Why I Write The Bard Owl
Three Things I'm Passionate About...and I Hope You Are, Too.
Hi Readers,
Thanks so much to all of you who read The Bard Owl. I wanted to share today, briefly, three reasons why I continue to write and curate things for you.
My passion, simply put, is to equip evangelicals for missional living in a secular society. In order to do that, I think three movements are necessary:
We need to move from tribalism to hospitality. Hospitality is our heritage. Jesus is hospitable toward us, through the cross. Yet we evangelicals tend to be tribal in the way we think, the people we favor, and the way we choose to spend our time. Gone are the days when we could grenade launch the gospel at a local shopping mall onto someone else’s platter. In a secular society, we need to embody Jesus’ mercy through radical hospitality, empowered by the cross.
We need to move from legalism to wisdom. Legalism is any way we treat one culture (or subculture) as the standard for salvation. Evangelicals speak against legalism all the time, yet we’ve made white, republican conservative views the “law” people must obey before they’re considered “real” Christians. We tend to have an angelic/demonic view of culture: if art, or literature, or science, or whatever is not explicitly Christian, we assume it must be totally corrupt and evil to the core. If it is explicitly Christian, we ignore the ways it might plasticize life. The heart of wisdom is able to see both the imago dei and the corruption in everything.
We need to move from spiritualism to stewardship. Evangelicalism tends to be a dehumanizing movement. Listen to Christian radio for more than ten minutes, and you’ll hear a group of people whose vocabularies don’t include anger, repentance, injustice or neediness. Human nature has been scrubbed, in exchange for a false spiritualism that “has the appearance of wisdom,” as Paul writes, “in self-imposed religion, false humility, and neglect of the body, but are of no value against the indulgence of the flesh.” (Colossians 2:23). In order to be a light to people around us, we need to become known as people who are fully human, and fully committed to the dignity of others.
If you’re a regular reader, I’m assuming you resonate - or are at least curious - about these things.
That’s why I’m asking you, this December, to consider becoming a paid subscriber. Each paid subscriber helps me reach 45 new readers per year. I literally have statistics to back this up.
My goal this December is to move from a 2% paid subscription rate to a healthier 5% reader paid subscription rate.
That means I’m looking for 60 new paid subscribers who are passionate about reforming evangelicalism.
Would you consider becoming one of them?
It’d mean the world to me.
You can become a paid supporter below for 20% off. This will also give you access to my weekly curation of books, articles, music and movies from a gospel-centered perspective:
P.S. If you’re wondering whether that is all just talk and theory, I will share a very hard lesson I endured very recently.
I had discovered too late that I had allowed my pride to take over during an interaction with a stranger. I know now that this is a dangerous mistake to make, for many reasons. But in my case, by the time I realized I needed to apologize, the opportunity had permanently evaporated. I can find no way of contacting this person to make amends. A very powerful and painful lesson.
Of all the things you mentioned, I would have to say the humility issue is paramount. I do not say this from a point of arrival at perfection. You understand this, I’m sure. But I wanted you to know that I understand it. Pride is ever at my door to usurp humilities proper place.
It is humility that allows us to see every critique as a potential aid for improvement. If we evaluate a criticism humbly and honestly and find it wanting, then we can set it aside. But the process of self scrutiny is profitable. Just stopping to ask our Heavenly Father to help us see the truth is of immeasurable benefit.