Do you agree or disagree with this statement: “You don’t have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body.” Or this one: “I am my body.” These statements get at the heart of not only some of the big cultural issues we are facing now, but actually inform our regular, everyday lives. Gregg …
As high school and college graduation season is approaching, I wanted to trace back to a great book written by Rut Etheridge and published in 2019, God Breathed: Connecting through Scripture, to God, Others, the Natural World, and Yourself. I happily endorsed it, saying: It is difficult to find good books targeted for a young …
I remember when Mark Driscoll’s sex book came out and a few Christian leaders began voicing their concerns while many still looked the other way. He overshares about his sex-life, shames his wife, and teaches a disturbing, one-sided view of sex. Many still gave and shared their popular platforms with him. He remained a respectable …
My husband and I have not been ones in our almost 24 years of marriage to read Christian marriage and sex books. We’ve read one—Tim and Kathy Keller’s. And now here I am, about halfway through reading Sheila Gregoire’s, along with Rebecca Lindenbach and Joanna Sawatsky, The Great Sex Rescue. I keep talking to my …
We reveal what we hold sacred by the language we use. Maybe those who don’t consider themselves religious would think themselves exempt from this proposition. But that isn’t so. Senior Lecturer in Applied Linguistics at the University of Sheffield, Dr. Valerie Hobbs contends that “all humans participate in sacred-making.” The sacred is anything or anyone …
“Our responses to the vulnerable expose who we are.” As I said, three great books on abuse in the church have released this fall. Diane Langberg’s Redeeming Power: Understanding Authority and Abuse in the Church is now completing my set of reviews. Dr. Langberg is an expert in this field, as she is an internationally …
Recently, in reviewing A Church Called Tov, I said that spiritual abuse can be like living in a bad dream—not only because you can’t believe this is happening, but because none of the people you are going to for help are functioning as they should. The whole setting is off and you are trying to …
Recently, at a conference where I was speaking, some women called me over to their table asking for some book recommendations. And as usual, I said, “Well, that depends on what you want to read about.” Immediately, one woman blurted out, “Sex over 50!” Not what I was expecting. But it just so happened that …
What if the very people accountable to God to shepherd your soul are the ones crushing it? What if, behind the curtain of that Christian community that you have grown with and loved, you find that you really aren’t safe? What if you find a more traumatizing truth than your original abuse—a whole culture in …
What does it mean to read Scripture as the church? What’s going on when we read the Bible? And do our tidy hermeneutical systems box in Scripture so that God’s voice never judges us, never surprises us, and we miss what the Holy Spirit is saying to the churches now? In his book Reading Scripture …
Aimee Byrd 