It also depends on what values you want to practice: familial unity or personal spirituality.

So, my wife is agnosticish and didn't attend church with me after the oldest was like two (he's 16 now). I've never made my kids go with me, and let them explore belief on their own terms. My oldest identifies as Christian now, and is part of a youth group. To say: kids can make their own decisions.

The Atheist Christian When belief won't let you go, no matter how hard you try.

Some thoughts about belief based loosely on Thomas from this weeks lectionary passage. #WAT

theclutteredmouth.com/the-atheist-...

Death by Death Walking in Easter, the shadow of death.

New (old) essay up at The Cluttered Mouth.

theclutteredmouth.com/death-by-dea...

Death by Death He didn’t look like himself. I guess no one really does hooked up to medical machines keeping the body and brain alive. Here was my Papa in the final hours of his life though. He went into surgery for some heart issues and never came back to us. I got the chance to tell him goodbye. Alone with the dying in that room, I remember telling him that everyone he had taken care of, everyone in his family, everyone he loved was ok and that he didn’t need to hang on for us. Looking back, I don’t know why I said that. He was going off life support. There wasn’t a hanging on to be done. I suppose it was for myself, to tell myself that we were going to be ok without our patriarch. I may have said it because you’re supposed to have words for the dying if they can’t speak. Maybe it was because I believed he was fighting—like he always did—and that he could hear me. Perhaps I wanted him to be at peace more than I wanted him to come back to us. Whatever the reasons, I said words to my dying Papa; I told them, and a little while later he was dead. Death won. Death by death, my life has been filled with loss and grief. It began with my mom. Her death, when I was two, introduced the weight of death into my life. For as long as I can remember, I have known grief over the loss of someone I loved, even without knowing her. I’ve grown accustomed to death, marking the passage of life with sorrow, yes, but knowing it’s just what happens to us all. As I am fond of saying, no one gets out of here alive. Other deaths throughout my life have reminded me and reinforced this fact. My grandmother died of cancer. My friend Mikey was lost to suicide. My favorite church elder had aggressive cancer. My other grandma (my Papa’s wife) was lost to grief, age, and the result of a stroke. Michel Spencer was taken too soon by cancer. We added Rachel’s name to the list of souls we pray for and ask to pray for us as they witness our life of struggling to hold faith, hope, and love. In every one of these lives, death has come and taken them, replacing their physical presence with the wound of grief. It may come in the guise of cancer, illness, medical complications, but let’s call it what it is: death. It comes for each of us. And in every case, we are left with the same result. Death won. Jesus died too. We are walking in the 50 days of Easter, and here we tend to forget that before the resurrection that starts Easter, we are ushered into the season by death. I wonder how many people the disciples who mourned Jesus’ death had lost to death? I know Mother Mary lost her husband, Joseph. She’s known the heaviness, the grief of death at least one other time in her life. I have a feeling it was more than once, though. And collectively, I imagine those first Jesus followers had felt the sting of death in their lives many times. And now their hope of revolution has died on a cross. Death won. Even as death wins, again and again, it doesn’t get the final word. We are walking in Easter, and yes the season is ushered in by Good Friday and the death of love, but the Easter Season begins with the death of death by death and the resurrection of Christ ushering in a new reality, a reality where even though death wins, it never has the final word. Resurrection isn’t the victory over death; resurrection is proof that death is dead. After all, how can something that has passed away have any hold on us anymore? There is a good life that not only animates our bodies but now comes to us in the harrowed grave and lifts us up. We are no longer bound by death, its icy grip capturing and enslaving us. There is a hope, a way out, a victory. The resurrection declares that victory and our participation in the resurrection are both a salvation and a declaration that the old has passed and now it’s all new creation. Life after life, the reality that eternity is our playground is something that beckons us to live here and now. To live, entirely, ultimately, with reckless abandon. I don’t know what that means, but I want to learn to Carpe diem, seize every day and drink it down to the marrow. Life is meant to be enjoyed, and life after life is designed to be our fulfillment. We are made for life, not for death. So, death wins for now. Its sting touches us all, and grief is its remnant, its wake, it’s the effect on our hearts and bodies. Feel that effect. Feel the grief, the loss, the hurt. There is nothing wrong with that. These feeling in our chests are real, solid, and demand to be experienced. If we don’t, they will pop up in other places in our lives, disrupting and reminding us that hurt still lives here because of death. But life has won. There is no longer a permanence to death. We all come out alive. All of us. There is no exception. Love ushers us in by harrowing hell, destroying the grave, and beckoning us all to come forth. I don’t understand it, but I believe it. I need this faith in my life because without it, everything loses color, meaning, and hope. I need to believe that life, love, light wins, indeed has won, and that I get to take part in that victory. I need a victory in my life. So, I believe in the death of death. Even as death by death, I lose people I admire and love; it is the death of death by death that gives me hope. We will all live, and it will be glorious. * * * _Thank you for reading The Cluttered Mouth. This is an AI free, independent publication. If you like what you read today, think about subscribing or supporting._ Subscribe and Support

Walking in Easter, the shadow of death.

Death by Death Walking in Easter, the shadow of death.

New (old) essay up at The Cluttered Mouth.

theclutteredmouth.com/death-by-dea...

New post up at The Cluttered Mouth.

If you want to make sure you're reading all that's stuck in my throat, please subscribe (or support for $5mo). New posts will come directly to your inbox, and you'll be able to comment and converse about them.

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My favorite part of this is how absolutly white and good looking the image is. Very biblical.

New post up at The Cluttered Mouth.

If you want to make sure you're reading all that's stuck in my throat, please subscribe (or support for $5mo). New posts will come directly to your inbox, and you'll be able to comment and converse about them.

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This week on Anarchodox:

-We nerd out about how cool the Artemis II mission is for a bit

-The Supreme Court reverses a ban on conversion therapy

-Local mad emperor issues doomsday proclamation

-Deep Dive: Conrad Noel, the Red Vicar of Thaxted

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The Atheist Christian I’ve been a believer as long as I can remember. Maybe longer. See, I was raised in the pews, at church services, Bible studies, and prayer meetings. Christian language was my native tongue. I was immersed in the Bible and immersed at my baptism. I’ve preached sermons and created Bible study curricula. I’ve led worship and crafted songs for the congregation to sing. I’ve been part of multiple church plants. I spoke in tongues. I was slain in the spirit. I’ve seen miracles. I’ve witnessed exorcisms. If it is part of the Christian experience, it’s a part of my history. There was never a time in my life that I didn’t believe in what I saw, in the movements of God among people. I’ve known the truth of the Spirit falling on a congregation in song. Faith has been in my blood and grace has been my food. In short, I know what it is to be brought into Christianity and on fire for God. I know what it is to believe with more than your whole self. And I wish I could stop. I want to stop praying, “Lord, I believe; help my unbelief.” I want to stop being drawn into scripture week after week. I want to stop hungering for the table of the Lord. I’ve already stopped being a Christian; now I wish I could stop believing, stop having faith, stop being obsessed with Jesus. But belief won’t let me go, as much as I wish it would. In the dark of the night, in the middle of my depressive episodes, in the lonely hours I keep, I hear my heart still singing songs to God. When life threatens to fall apart and I’m at the end of my rope, by bones cry out for divine rescue. As joy begins to seep through the cracks, I feel my soul drawn upward into the heavenly places where I can rejoice with the heavenly hosts. When good triumphs over evil, my mind gives thanks to God, from whom all blessings flow. These are more than habits. This is belief at a cellular level. This is the faith that is latent in me coming awake (riffing off Christian Wiman in “My Bright Abyss”). This is being in love with the Spirit from the depths of the bowels of my being. I can’t stop acting like I believe because I can’t stop believing. Once, Jesus decided to head back to Judea to heal/raise Lazarus from the dead. Judea was a bad place to be. It’s where the people who wanted to kill Jesus were. It was tempting fate and walking into what could be a suicide mission. When Jesus set out on this bad idea, the Apostle Thomas said, “Whelp. We might as well go and die with him.” (my paraphrase). Thomas was all in all the way. There wasn’t a fiber of his being that held back. He was willing to die a fool’s death for Jesus. I relate to this. Back in the days I was on fire for God I was willing to give anything and everything to follow Jesus. I was all in. There wasn’t a fiber of my being that held back. I told myself I was willing to die a fool’s death for Jesus. I was just like Thomas. I followed, no matter where Jesus led. I followed Jesus out of good romantic relationships. I followed Jesus away from jobs that could have become careers. I followed Jesus out of some churches. I followed Jesus intellectually, never being satisfied until I found him in the ideas and theology I was constantly teasing apart. Anywhere I sensed or saw Jesus, I followed him. And I was happy about it. Jesus wasn’t a burden back then. Jesus was my joy. Jesus was my love. Jesus was my everything. As much dopamine was pumped into my system during worship times, as much wonder, awe, and doxology was birthed in me during intense experiences of prayer, Jesus didn’t let me stay in a toxic system of dogma, doctrine, and domination. Jesus rescued me from my own faith. I don’t want to leave Jesus behind, but I don’t want all the baggage that comes with belief anymore. I’d love to just walk away from the Jesus story and live a non-religious life. But that story, that person, won’t let me go. I keep getting drawn back into Jesus’ orbit, keep getting gripped by the story and beauty of who he is. It might sound silly to want to stop believing, but the truth is, I’m tired. I’m tired of the expectations I put on myself to “be good.” I’m tired of the rules I play by. I’m tired of the tethered to something as toxic as the Christian church (especially in the U.S.). I don’t want to leave ethics behind; I just don’t want them to be tied to the hypocrisy and socialization I was indoctrinated into. See, as much as I’ve followed Jesus, it’s always been in this container of Christianity. I don’t know how to separate him from this beast. Maybe you can’t cleave Christ from Christianity. And if that is the case, I want nothing to do with either. But maybe Jesus is greater than the religion that twists his name, building golden calves and false prophets and calling them God. Jesus has to be more than the force that would put a white supremacist, queerphobic, money worshiping, power-grabbing, fascist-aspiring political regime in office. Jesus, in his death and resurrection, shows us something greater than the violence and domination that this world venerates. Jesus has to be separate from Christianity if I am going to continue to be willing to die with him. I don’t believe in the God I was raised with. I renounce the works of a hell-bent, angry God who uses war and wrath to enforce his (and of course this God is a he) capricious will on our miserable lives. I need more deity than I was given if I’m going to believe in a god at all. I need someone here, with me, with us. Someone who isn’t pristine and perfect. I need an earthy messiah, one that knows the pain and sorrow of being human. I need a savior that brings joy and love, not as happy clappy emotional bypassing, but as hard-earned, well-deserved, exhausted expressions of goodness in the cosmos. I need a God who is willing to die with me, not just expect me to die for them. So, no, I don’t want to believe what I was raised in. I don’t want miracles and speaking in tongues, tithing and building campaigns. I don’t want a fucking religion any more. I want to get to know the one that won’t let me know, to lose myself in the belief that won’t let me go. I want more than I was promised: I want faith that gives a shit. Give me a God that bleeds, that cries out in abandonment, and still forgives because they refuse to be shaped by the powers and principalities that keep us all enslaved to money, power, and fame. Give me a god who suffers violence without retaliation. Give me the slain lamb. I can’t believe in any other god. * * * _Thank you for reading The Cluttered Mouth. This is an AI free, independent publication. If you like what you read today, think about subscribing or supporting._ Subscribe and Support

When belief won't let you go, no matter how hard you try.

I would rather have the resurrection be made up and have it change how I treat my neighbor than be able to prove it and it never change how I love.

A stream of consciousness post against despair.

I dont know how to keep having hope. What good is my job, the chaplaincy program I'm in, my writing... what good is any of it in the face or evil and terror? What good does any of it produce that can counter all this dumpster fire? I dont know how to keep going.

Ok, now this is becoming Tolstoy smut.

Not on Rex Manning day!

Better than reading Tolstoy smut.

A stream of consciousness post against despair.

I dont know how to keep having hope. What good is my job, the chaplaincy program I'm in, my writing... what good is any of it in the face or evil and terror? What good does any of it produce that can counter all this dumpster fire? I dont know how to keep going.

If only kenosis was the cornerstone...

Prayer is standing against the works of darkness. So no, he's not sitting.

I would rather have the resurrection be made up and have it change how I treat my neighbor than be able to prove it and it never change how I love.

Three men and one woman go to space, and the commander's name is Reid.

They're going to go behind the moon, be out of contact for 40 minutes...

Did we really need ANOTHER Fantastic Four reboot so soon?

new yorker headline: THIS EASTER, AN AMERICAN POPE CONFRONTS AN AMERICAN WAR

*movie trailer guy voice*

Rev 13.11

If sin (at least in part) is participation and propagation of the systems of violence and power that rule the world, then what relationship does baptism have to cleansing from sin if we still participate (because there is no counter society with its own economy) in the systems after baptism? #WAT

I'd drink so many cans of this, just to leave the emptys in random places as a message. And I don't even like pilseners!

Stay in the hotel, watch Red Dwarf, and order fish n chips.

The Cluttered Mouth The writing of Aaron J. Smith. For everything that's stuck in my throat...

This weeks essay (loosely inspired by the lectionary txt) is about being an atheist Christian, and how belief won't let me go... no matter how hard I try. If you want to make sure you read it, and all my work, sign up for the Cluttered Mouth newsletter. Free, or $5mo. theclutteredmouth.com