Blog Posts from Will James (Altar'd Thoughts)

Seventh Day Adventism is not simply my denomination of origin – not simply my preferred flavor of Christianity. It is a fully saturating physical force integral to my existence. Adventism is gravitational. It is an underlying essence that seems to tie all other things together. It affects you and the direction of your movements whether you are thinking about it or not. Whether you are committed to it or not.

Prayer had to change. It had to die and hopefully resurrect. It had to become less me and mine but more all of us, more contemplative, more meditative, but honestly, so far, it’s just been more rare.

This Needs to Stop, NOW!

“El Shaddai” was the start of Jacob waking up to Truth after burying the myth.

Here is the rub: we Adventists believe we have the most tools to allow ourselves to be “doing it right,” but we make up only .5% of the adult population in America – one in every 200 adults. But, if those are the numbers, what is going to happen to the other 199 that are “doing it wrong?” Let alone what happens to the billions of people that are not Christian, not because they “rejected the Good Word” but because the corner of the globe they were born in precluded it, and the

Where the origin stories of the ancient near east and Mesopotamian world tended to express great conflict amongst the gods and interfamilial wars that resulted in the accidental creation of Earth and mankind, as byproducts of chaos (i.e. the Enuma Elish), the Biblical text, the words themselves, suggest that a collective of God, (“Let us make man in our image”) made a community decision to create purpose out of chaos.

Wandering in the wilderness for forty years won’t make you grateful for the creation of the dirt stuck in your eyes and mouth, but not being enslaved will make you grateful about pretty much anything. The Israelites in Deuteronomy needed a different revelation and a different reminder of who Abraham’s God was for them. An emancipator.

I just couldn’t let the ideas get in my brain so the roots couldn’t take hold, you know? I knew that a lot of the everyday practical scientific things I was learning, that were testable and provable, were subject to the same physical laws, concepts, and mathematics as the “taboo” evolutionary ideas in science, but “chewing the meat and spitting out the bones” was my divine test. Learn…apply…but never believe.

As we have approached the end of Pride Month 2018, it seems just as good a time as any to say that I’m one of those weird LGBTQ affirming Christians. I haven’t always been because I’ve read the same Bible as you who disagree with me. I was more of the “I will love the […]

We don’t yet see things clearly. We’re squinting in a fog, peering through a mist.

Dear Mr. Evangelical who “can’t” vote this year: This isn’t really a letter to any one person in particular. It’s directed more at an idea, most recently offered by Vox.com. You weren’t the first to say it, just the latest I’ve seen. So with that limited disclaimer, in that regard, and in the spirit of brevity, […]

This Episode of the podcast is a bit of a curve in the road. I started this podcast because of a personal/emotional/psychological/spiritual disruption in my life that started a couple of years ago. It has been a process that I was not prepared to be vulnerable about. However, now is the time. I found […]

See, while the older brother couldn’t celebrate because of what he THOUGHT about his brother, the servants couldn’t help but celebrate because of what they KNEW about the Father.