What Is Religious Trauma?
Religious trauma is not about rejecting faith. It is about naming when experiences in Christian spaces have caused lasting harm. When the sacred is misused, it wounds deeply. But the gospel still leads to freedom.
Easter Sunday: The Defeat of Death and the Birth of New Creation
Easter Sunday is not simply the happy ending to Good Friday. It is the moment that reveals what the cross actually accomplished. The resurrection is not proof that Jesus was right. It is the defeat of sin and death themselves. If…
Did Jesus Save Us From God or From Sin and Death?
This blog explores the meaning of Jesus' salvation, focusing on the concepts of sin, death, and separation from God. It argues that humanity's true crisis stems from sin's power rather than God's anger. Salvation involves Christ's victory over…
The Wide Work of Christ
Not some things. All things. Through the cross, God is making peace and drawing what is broken back into wholeness.
Deconstruction Led Me to a Deeper Orthodoxy and Faith
Deconstruction didn’t lead me away from Christianity. It stripped away a brittle, exhausting version of faith and led me into something older, deeper, and more Christ-centred. What remained was not certainty, but a faith I could finally live.
What I Enjoyed Writing This Year (And What It Did to My Faith)
Looking back over the year, the pieces I enjoyed writing most were not about answers but attention winter light, wounded faith, healing before obedience, and a God who is not in a hurry. Writing became a way of learning how to stay…
On the Incarnation: Athanasius, Christmas, and the Healing of the World
On the Incarnation by Athanasius was written during a time of empire, conflict, and theological crisis. This reflection explores how the early Church understood the incarnation as God entering human history to heal decay,…
Benediction: Awe Made Near
God did not save the world from a distance. He entered it. In Jesus, God stepped into human flesh, shared our ground, and began the long work of reconciling all things from within. Awe, in the Christian story, is not about spectacle but about nearness.
Healing Before Obedience: The True Path of Discipleship
We often ask wounded people to behave like healed ones. This reflection explores why Jesus restores before he commands, how trauma and shame distort obedience, and why true transformation begins with healing, not pressure.
My Top 5 Books of 2025
I do not usually read with lists in mind. I read slowly, often distractedly, sometimes devotionally, sometimes just to survive a season. But looking back over this year, a handful of books stand out not because they impressed me intellectually, but because they helped to…
Recovering the Lost Books: Why Protestants Need the Deuterocanon Again
Most Protestants do not realise the early Church read a wider Bible than the one we inherited. Books like Wisdom, Sirach, Baruch, Tobit, and the Maccabees shaped the world of Jesus and the imagination of the first Christians.…
Advent: Maybe Christ Is Waiting For Us
Advent is usually framed as our waiting for Christ to come, but what if Christ is already here and we are the ones catching up? This reflection explores Advent as awakening, formation, and learning to recognise the presence of Christ in our midst.
Becoming Men Again: A Theology and Philosophy of Manhood
Masculinity is either idolised or dismissed, but rarely redeemed. Men do not need more stereotypes. They need initiation, healing, responsibility, and a return to Christlike humanity.
Tonight I opened a new book, "Haiku Japanese Poems For All Four Seasons" and decided to try my hand at it. Might write some for Scribbling Theology in the future.
Image crowned with light,
grace shapes dust toward glory’s form,
God becomes our life.
The Way Back to Orthodoxy Is Through Beauty and Transcendence
If the church drifted into quiet heresy by losing its wonder, then the way back to orthodoxy is through beauty and transcendence. This reflection explores how the recovery of awe, sacrament and imagination can restore depth to our…
Without Beauty the Church Drifts Into Quiet Heresy
Orthodoxy remained, but the world around us lost its depth. This reflection explores how the Western church held onto its doctrines yet drifted into a thin and disenchanted faith, drawing on voices like Charles Taylor, Underhill and James K A…
Christians often fear Halloween. But what if this night is not a celebration of darkness, but a reminder that even the dark belongs to God?
The Celts called this season Samhain, when the veil between worlds grew thin. The Church called it All Hallows Eve, a vigil of light and memory.
The Shack: A Reflection
When William Paul Young wrote The Shack, he was not trying to explain why terrible things happen. He was writing his way through sorrow. Like Job, he sat among the ashes, surrounded by questions that would not rest. Out of that ache came a story. Not a sermon, but a parable…
My Burden
8Jesus said,my yoke is easy, my burden is light.I want to believe him,but most daysthe burden feels like stone. The burden of anxiety,the burden of belief,the burden of trying to be humanwhen I am tired,so tired. If this is light,what does heavy feel like? And yet,he keeps whispering,…
@brianzahnd.bsky.social
So excited for your new book in may to come out (way too far btw), already pre ordered!
A Theology of The Elder Scrolls: Part I
Every Elder Scrolls player knows the lore contradicts itself — Altmer, Nords, Khajiit, Dunmer, Imperials all tell creation differently. But what if those contradictions aren’t flaws, but the heart of Tamriel’s theology? Part I explores myth, paradox, and…
The Image of God Revisited: From Eden to New Creation
The image of God runs like a golden thread from Genesis to Revelation. Humanity was created as living icons in God’s cosmic temple, called to serve as royal priests who reflect his presence into creation. Though the image was fractured by sin…
May you know your sorrow is not failure. May silence hold you, not undo you. May hope come like a slow dawn, not rushing, just faithful. And may the scarred Christ carry you toward the promise that all shall be made new.
The Contemplative Gospel Part I: Creation, Fall, and Our Lost Communion with God
The gospel does not begin with sin but with wonder. Creation was spoken into being within God’s presence, every breath sustained by Him. The fall fractured our communion, yet God’s presence remains. A contemplative…
Words are never just noise. They carry life or decay, creation or ruin. To bless is to echo the God who spoke light into being. To curse is to deny his image. May our words become breath that lifts, until our speech itself is a prayer.
Genesis 1–11 is not just about the past but about us. To be human is to live east of Eden, longing for home. Yet the God who was there in the beginning still walks among us, asking “Where are you?” and whispering us toward new creation.
