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Essay

Secular Spirituality: Why the Cubs Matter

I'm often criticized for writing about popular culture. I guess it's not proper for an academic to explore the depths of Heavy Metal, The Big Lebowski, or Bob's Bar. I must have missed that day of Christian academic orientation, you know, the one on how to be…
Jason Lief
November 4, 2016
EssayScience and Faith

Taking Science to Youth Ministry

This past Wednesday my good friend Andy Root from Luther Seminary led a workshop for youth leaders on the topic of "Science and Youth Ministry". Seems like a strange topic I know—what does a Wednesday night youth group gathering have to do with Einstein's theory…
Jason Lief
October 21, 2016
Biblical StudiesEssayTheology

Going Medieval

Lately, my classes are all running together, intersecting at the point of the Golden Calf in Exodus 32 and Dionysius. Discussing the Golden calf is fitting in our current political climate—the way we all adhere to our political and cultural ideologies, taking God captive as we pontificate about…
Jason Lief
September 23, 2016
Essay

Urban Meyer and Augustine

Our holiness begins with our acceptance of restlessness, not as a good in itself, and not as a frustrated shifting and turning and wishing for something better, simply the steady acceptance of incompletion and the radical nature of our desire for God's endlessness.   Rowan…
Jason Lief
September 16, 2016
Essay

Choosing to Love my Wife (Again for the First Time)

It was one of those beautiful August summer nights in Iowa when the locust are loud and the air is sweet with the smell of corn. The deck was thick with smoke—cigarettes and cigars, the conduit for good conversation. We talked about marriage and parenting, how it opens…
Jason Lief
August 12, 2016
EssayPolitics

Show the Conservatives Some Love

I'm not a conservative. At least I don't think I am. I do hang out with people who are conservative—they are thoughtful at times and very fun to be around. They try to tell me that I'm really a conservative. Maybe? I don't know... I…
Jason Lief
July 29, 2016
Essay

Ghosts

There we were, driving down a driveway made up of two deep ruts, moving deeper and deeper into the Arizona forest. At 7,500 feet, we drove along a ridge, weaving in and out of different pathways. Finally, we came to a clearing with a number of small buildings and children…
Jason Lief
July 15, 2016
Essay

In Praise of Sucking: An Ode to Softball

For the first time in a long time I'm playing rec league softball. It's a minor miracle, really. Two years ago I blew out my patellar tendon dunking a basketball, and now I'm running the bases. I don't run hard, but I'm running nonetheless. The…
Jason Lief
July 1, 2016