Tag: faith
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The Incompatibility of Wealth and Wisdom
Proverbs 3:13-18 – 5/6/2026 Happy are those who find wisdomand those who get understanding,for her income is better than silverand her revenue better than gold. Proverbs 3:13-14 (NRSVue) Hoarded wealth is evil, on this the communist and the Christian are in agreement. The reason the accumulation of wealth is evil is usually understood to be…
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The Weight of Choice and Knowing how to live
Proverbs 3:5-12 – 5/5/2026 Trust in the Lord with all your heart,and do not rely on your own insight. Proverbs 3:5 (NRSVue) For the Lutheran and indeed for the Christian, we are to rely on God’s will and wisdom as superior and more conducive to flourishing than our own fallen human wisdom. We lack the…
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Dionysus and the Crucified
by Justin Marquis A Nietzsche scholar in seminary, a Christian writing a blog invoking the pagan God of wine; what exactly is going on? Nietzsche himself proposed a dynamic and even violent opposition, expressed as Dionysus versus the Crucified, between the God of wine and Christianity. Dionysus the god of subterranean, sometimes violent urges, the…
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Why Jesus?
by Justin Marquis Last week I was asked by an old friend, “Why Jesus?” regarding my return to a life of faith. This is an unsurprising question given my past rejection of Christianity and the Church. I have attempted to answer this question before, but that answer was just as provisional as this one. What…
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Maundy Thursday Reflection
by Justin Marquis [Given at Maundy Thursday Worship at Irving Park Lutheran Church on 4/17/20250] Maundy Thursday is a special day for me. When I started working and worshiping here at Irving Park Lutheran Church, it was Holy Communion that drew me back to the church community. Food brings people together, and it is with…
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Returning to the Church. Why? What does it mean?
by Justin Marquis I would believe only in a god who could dance….Now I am light, now I fly, now I see myself beneath myself, now a god dances through me. –Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, I, “On Reading and Writing.” I keep starting to begin a blog post explaining my return to the church beginning…
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Escape! How I left Evangelicalism
In my last entry, I wrote that I would post about the three types of reasons I left the evangelical* campus church I attended while in university—intellectual reasons, moral-political reasons, and reasons having to do with sexuality and lifestyle. I’ve decided to forgo that post and go a slightly different direction. You, the reader, can…
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Isolating Church, Liberating Education – The Early College Years
by Justin Marquis Previous Post – My So-Called Faith The beginning of my studies at Purdue University was a time of intensifying my commitment to my Evangelical Christian faith. My high school part-time job had been working at the public library, first as a page and then as a clerk. A lot of my high…
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My So-Called Faith
by Justin Marquis Previous Post – How Could I not Be Grateful for My Whole Life? Everyone, I believe, has those memories of youth that are difficult to remember because of how embarrassed we are of our younger selves, things we did that are so cringe-worthy in their immaturity, their naivety, even their stupidity that…
Dionysus on a Bike 