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Are you looking for some Lent reading? A recent review in The Christian Century called The End of the Christian Life "a rich quarry for individual reflection and group discussion" and said it "would make excellent Lenten reading, especially during a pandemic!" Life is fragile. The past year has revealed this reality to us -- on a global scale and, for many, in our own communities, our own families, our own bodies. As we reflect on the year 2020 and as we turn our attention toward the season of Lent, we remember the claim of Ash Wednesday - "You are dust, and to dust you will return." We are dust. As dust crumbles and is blown about by the wind, we, too, are momentary. Our bodies break apart; they don't last forever. And yet, we are beloved. We are small, we are on pilgrimage, and beloved. The season of Lent reminds us that, just as...

05 February, 2021

https://anchor.fm/jtodd-billings Did you see the new podcast released in conjunction with the release of The End of the Christian Life? Descriptions and episode links are below. Be sure to subscribe on your favorite podcasting platform, whether on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or Anchor. We've received a great deal of positive feedback about the free podcast from listeners around the world. Check it out! Episode 1: KJ Ramsey, Poor Scripts and the True Story of the Triune God Sometimes pain stays with us. Some hurts aren’t healed, and we wish the suffering would simply leave and quickly. Join J. Todd Billings and therapist and author KJ Ramsey (This Too Shall Last, 2020), as they explore prosperity gospels and the misleading scripts that tend to define our lives of faith. How might our unresolved pain invite us to experience the presence of the Triune God who meets us in the midst of our suffering. Episode...

18 November, 2020

Here's an article with material adapted from The End of the Christian Life featured in the October issue of Christianity Today. Enjoy! And share with others you know who might be mortal. ;-)   I used to assume that God owed me a long life—to pursue a vocation and family with full strength, to live long enough to become a grandparent. Then, at 39, I was diagnosed with incurable cancer. The expected storyline of my life was interrupted. Now, as a cancer patient, my expectations have changed. The cancer is likely to cut decades from my life; I experience daily pain and fatigue that drain my strength. While my former expectations of God may seem reasonable, I’ve come to see how I had unwittingly embraced a form of the prosperity gospel. I believed that God owed me a long life. This assumption is widespread. Among those in the United States who believe in God, 56 percent...

16 October, 2020

Published in Mere Orthodoxy, April 20, 2020 Our world feels contaminated with disease. And yet, precisely in light of this contagion, perhaps we can learn more about the breadth and depth of Christian resurrection hope. Indeed, our cultural imagination may be more in tune to a reality that has a great deal to do with Eastertide season: the way in which the whole world is in need of healing, in need of a Deliverer. Before the COVID-19 outbreak, a central cultural point of reference for resurrection hope was simply the hope in the afterlife of the individual. Indeed, despite the much-reported increase in Americans who have no religious affiliation, belief in an afterlife seems to be very popular. About a third of those who do not believe in God still believe in life after death. A University of Chicago study indicates that, while belief in God and affiliation with a particular religion have been...

22 April, 2020