of Abraham and Sarah. Yet, his life as described in Genesis seems, well, uninteresting. But, there is a very interesting idea behind what happens--or rather, what doesn't happen--in Isaac's life, and it has to do with to how humanity's relation to God develops through multiple generations, according to the Bible. Coming to learn the perso...

Send us Fan Mail A bonus, unscripted (!) episode. We'll see how this episode turns out. So, we've been exploring "ideas, insights, and stories in Christianity." But, where am I in all this? Have I ever experienced some of the things I describe in this series, especially in the third season--God speaking personally to people, making promises, and unfolding miracles? Now that I&a...

Send us Fan Mail Why did God call Abraham to offer his son, Isaac, as a burnt offering? The story of the "Binding of Isaac," is not simply about a story of a man obeying God to the point that he will sacrifice his own son.  It is about a call that everyone who speaks with God eventually hears. And we hear this call because all of humanity has been waging a one-sided Cold War with God, an...

Send us Fan Mail What is faith? What is a miracle? And how are the themes of promise, time, and ambiguity related to all of that? Has God truly been speaking with us? Is Reality personal ? Christians believe God speaks to them and walks with them, but what we’ve explored so far still remains open to the question on whether this is merely one possible way to relate to reality, a subjective way to p...

Send us Fan Mail Moral teachings in the Bible, especially in the Hebrew portion (the Christian Old Testament) pose a problem. There are rules and regulations that do not seem very important to us, while there are practices, such as slavery, God either seems to ignore, or even condone. And we're not even getting to the laws that God commands that seem too harsh or even barbaric by our standard...

Send us Fan Mail Is God good? And if God is good, why are moral laws and commands in the Bible, sometimes  not so good? And of course, why do bad things happen, if God is good? But, before we can ask those questions, we should've asked this more basic question: Why would you think that God is good ? What does it mean to say that God is "good"? We will begin to explore  this question...

Send us Fan Mail For ages, people have ascribed personality to their deities. What was their reasoning? And what would be the personality of God that speaks forth all things? How should we start thinking about this? And what about Abram, Sarai, and their family? What was the personality of God that spoke to them? How did they begin to learn Who God was in their lives, and what did they experience?...

Send us Fan Mail The first extra episode for Season 3; the next main episode (S3E5) will go live early July. (update: there were more delays, so I couldn't complete the new episode by the end of June as I had originally planned. I apologize for the delay!) This episode addresses the more "meta" question about this series that I wanted to go over before releasing the next episode--wh...

Send us Fan Mail To hear God speak to you, is to be presented with truth; they are the same thing. And God speaking to you often begins with uncertainty, because we don't know whether what is being presented to us really is true. Abram and Sarai hears God speak to them in how they are moved, or inspired, to follow an inner call. "Something" guides them, and that "something&quot...

Send us Fan Mail The Genesis account of Abraham, Sarah, and their children, invites its readers to follow in their path, and continue their journey toward God.  There's one, big problem: it doesn't tell us how to start . Their journey begins with God speaking to Abraham (Abram), but Genesis does not describe how God first spoke to Abram, and how Abram heard God for the first time. So, ca...

Send us Fan Mail  Abraham, Sarah, and their family--are they "historical" figures? The simple answer? No... and Yes. (Ok, so it's not a simple answer) Another answer is the actual title of this episode: "Historical in/significance of Abraham's story" This odd title can refer to four things. 1) The "insignificance" of Abraham as a "historical figure&quot...

Send us Fan Mail What does it mean to say, “There’s no God?”  What it means for us today, to say, “there’s no God,” is quite different from what it meant for people living just several centuries ago, to say, “there’s no God.”  That's because people back then did not merely believe that God exists. They perceived God in their world. Then, some time ago, God disappeared from our perception. We...

Send us Fan Mail A short prologue to the 3rd Season of What do you mean God speaks?  -  "Those who wrestle with God.  1st main episode of Season 3 is scheduled to go live next week.   Music : "True Genesis" by Tenacious Orchestra - Licensed from PremiumBeat.com  ----------------------------------------   Support the show  ----------------------------------------           Instagram:...

Send us Fan Mail  Trailer for the upcoming Season 3 of "What do you mean God speaks?"     Those who wrestle with God.           The trailer : "Monologue of the children of Abraham"  Music : "True Genesis" by Tenacious Orchestra - Licensed from PremiumBeat.com  ----------------------------------------   Support the show  ----------------------------------------       ...

Send us Fan Mail Post-season bonus episode; here I just go over some things I thought of while writing this second season, or other things I could have put into the episodes (or thought was interesting), but didn't. I also talk about new listeners, trouble with writing for people I can't see, and stuff like that. Also: at the end of the episode, I play the full length music pieces I have...

Send us Fan Mail The finale of Season 2: Genesis. Please join me for the third Season!  We think the story of Babel is about God punishing people for building a tower that reaches the sky; that is why God makes them speak in different languages. But, what if it’s much more than that? What if the Tower is not really God’s primary concern, and the goal of God making people speak different languages,...

Send us Fan Mail What does the Flood that God speaks forth mean for those of us today? What is God speaking and promising when Noah and his family emerge from the Ark to a new world? What does it mean for God to make a covenant that the world will never unravel completely from the Flood? This is the conclusion of the second arc of this season, which spans between episodes 8 to 12. If you put the t...

Send us Fan Mail When everything unravels into the Flood, what will save you from it?  Make sure you've listened to "S2E10: ...so that Everything unravels into the Flood" before this episode. What does it mean for God to bring the Flood, while speaking to Noah to build the Ark? The Ark is more than just a means to escape destruction--God is, in a sense, telling Noah to build a small...

Send us Fan Mail What does it mean for God to bring the Flood? Why does God bring the Flood? What is the Flood that brings an end to our world?    (Genesis 4 ~ 6) Is our world unraveling into a flood?  2:16       Did the Great Flood happen?               9:53       What humanity makes of the world after Cain               16:38       How evil unravels our world into the Flood               27:05  ...

Send us Fan Mail What would it be like to be Cain? To rage at how your life is unfolding, then somehow, in some way hear God speak to you, and recognize those words as God speaking? And then, go against it? What was going on with him? What would lead him to do this? And how would this change the world afterward? Yourself, and your descendants? When Cain murdered his little brother, he got his wish...

Send us Fan Mail From the Fall, Exile from Eden, to the first Murder What "death" did the Fall bring upon humanity? One way to answer is, "how do we live forever?" I'm not asking how do we avoid dying forever; rather, if we don't die, how do we live? Because after the Fall, Life has become our enemy. And Cain murders his brother because of it.  (Genesis 3 ~ 4)  1:48  ...