A few weeks ago a gentleman at our church asked me why I spend so much of my time addressing crime in the neighborhood.  It was one of those questions that is so simple to ask, while the answer is so big and has so many layers. For starters, we

A couple of years ago my wife Carrie was driving through our neighborhood with several black teenagers in her minivan – mostly boys I believe. They were all friends of ours and part of our church. As they drove past a patrol car, the officer inside looked at them, pulled

Part 4 of 4 – Mixing Yellow & Blue (read Part 1 HERE) Yellow Team Christians and Blue Team Christians are each right about a lot of things when it comes to living out the Way of Jesus in a Violent Society – a passion for justice, valuing the sanctity

Part 3 of 4 – What the Blue Team is Missing (read Part 1 HERE) While the Blue Team does a great job of recognizing the role that moral agency or free will plays in the violence in our society, works to protect the sanctity of human life from those

Part 2 of 4 – What the Yellow Team is Missing (read Part 1 HERE) While the Yellow Team does a great job of recognizing and attempting to address the big picture, systemic, and historic factors that contribute to violence in our society, they often fail to give proper weight

Part 1 of 4 – Yellow & Blue I have had a statistically unusual amount of violent encounters in my adult life and I also minister to people who have been victims of violence and people who use or have used significant levels of violence in their lives (on both

If being judgmental is a human condition then, according to Christianity, Jesus is the antidote. When we are judgmental we are evaluating others against our own values, ideals, words, and actions and finding them wanting by comparison. Whether our analysis is accurate or not it makes us feel better about

I used to think that being judgmental was the sole territory of narrow-minded, self-righteous, religious people. You know the ones I’m talking about. The people that you feel like you can’t be yourself around or be honest with for fear of getting that condescending look or that biting comment. When

I met guy the other day who I thought had a very depressing job, a similar job to one I have had before, so I thought I knew from experience how depressing it was. The strange thing was though, that the more time I spent with this man the more