Church of Christ
Why I am a member of the Church of Christ Church of Christ & Eastern Orthodoxy
Micah Redding: Faith in the Future of Humanity
Science and faith, Christianity and Transhumanism
Latest posts
Sacrament & Sacramentalism
Basic idea: Sacraments are a form of Co-Creation in Scripture Parliamentary Theory of Sacraments Communion is Sacramental Marriage as a Sacrament
A cappella singing
Non-instrumental congregational singing—especially with four-part harmony—is a powerful demonstration of the priesthood of all believers, and of the unity in plurality that Paul defines as the nature of the Body of Christ. It brings togeth…
Why I am a member of the Church of Christ
Governance. Our structure is Congregational and Presbyterian. Decentralization with accountability is incredibly important in our time. Human agency. Our sense of human nature and agency is more akin to Catholicism, Orthodoxy, and Anglican…
Notes for Researchers on Christian Transhumanism
Definitions: Transhumanism can be defined as the ethical use of science and technology to transform the human condition. Christian Transhumanism can be defined as the ethical use of science and technology to transform the human condition, …
Marriage as a Sacrament
I’ve attended a lot of wedding ceremonies, and I’ve often felt a bit dissatisfied. In more secular-leaning ceremonies, the emphasis is often on the power of the couple’s love to hold them together. In Church of Christ ceremonies, the emphas…
The Creation Mandate
The Creation Mandate is a description of the human calling as described in Genesis 1:26-28. The Creation Mandate is the calling to create and cultivate life in imitation of our Creator. The Creation Mandate entails the human calling to scie…
Why Communion is Sacramental
The Churches of Christ, following the Protestant trend, have tended to see Communion or the Lord’s Supper as symbolic. The significance of the symbolism was primarily a reflection on the cross, and the significance of the act was primarily …
Co-Creation with God in Scripture
This is my basic framework for understanding this idea: Genesis 1 gives us the Creation Mandate, the calling to rule all things in imitation of God. This calling is exemplified for us in God’s own activity of creating and cultivating life,…
Church of Christ & Eastern Orthodoxy
I’ve read that within Anglicanism, some traditions see the Anglican Church as the heir of Catholicism, while others see it as Protestantism or something else. Perhaps in a similar way, I see the Church of Christ as the fledgling heir of Eas…
Parliamentary Theory of Sacraments
The New Testament employs political language for the authority and function of the church. For example, Jesus speaks of “keys to the kingdom” and “binding and loosing”—an authority he vests in the consensus of two or more disciples (Matthew…
Life at Scale
Life as we know it is full of incredible diversity and change. From single-cell to multi-cellular organisms, from asexual reproduction to sexual recombination, from bacteria to plants to fungi to vertebrates, life evolves, transforms, and g…
Origins of Transhumanism: W.D. Lighthall
For several years now, I’ve been hunting the origins of transhumanism. One of the significant mysteries in this story is the first time the word “transhumanism” shows up in English. Until recently, the first appearance of “transhumanism”, w…
Paul, Paradox, Myth, and the Danger of Knowledge
“Paul, you are out of your mind! Your great learning is driving you mad!” So exclaimed the governor Festus on hearing Saint Paul speak. Until recently, this statement made sense to me. Studying too much can push some people over the edge.…
Teleology & Simulation
(—This essay is a draft, undergoing feedback and revision.—) In 1802, William Paley famously set out the “Watchmaker Analogy”, a teleological argument, or argument from design for the existence of God. The argument was as simple as it was i…
My Sister's Wedding Ceremony
I was incredibly honored and thrilled to perform the wedding of my sister Hannah today. Here’s a rough transcript of what I said during the ceremony. . We’re gathered here today to celebrate the marriage of Hannah Marie Redding, and Juan Da…
The Resurrection is Participatory
In my previous essay, The Resurrection is Technological, I explored Paul’s argument in 1 Corinthians 15, that the resurrection is about God’s intention for humanity to reign over the cosmos. According to Paul, God’s plan was for humans to r…
The Kingdom of God has a biotechnological research agenda
The Kingdom of God has a biotechnological research agenda. We must cultivate all life, starting from the bottom up. We must learn how life works, how evolution unfolds, how ecosystems function—and we must learn to bless and uplift those pro…
Miracles vs Magic
In 1600, during Giordano Bruno’s heresy trial, the inquisitors asked a question: Did he believe Jesus’ miracles were performed by magic? It’s hard for us to understand the significance of this question. In our post-Enlightenment world, this…
Dealing with Death
On Tuesday, April 24th, I was interviewed on BBC Radio about technology, the pursuit of immortality, and the meaning of death. In the middle of that night, we were awakened by a call from an out-of-state hospital, telling us that my father-…
Be Thou My Vision, the Royal Wedding & Theosis
At the Royal Wedding yesterday, there was a brief moment when everyone in attendance, including the royal couple, sang together. They were singing a melody shared by Be Thou My Vision, one of the most beautiful hymns ever written. The hymn …
The Tower of Babel
Perhaps no biblical story has captivated people’s imaginations like the Tower of Babel. In this story, a group of people get together to build a tower tall enough to reach heaven—from which they intend to launch an all-out war on God himsel…
Environmentalism Mandates Transhumanism
In one billion years, life on Earth will be gone. Five billion years from now, the Sun will expand to encompass the Earth. But long before that happens, the rising temperatures of the Sun will boil the oceans, and make the planet uninhabita…
Mary, Mother of God, Catholic Transhumanist Wonder Woman
The more I am exposed to the Catholic aesthetic, the more I understand that for the ancient church, Mary was sort of like Wonder Woman, working against the power of Kings and Empires to smuggle the divine into the world. She strides across …
Black Panther is the Transhumanist Future We Need
I’ve just returned from seeing Black Panther, and not only is it a great superhero movie, it is one of the most tech-positive movies I’ve seen in a long time. Its story-telling offers to reorient the entire superhero genre around deep quest…
Francis Bacon, Christian Transhumanist
In the 1600s, Francis Bacon, creator of the Scientific Method, was advocating Christian Transhumanism. It’s common for people wrestling with the tension between science and religion to point out that many great scientific pioneers, such as …
Feedback Loops
Recently, I’ve realized that feedback loops have been one of the most important things in my life—and are perhaps one of the most important things in the world. Most of us are aware of negative feedback loops. Feedback from a set of speaker…
Minimum Viable Theology: Superorganisms
This is part of a series on a Minimum Viable Theology. The idea is to see if we can construct a minimal theological starter kit, using only reasonable assumptions. The first entry is about why good wins. You should start there. One of the m…
5 Theses for the Next Reformation
500 years ago TODAY, Martin Luther nailed 95 theses to the door of a German church, kick-starting the Protestant Reformation, and changing the course of history. 500 years later, the religious world is once again in turmoil, grappling with …
Christian Transhumanism is the Next Reformation
Published at the Huffington Post Five hundred years ago, Martin Luther nailed 95 theses to the door of a German church, kicking off one of the most significant movements in Christian history: the Protestant Reformation. The movement was les…
The Resurrection is Technological
In 1 Corinthians 15, Paul lays out an argument that many believe is at the heart of the Christian faith—an argument for the ultimate resurrection of all people, and the eradication of death itself. Paul’s explanation of this belief is often…
Two Kinds of Power: Why Fascists Can't Make Art
I believe that there are two kinds of power in the universe. The first one is control—the ability to constrain action. The second one is freedom—the ability to act. These two kinds of power are in deep conflict, locked together in an invers…
How does Salvation Work?
Here’s how salvation works in Christianity. In Christianity, love is what saves. When Jesus is asked how to inherit eternal life, the answer is the the greatest commands: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul a…
The Beginner's Paradox and the Beatitudes: We Must Fall in Order to Rise
Ira Glass, in an interview on creativity, described the thing that no one ever tells beginners. It’s simply this: When you start pursuing something new, it’s often because you fell in love with something old. Maybe you decided to learn musi…
The Purpose of Scripture & Doctrine
I spend a lot of time thinking and talking about scripture and doctrine. And yet, as I’ve expressed in many different ways, I believe that love is the answer—the truly significant factor. So why not just let the scripture & doctrine stu…
Wonder Woman
For CS Lewis, Adam and Eve were a vision of humanity as it could be, in its full power and beauty. They were man and woman unchained, gods and goddesses walking the Earth, intense and fierce, full of fiery and dangerous grace. Superheroes a…
Moana and Reading Scripture
I love the movie Moana. And, particularly, I love this song—both because it’s a great song, and because it perfectly encapsulates a deep truth about reading scripture, or any kind of story. (Listen to it!) On the surface, the meaning of th…
Crisis
Today marks a year since the Orlando nightclub shooting. On June 12, 2016, a single gunman walked into a Florida nightclub and killed 49 people, wounding 58 others. A few days later, I wrote down some thoughts about what was happening. This…
The Serpent’s Lie
I’ve heard it over and over again, when people are considering some new capabilities or technological power: “This is just a repeat of the Serpent’s lie, You shall be like God!” The reference is to Genesis, where the Serpent tempts Eve by…
How to Read Scripture
Reading scripture is meant to be hard. I don’t mean that it has to be tedious or boring or anger-inducing or something like that. I mean that the meaning is not just floating on the surface, waiting to be scooped off like so much pond scum.…
Wireheading, Faith Healing, and Why the Placebo Effect is the Most Important Thing in the World
If you could flip a switch and experience more pleasure than you have ever felt in your entire life—would you do it? What if that switch also made you feel incredibly happy and joyful? What if it made you feel contented and successful and a…
How to handle God’s audacious vision for humanity
I’ve recently been rediscovering how truly audacious the biblical vision for humanity is. According to even a cursory reading of the scriptures, humanity is made in the image of God, given charge of the entire world, and called to participa…
Why the Lego Batman Movie might Save Civilization
The other day I saw The Lego Batman Movie, a great addition to both the Batman movie franchise, and the Lego movie franchise. It had action, adventure, drama, romance—and more cameos from familiar good guys, bad guys, and ambiguous guys tha…
What would you have done?
I’ve spent my entire life wondering what I would do at certain junctures in history. Would I have followed Jesus—or stood with the Pharisees? Would I have worked against slavery—or argued that it was a necessary evil? Would I have opposed t…
Why Christians need a Minimum Viable Theology
I am a Christian, and part of what that means is that I am an heir of an incredibly dense and comprehensive cultural tradition. I would call it a maximal cultural tradition, as it has produced art, music, literature, language, buildings, so…
What is Happening in the World?
Here is what I believe is happening in the world. Accelerating technological change has unleashed an era of unprecedented prosperity, freedom, and opportunity. The necessity of extreme poverty is vanishing in the rear view mirror, the incid…
How to Become Immortal
In the last few years, a number of different organizations have launched projects to end aging and radically extend human longevity. Google’s Calico Labs is perhaps the most well-known effort, followed by Aubrey De Grey’s SENS foundation—bu…
Christianity is Love
Christianity is the assertion that love is the most powerful force in the universe. Of course, when we talk about love, all kinds of ideas come to mind, from romance to hippies to powerful feelings about ice cream. (And by the way, if you d…
Partnership with God
This Fall I taught a Bible class at my local church, along with Kyle Creamer, Nate Underwood, Emily Stutzman Jones (Lipscomb’s Director of Sustainability), Rob Touchstone (founder of the Well Coffeehouse), Tim Catchim (creator of OneLife Mi…
How Self-Help Really Works
At the beginning of last year, I inadvertently found myself listening to an interview with self-help guru Tony Robbins. That interview made me curious, and pretty soon I had listened to several interviews, a 20-hour full-length audiobook, a…