Guidelines, Ground Rules, and Guard Rails For the Stranger Verse

Creating and cultivating a healthy space to grow and learn

We’ve got people from all over the world here, literally. Which is amazing. But with that comes diversity of opinions. We want to create and cultivate a safe space for us to bring our honest thoughts and questions, and to grow in our convictions. At the same time, we want to fight against division and disunity. So here are a couple of guidelines:

1. Approach everything with a posture of humility - One of the things that first drew me to the Blurry guys (Luke and Nate) was their intense honesty wrapped in gracious humility. They had convictions and pushed through curiosity, but always with a posture of humble consideration. I wrote my first book, “The Hidden Peace,” on a theology of humility because I truly believe humility is the soil of the Christian life. Humility brings clarity, while pride brings insanity and chaos. No wonder Lucifer fell from the heights of heaven (a place Yahweh himself placed him, Ezekiel 28:12-19)—it’s a story of curiosity gone wrong because there was an unholy exchange of humility for pride. This is what we DON’T want to do. We want to maintain humility and allow that to be the guardrail for our curiosity.

2. Keep in mind theological triage and keep the main things the main things while remaining open and considerate on secondary and tertiary matters - Theological triage is a concept that separates theological doctrines into categories from essential to non-essential. A quick breakdown:

Primary Issues - Core doctrines of the faith. We lose these, we lose Christianity as a whole. The Triune God. Yahweh as the uncreated Creator. The Incarnation. The Resurrection. The defeat of sin and death through death. Jesus as the only way to reunion with the Father. Baptism and the sacraments.

Bottom line - We can’t reject these, or we reject the essence of the Gospel.

Secondary Issues - How some of these doctrines are fleshed out. For instance, baptism: Is it based on confession of faith? Is it for children? What about infants? Communion: Do you do that every week? Once a month? Questions about end times and the rapture?

Bottom line - We can disagree over these. They may influence our participation at the local church level, but we’re all still believers and followers of Christ.

Tertiary Issues - Things like the style of music, the color of the carpet, the stage design. Things that often fall into the area of methodology but are not essentials.

Bottom line - We should never divide over these. These are preferences and often areas that will push us into deeper sanctification.

3. Speak to others as if they were right there in front of you. Though we are in a disembodied environment (the world wide web), we are embodied people who bear the image of God. Let’s communicate to each other with that in mind. - We live in a world absolutely terrorized by contempt. There has to be a remedy to contempt that allows for meaningful confrontation without dehumanizing other image bearers of God while maintaining personal conviction. This leads us back to that posture of humility. I’ve realized that it’s really hard to hate someone you’ve sat down and shared a meal with, someone whose presence you actually enjoyed. Even if you didn’t enjoy the experience, just the shared human story makes it a little more difficult to act in harsh ways. I’m convinced this is why Jesus shared so many meals with so many different people (his disciples, tax collectors, crowds).

3. We won’t tolerate any bullying or vulgar/obscene talk - No explanation necessary.

4. We ask that you keep to the questions/prompts that are placed in the chat. There will be dedicated chats along the way for more random or “blurry” topics. - This is the first time we (Luke, Nate, and I, along with our team of in-house theologians and scholars) have done this, so we want to start slow. This means, to start, we will initiate chats and invite people to comment/reply. Some chats will be open to all subscribers regardless of free or paid. Others will be paid chats only. And then we will have a special chat for those who are founding members.

Jesus is the point. If we miss Jesus, we missed everything.

On behalf of the Blurry guys, we just want to thank you. We start the Bible In A Year journey in just a few days, and we’ve learned so much along the way. We had a small little dream and it has grown in ways we couldn’t have even imagined. We’ve had hiccups and journal misprints (some of you have January with 2025 dates, but February on is all good, we’ve fixed this though!), and you’ve been patient with us as our tiny little team tries to put on display the beauty of the Cosmic Christ.

P.S. - The Journal for 2026 is in its infancy. We wanted to get started with something simple, functional, and helpful. We’ve already got ideas for ways to improve it next year: spiral bound options, more teaching sections, an intro to every book of the Bible from a cosmic worldview, discussion guides for groups, a children’s edition, and much more. So for all of you who have jumped in on this early version, thank you! You truly have made it possible for us to do so much more in the years ahead.

So excited for this Stranger Theology journey with you all!

If you haven’t already, we would love for you to upgrade to a paid subscription. I just received the first article from one of our theologians in residence, Jeremy Jenkins. It’s on the cult Santeria and Neopaganism. I’m so hyped for it!

Plus, the first introduction episode of the Cosmic Mountain Podcast drops next week!