Mr. Locke’s Classroom

Needless to say, last week was an interesting week.
Admittedly, calling people assholes is not the best way to start a conversation, but for better or worse, I did have a lot of conversations last week: With PhD students, with fellow MDiv students, with former students, faculty members, staff members, bloggers, anonymous emailers and letter writers, [...]

I started reading Augustine’s Confessions today, in conjunction with a chapter “about” him (and his theological positions) in my Church History textbook.  I find myself growing more and more perplexed, being pulled in two separate directions.
On one hand, when I read what others have admiringly written about him, and when I read summaries and explanations [...]

Walking the line between confident self-expression and pompous diatribe is tricky (ironically enough, “diatribe” comes from a Greek word that means “waste of time”). This is certainly true of blogs in general, and mine specifically.
Last week, I crossed that line. I wrote a public criticism of the educational methods used in my Greek [...]

The day I was born (according to my mother) one of the doctors listened to my loud cries and quipped, “That kid’s ALL mouth!” And somehow that characterization has followed me ever since.
I have an old cassette tape recording of myself in the 3rd grade, talking to the tape recorder. It was a [...]

Still here in Tulsa at Grady Walker’s house with my son (also Grady). Usually when we come up here to visit, we stay in the guest bedroom by the kitchen. As fate would have it, another guest is staying in that room, so little Grady and I are sleeping in the large bed [...]

Last night as I was leaving (and locking up) the church, a man in a truck pulled up, and asked where the prayer meeting was. I said I didn’t know, but that we didn’t have anything scheduled in the building for that night. We have several groups and three different churches that [...]

Yesterday I was having a Samson moment. Because of some stuff happening in my life right now, I was feeling shorn of power, shorn of favor, and shorn of identity. Like Samson, it was mostly a situation brought on by my own arrogance and/or stupidity, but also like Samson, there was a certain [...]