First, let me say... I love Ricky Gervais. He is a very funny and intelligent man that often does incredible work that I think makes this world a better place. He is also a very outspoken "atheist." Here is a tweet he just posted: I wanted to respond to the tweet, but I saw no way of doing so within 140 characters. Of course, I don't really expect him to hear or care about my response. But I have some thoughts about it that I feel like expressing. So here we go. That statement that Ric...

First, a word of warning… This blog is NOT intended for everyone.  It is written for a very specific group of people—those who would like to have some sort of intellectually honest faith but have experienced crippling existential doubt that makes faith difficult or impossible for them.  If that phrase means nothing to your own experience, I’d suggest you move on to a different blog because this probably won’t be all that helpful to you. I guess I could start this with the image o...

Last night, I had one of the most beautiful worship experiences I have had in a long time. We played at a Catholic youth festival in Louisiana, and afterwards we stayed for "adoration." Wasn't quite sure what that was, but we ended up kneeling in silence in a field for like 20 minutes with thousands of young Catholics, all holding candles. It was amazing. A procession of priests came walking through the candlelit masses holding a big golden cross and then they put this other golden thingy ...

I don’t claim to be a pacifist. If I would have been at that school the other day, and I had a gun, I would have shot that man in a second to stop him. What I’m not going to say is that this response would have been the Christian one. I’m not going to say that I know that this is what Christ would have done. Jesus, the one who taught us to turn our cheek when our enemies strike us. Jesus, the one who taught us to pray for our enemies, love them, give them more than they ask for ...

An excerpt from "The Crowd, the Critic and the Muse" (Appendix 2): A typical conversation I might have on an airplane: Stranger (upon seeing the guitar on my back): Hey, are you gonna play us something? Michael: Ha ha! Maybe, we’ll see! (Note to jokesters: anybody who regularly carries a guitar onto a plane is tired of this joke.)  Stranger: You know, I’m not sure that guitar is going to fit in the overhead . . . Michael (trying to stay nice): Yeah, it does actually. I pla...