Author Archives: Matt

About Matt

Software engineer by trade; lay theologian by nature; Lutheran by grace.

Religious Freedom in New Mexico

Despite the frequent but dubious suggestions that forcing people to call gay relationships “marriage” won’t hurt anyone, it’s already coming at the expense of religious freedom. You’ve no doubt heard of the Christian photographers in New Mexico who refused to … Continue reading

Posted in Politics | Leave a comment

Atheism Caused By Genetics

I don’t like cilantro. It’s not merely a matter of personal taste, either. I’m one of about 20% of Americans who lack a certain enzyme in our saliva, the result of which is that the popular herb tastes like soap … Continue reading

Posted in Atheism, Science | 1 Comment

A Most Peculiar Animal

Though philosophy is usually considered a more high-brow, ivory-tower kind of discipline, it is something everybody practices, whether they do so intentionally or not. Accordingly, philosophies that start out among the elites in the academy always have a way of … Continue reading

Posted in Culture, Humanism, Natural Law | 2 Comments

Faithless Feedback

How do non-Christians feel about “being on the receiving end of the efforts of Christian evangelicals to convert them?” Or, putting it in Christian language, “how do unbelievers feel about having heard a Gospel that they didn’t believe?” I think … Continue reading

Posted in Spiritual But Not Religious, The Modern Church, Theological Liberalism | Leave a comment

Why Millennials Leave, and What to Do About It

There are two temptations a Christian encounters whenever he reads about why young people are leaving the church. The first is to seek to transform the church into whatever young people want it to be in order to retain them. … Continue reading

Posted in Apologetics, Christian Youth, The Modern Church | Leave a comment

The Rise of the Superstitious Left

I happened across a rather strange headline today: The Rise of the Religious Left: Religious Progressives Will Soon Outnumber Conservatives. I found this puzzling given the current trends in American religion. I generally think of the religious left as the … Continue reading

Posted in Culture, Spiritual But Not Religious, Theological Liberalism | Leave a comment

Nobody Wants to Commit

“Men just don’t want to commit.” It’s a charge that seems to come up fairly often when we ponder the sexual immorality and illegitimate children around us, and it is probably true. As I’ve written before, sexually barbaric men tend … Continue reading

Posted in Chastity, Ethics | 1 Comment

The Father is Not A Metaphor

What’s the deal with all that “father” language in the Bible anyway? The gender-explicit language of Scripture has long been a stumbling block to theological liberals. Under the influence of feminism, many have sought to relegate all the masculinity of … Continue reading

Posted in Feminism, Theological Liberalism | 7 Comments

Please Stop Working Together

One of the most common complaints I hear about contemporary politics is that the two primary political parties are always at each others’ throats.   “If only we could all work together, then we could finally get something done and solve … Continue reading

Posted in Politics | 2 Comments

The Secular Virtue of Faith

Christians talk about faith a great deal. It is, after all, through faith that we are saved. When we speak about this kind of faith, we’re referring to a kind of trust in God and His promises to us. It … Continue reading

Posted in Ethics | Leave a comment